Mending my nets

Mending my nets is a blog written by Ella as she navigates the world after baby loss. This is a space to share what life looks like now, as a bereaved mother waiting to go to the sea again.

Creating a Sands Ribbon Display for Baby Loss Awareness Week 2024

I saw an email about setting up a Sands Ribbon Display and wondered if that would be something I could do. I liked the idea of the displays and thought the photos I’d seen were beautiful. There wasn’t a ribbon display local to me so I thought I’d keep it on my mind and see how I felt closer to the time. As things went on I found myself thinking of ideas and it started to become something I felt I had the energy for. I usually love a project but over the last year I’ve not had the same drive for the things I once did. Feeling interested in doing a ribbon display was a really nice sign for me that maybe that little bit of me wasn’t lost forever like I thought it was at one point.

I had quite a particular image in mind of how I wanted it to look, I wanted the focus to be on the ribbons, for it to be very striking and capture people’s attention but also be gentle enough to represent babies. This was quite important to me that it was done really nicely, if I couldn’t do it properly I didn’t want to do it at all.

I reached out to our local council who usually arrange really beautiful Christmas decorations and lots of other occasions throughout the year. We wandered around the town looking for the perfect spot and they were really supportive of the idea and helped with all the practical parts and physical set up. Not only was this a huge help but it also felt like a validation of why it was so important, two men I’d never met were so willing to make the display beautiful and something that could be used by everyone, it helped give me a little encouragement that others saw its importance too. Armed with my little mock up we set to work and now we’d decided what the plan was, it was just about making it happen.

I created posters and some social media posts, trying to explain what the display was about, but crucially how people could add ribbons for their babies. I found explaining it a little tricky but got there I think! There is so much you could and I wanted to say, but felt it needed to be simple and informative.

Posters went up in local shops and the local community Facebook pages and I even braved a press release to the local paper. I cut up lots of ribbons, kindly donated by our local Hobbycraft and tested out different pens and hung them in my garden in the rain for days, wanting to make sure they stayed looking nice and that the names wouldn’t run. I found a few smooth pens that worked well and hair sprayed the ribbons to help waterproof them a little and spent hours prepping them all, hoping they wouldn’t all be used.

The week came and I couldn’t believe the reception, the ribbons I had placed in a box at the display for people to use ran out within the first day and I stopped by each day to check on it and top up the ribbons. 226 were added over the 7 days the display was up. It was three wooden posts in a flower bed in the town square, with pink and blue fairy lights strung between them, and the ribbons were added to the lights. It looked just as lovely in the daytime as it did at night and I loved seeing people walk past it, some who went up to read the posters and others who simply noticed. They may not have known what it was for, but they saw the ribbons, they were there and they all represented our loved babies.

I felt so proud adding a pink ribbon with Astrid’s name on it to the display first. She was the reason I had signed up to do it but also the reason I knew about it in the first place. It was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time seeing more and more ribbons added to the display over the days. 82 blue, 75 white and 69 pink ribbons in total added from our small town.

The local council even lit up the town hall pink and blue with hearts, it was so beautiful and such a wonderful sign to so many of the impact these little lives continue to have.

One woman I spoke with added a ribbon in memory of her older brother, who despite passing away before she was born was always celebrated in her home. Her mother made sure he was never forgotten and she was carrying that on now by adding a ribbon for him. She told me how he would have been almost 100 today and I was so touched by the contrast of babies who lived almost a Century ago being just as loved whose dates on the display were only weeks before.

I was even able to connect with another mother again after our paths crossed years ago. They were selling their home, shortly after their son had passed away. Still to this day I remember his perfect and lovingly curated nursery in their home. I thought about that family after we returned home to a nursery never to be used by the baby it was made for and thought about how they were still standing and how we would too. Then, a year on, I met her again at the display and shared with her how the memory of their little family helped us in those early days. Here we both were, sometime later, both still standing and adding ribbons for our firstborns. A special connection I’m not sure would have otherwise happened.

I started to realise the scale of the display as the days went on, I expected a few ribbons to be added, I knew some other local mums from my Sands group who were planning on adding ribbons but other than that I didn’t expect there to be many. The number wasn’t the point to me, each was a baby and they all mattered. As the days went on I realised though how the number did in fact matter, because exactly that, each was a baby. With every ribbon added I pictured a family like ours, touched by a short but precious life. The more people who saw the ribbons and hopefully talked about it, shared it, donated money, all contributed to hopefully there being fewer ribbons added in the future, and that felt like something that was just as important as a special place to share our babies.

£434 raised

https://www.justgiving.com/page/nantwich-ribbon-display-2024?newPage=true#sharePage

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