Meet Trailblazer Kim Woods

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Woods.

Kim, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started The Beautiful Scar Project along with my husband in 2013 to help families who have lost a baby due to miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death turn the loss of their baby into a beautiful scar. I have lost four babies myself; three to early-term miscarriage and my son, Caleb, was born still the day before he was to be born at full term. We lost our first three, Jackson, Grace and Reagan, all within one year and each loss compounded the last, crushing my soul and enveloping me in darkness. When we got into the second trimester with Caleb, something we had never experienced previously, I felt a little more comfortable and a little more with each passing week. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office for one final test before my scheduled C Section the next morning feeling blissful and unbelievably happy that our first living baby would be born the next day. Then came the words – the five words no parent should have to hear – “I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.” I didn’t understand. I couldn’t believe that Caleb was gone, less than 24 hours before he was supposed to be here, born alive. Instead, on December 12, 2011 Caleb was born still, silently, in an operating room to two heartbroken parents. While in the hospital making memories with Caleb my husband, Scott, and I decided that parents going through what we were experiencing needed more help, especially with making eternal care decisions. We dreamed up a nonprofit in that very room, holding our stillborn son, to help other families like us. We decided to call it The Beautiful Scar Project because our pastor reminded us at Caleb’s funeral that all wounds create a scar and it’s how you care for that wound that determines how it heals. If you ignore it, pretend it isn’t there, it can get infected and make things exponentially worse. But if you nurture your wound, take care of it and acknowledge its presence, it’ll still scar but will turn into a beautiful scar that you’re proud to share with the world. We developed a resource folder that we give to hospitals at no charge to use with families who have lost a baby due to miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death that provides information on eternal care decisions, gives them permission to grieve the loss of their dearly loved baby and provides them the knowledge that they aren’t alone – there is an entire pregnancy and infant loss community, that we call Grief Warriors, ready to walk alongside of them in their grief journey. Our society doesn’t handle grief well and when you lose a baby in the womb people can sometimes dismiss your loss as less important than if your child had died later on. The Beautiful Scar Project exists to provide families with help and hope – to ensure they don’t walk this journey alone. The Beautiful Scar Project also donates a Caring Cradle or Cuddle Cot, a medical device that provides the gift of time to families by allowing the baby to stay in the room with them until it’s time for them to leave, to one hospital a year. Additionally, we are launching a couples retreat in 2020 for bereaved couples to do grief work and learn how to nurture their partnership that can be strained due to the life-altering impact the loss of a baby has on your life.

Has it been a smooth road?
The road of a grief journey is incredibly complex and bumpy. I always say that grief isn’t graceful; it’s messy, raw, and real. I struggled with anger and feeling like no one understood how I was feeling. The more I got involved in the grief community, I realized I wasn’t alone and that sometimes strangers can understand you more than your own friends and family. While creating The Beautiful Scar Project, I struggled with balancing my raw grief against the need to accept other grieving parents where they were at in their own journey – no two people grieve the same. Not even spouses who are experiencing the same loss. My advice would be that it’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to not want to celebrate holidays or need to cancel plans with friends. It’s ok to be angry or cry more tears than you ever thought possible. I would say that getting help and plugging into the pregnancy and infant loss community is key. Talk therapy, support groups (in person or online), and social media groups are all ways to help you feel less isolated and for your grief to be validated. I would also say that the old adage of “time heals all wounds” isn’t true. The loss of a baby is grief you will carry indefinitely, but the grief softens over time and won’t feel like an exposed nerve where everything is excruciatingly painful forever. It’s like a river rock that becomes softened by the water. The rock is still there and may even have some sharp edges here and there but the rawness will soften and allow you to survive.

We’d love to hear more about The Beautiful Scar Project.
I’m incredibly proud of the work we do because when I lost my babies, I felt so alone, so unseen, and that my grief wasn’t validated initially. When I lost Jackson, Grace and Reagan, I allowed people to bully me into how I should feel and how quickly I “should” get over the loss of what they viewed as an “idea” rather than my baby. I always say that Caleb made me brave because after he died he became my line in the sand – if people couldn’t deal with me talking about him, processing my grief for as long (or as loud) as I needed to, then I didn’t have any room for them in my new normal. The one I had to create after the loss of my babies. The Beautiful Scar Project gives families a voice, a vocabulary, around cultivating their beautiful scars which is really the story of their baby. We call them Grief Warriors because they are – it takes herculean strength to survive each and every day without your baby. The families we work with are heartbroken and often don’t have a great support system around them who understand the weight of their loss. These families need to know that there is help available to them as well as hope. Hope that they will survive this soul crushing loss and there are so many of us like them out here to light their path. The resource folders we provide are our cornerstone program – we provide them to hospitals at no charge and have a team that goes in and trains them on how best to utilize them. We also have a Hospital Ambassador that is assigned to each hospital that is their point of contact for more folders or any questions or additional resources the families may have or need. I’m so proud to offer this resource and of the amazing partnerships, we’ve created with the hospitals who care so brilliantly for the families we service.

So much of the media coverage is focused on the challenges facing women today, but what about the opportunities? Do you feel there are any opportunities that women are particularly well positioned for?
I think that the grieving mamas we work with tend to lead the way in their families on how to incorporate the loss of their baby into their family’s story. They tend to be the ones who learn what rituals of inclusion of their baby works best for them such as leaving an empty chair at a holiday or how to honor their baby’s birthday. The mamas tend to be the ones reaching out for information on resources and plugging in with other families who have lost babies as well. I was a support group leader for many years after I lost Caleb and it was always the mamas who would lead the way into the unfamiliar territory of support groups because they intuitively knew that the grieving hearts of other mamas could help them heal too. This is how they continue to mother their babies – by finding ways to include them in their family’s story and tending to their memories.

Pricing:

• It costs The Beautiful Scar Project $250 per hospital per year to provide the White Folders of Hope program
• A Caring Cradle costs $5,000 and we donate one annually.
• Our Moose Mountain Escapes couples retreat costs $500 per couple and will launch in 2020.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebeautifulscarproject.com/
• Phone: 7202754982
• Email: beautifulscarproject@gmail.com
• Instagram: beautifulscarproject
• Facebook: thebeautifulscarproject
• Twitter: @beautifulscarCO

Image Credit:
Searching for the Light Photography

Suggest a story: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.