Remembering the Orlando Pulse Babies

Whenever an unthinkable tragedy happens I cannot help but think of the people who died – as babies. As a loss mama time stands still, forever imprinting everyone as a baby.

A lot of parents lost their babies that horrific night.

We are adults for most of our lives yet the memory of our innocence as tiny babies is etched in time. Ask any parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, older sibling or cousin. Those Orlando babies started out vulnerable, observant, and thriving on love. Every giggle, clutch of the hand, coo, and eye flutter is easily recalled by those who love them.

I don’t need to go into detail about what a heinous, horrendous, and preventable attack happened in Orlando. What I do need to express is that, like losing a baby, this crime rips people from their lives against the natural order of things.

We are born with a manuscript for expression of eye color, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Until we get older, we are unaware that this expression places us into specific groups. These groups are sometimes admired and sometimes hated.

We grow and become supported, or bullied, or often times both. It is awfully confusing and starts to wear us down.

In loss and grief the only way forward is through. Grief causes us to become raw versions of ourselves and we begin to require love – and only love – to ever thrive again.

In this time of sadness let’s allow ourselves to receive nourishing love.

I am inspired by my sister. She provided sustaining love to me as a baby. She supported me in very raw times. Literally spoon feeding me in a high chair and again two years ago in the hospital. Love got me through during very raw, vulnerable moments. She is returning to her true self; freeing herself from the exhaustion of pretending and from the grief of hiding. Shining a full expression of her gay DNA. And the response is mountainous love. She is again thriving on love.

Many different expressions of phenotype enjoyed a night turned horrid at Pulse. We will never get those babies back again.

My wish is for those 49 lives and the hundreds of others touched by those 49 lives will inspire us to grieve raw and vulnerable, and to allow a deluge of love in response.

In honor of these lives, my sister, and others fully expressing their DNA, I plan to write a list of 49 ways that I can allow my true self to shine, even if it appears complicated and insurmountable. Even if I don’t yet know how or what a true self requires or who might react crudely.

All I can do is aspire forward and allow love to find its way.

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.