From Thought to Verse: A Hole in My Heart
When I tell people I write poetry, the first thing they often ask is,
“How do you have time for that?”
The truth is—I don’t make time for it. It’s not on a checklist, and it’s not a goal I chase. It just happens… because writing is how I cope.
When I get the chance, I show people my books and explain the stories behind some of the poems. That usually helps them understand what I mean when I say, “It helps me cope.” But since not everyone sees me regularly or gets to ask those questions, I wanted to share a few of my personal favorites here—and the reasons behind them.
Each post will include one or two poems and the stories that birthed them. My hope is that these words encourage you, draw you closer to God, and remind you that we’re all walking this journey together—enduring to the end.
The Me before Grief
In August 2021, I didn’t truly know what love or grief meant. Sure, I’d heard stories and experienced some loss, but I hadn’t yet felt the kind of heartbreak that tears your world apart. I thought I had—but looking back, I realize I had no idea.
At that time, my desire to be a mother was growing stronger by the day. Then, in the second week of August, I found out I was pregnant with my first child.
The joy of seeing that positive line, the wonder of a new life growing inside me—it was overwhelming. I was amazed. From the very first second, I was in love. I told the people closest to me. My dream had come true:
I was a mother.
“A heartbeat – one that stopped far too young”
August, September, October… my appointments went well, but the baby was too small for us to hear a heartbeat yet. I wasn’t worried. I had already bought a few little items, and my mom and I had even picked out the baby’s first book.
I visited my happy place—Hayward, Wisconsin—and thought to myself,
“The next time I’m here, I’ll have a baby in my arms.”
When I returned home, I would be 13 weeks along. I was counting down the days until I’d hear my baby’s heartbeat with a doppler.
It was a Wednesday. I remember the excitement, the adrenaline. I lay there, the cold gel on my stomach, listening closely as they moved the Doppler across my skin. But… there was no heartbeat. They tried again. And again. Nothing.
They gave me a script for an ultrasound.
The next day, I learned that my baby—my first love, my tiny sweetheart—had died over a month earlier.
“Although you are not here,
You’re always here.”
What I experienced is called a missed miscarriage. I hadn’t heard of it before. My body hadn’t recognized that the baby was gone. It kept doing everything it could to protect them—keeping them safe, even as that safe place had become their grave.
I now knew grief.
Real grief.
The kind that tears through your body and soul.
The kind where you feel your body bleed and contract as it lets go of someone you’ve never held but already loved deeply.
“There’s a hole in my heart,
A hole I cannot fill.”
A friend who had experienced a miscarriage herself sent me a package—a necklace called the Aid Necklace. It symbolized the hole left in a mother’s heart when she loses a baby. That necklace, and my grief, inspired me to write again. But I didn’t write immediately. I wrote the words that became entitled “A Hole in My Heart” when I felt my rainbow baby—my sweet daughter—kick for the first time.
“My sweet child,
You fill that hole in my heart.
Although you are not here,
You’re always here.
Your blood is mingled with mine,
Your soul is cradled in mine.
The kisses I cannot give,
The touches you cannot feel…
I’ll give them to you anyway, my little one.
For love like this cannot be driven away…
It cannot be tossed aside by evil,
Nor dimmed by the darkness.”
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Writing this poem catapulted me into the world of writing as a way to process and survive. I couldn’t speak the words I felt, but poetry helped me express what was trapped in my body and mind. Letting the pain out in words became my next step forward.
My first baby taught me how to love, and in that lesson, prepared me for loving my daughter, Paige. Many don’t realize she is our second child. Many don’t think a miscarriage “counts.”
But I hope that by sharing this, you’ll understand a little more of what some mothers go through—and maybe, if you’ve gone through it too, you’ll find words for your own pain.
