Foster’s Loss: Sunflowers and the Choice to Feel Pain

In this heartfelt episode of Beauty in the Break, Foster shares her deeply personal experience with pregnancy loss and grief. She opens up about her journey through the devastating news, the difficult decisions, and the emotional and physical aftermath. 

Alongside Cesar, they explore the healing process, looking for light along the way, and the importance of sharing our stories. This episode is a powerful reflection on grief, surrender, and transformation, as well as the unexpected beauty that emerged from the darkest season of Foster’s life. 

Content disclosure: pregnancy loss / miscarriage / stillbirth / infant loss

In this episode:

• The impossible choice Foster made—and why she doesn’t regret it
• Why she chose to feel every ounce of pain
• The unexpected way Foster broke the news before anyone could ask
• What no one tells you could happen after losing a baby
• How saying ‘yes’ from the depths of grief transformed her entire future

If you or someone you love is struggling with a miscarriage or loss, here are some healing resources: 

Return to Zero: H.O.P.E
still Birthday

To support some small but mighty organizations doing great work in this field, please consider donating to: 

The Skylar Project
Mattie’s Memory

If this episode spoke to you, you may enjoy Episode 1: Breaking Open. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

We’d love to hear from you—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Subscribe to his newsletter Insights That Matter     
  
  Foster Wilson:
• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum doula services
• Subscribe to her newsletter Foster’s Village

     
Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley 

Editor: Bessie Fong

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break. I'm Foster...

And I'm Cesar.
 
This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.
 
So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.
 
We are here with you.
 
Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.
 
Hello everybody.
 
Welcome to Beauty in the Break.
 
We love a good Sunday.
 
That's what the guy said today.
 
We love Sundays.
 
Oh, that's what it is.

That's not a good Sunday.
 
We love Sundays.
 
We love Sundays.
 
We have a phrase here at this event we were at earlier today.
 
We have a phrase here.
 
They said, we love Sundays.
 
And I am.
 
Yeah.
 
Yeah.
 
First off, that feels really great to say.
 
Yeah.
 
And then two, what a great way to start a together community conversation.
 
Yeah.
 
I was a speaker for it today.
 
So I get to get a, I don't know, a bird's eye view into like how an event runs themselves and how familiar people connect with each other.
 
They said yes and to that.
 
Yes and to that.
 
Is it Sunday?
 
Yes and.
 
Yes and.
 
Yes and.
 
Give me that pre-Monday.
 
Come on now.
 
There were no Sunday scaries.
 
No Sunday.
 
Do you get Sunday scaries?
 
I don't get Sunday scaries.
 
I've been self-employed for eight plus years.
 
So my schedule is made with what I want.
 
And then I like what I do.
 
I like my job.
 
The last time I had it, I think I worked at an office, at a big corporation, and an office, and I was just dreading it.
 
So, of course, as I would in my early 20s, I would just be hungover on Monday.
 
Yeah.
 
I didn't know the term Sunday scaries until I think my brother said it maybe a year ago.
 
And I have almost always been self-employed.
 
I've worked for myself.
 
I've been in the creative field.
 
I didn't even know it was a concept.
 
So, I'm grateful for that.
 
Really?
 
There are some days where I have to remind myself that you never had an office job.
 
That is true.
 
It's nuts.
 
And it explains so much about how bubbly and happy you are.
 
It drove me a lot.
 
It just drove me a bit so many times working on a job.
 
When I was a kid and I wanted to be an actor, and I told my dad that, he said, well, you know, you're going to have to wait tables at some point.
 
I think I was 10, and I remember being at the bottom of our driveway waiting for the school bus.
 
He said, you know, you're going to have to wait tables to be an actor and I said I'm not gonna do that and I never made a table I did literally everything else I babysat I did all these random stuff but I never I never waited a table and I think I was trying to prove a point so yeah so we have a great show today I want to just give a little heads up to everybody because I'm gonna be talking about something pretty serious which is pregnancy loss miscarriage stillbirth all of these kinds of topics and it's my own personal story and I wanted to just give the listener that information ahead of time.
 
So that if this is something that might be hard for you to hear, you know, go listen to one of our other episodes today.
 
Maybe not this one.
 
Or listen with a friend when you feel like you're in a safe space.
 
And if this is something you've experienced or is fresh in your mind, as always, to talk to somebody professionally if you need, if you can.
 
This is a hard topic, but I wanted to share my story.
 
Well, yeah, I think that with social media and just every single interconnected piece of device that we have, more people are talking about it.
 
And I think that we should be having more conversations about the things we think that nobody wants to say.
 
We'll find out how much more we have in common.
 
Yeah, it's been a real email, this experience, to realize how many people I got connected to after I had a loss.
 
But we really think this is an important topic to discuss.
 
And these are the kinds of things we want to talk about on this show, which is these very deep and vulnerable experiences of our lives that maybe aren't being spoken about quite as much.
 
Yeah, it's a beautiful resource that we have of technology now that the conversation can be had more often.
 
And I think a pillar of this show is sort of diving into some of the stuff that feels scary because there's beauty in vulnerability.
 
It's a real life-hack right now in this society where everybody wants to say, I'm fine, everything's okay because social media, you're supposed to show the best version of yourself.
 
But because of that now, you have a superpower.
 
The moment you're vulnerable, everyone's like, well, what's going on here?
 
What's happening?
 
This is important stuff.
 
And we kind of want to tap into that.
 
Because if you and I can have these conversations and be vulnerable, I think anybody listening can find tools for themselves to become a little more vulnerable in their life.
 
Yeah, we're just like breaking this topic open here in this space.
 
And it’s a safe space to listen in and have this conversation.
 
With your pregnancy loss, did you feel comfortable speaking it out to somebody?
 
I felt like my hand was held and I needed to, I didn't have a choice in the matter.
 
And that became sort of the beautiful part of this journey was that everybody knew.
 
And then leaning into that, you know, people have commented, oh, it's very brave of you to share.
 
And I suppose there is that element as well.
 
But for me, it was a very healing to share because I began to make meaning of what happened to me through sharing that story. and I'll do that with you today.
 
Yeah.
 
To set the scene a little bit.
 
My partner at the time and I had a toddler and we were pursuing our dreams and creating our family and we wanted a second child and so we got pregnant pretty easily, fortunately, and we were with a midwife.
 
In a midwifery model of care, we don't really have ultrasounds along the way until the 20-week anatomy scan.
 
So, everything was looking really good.
 
Pregnancy-wise, I was feeling really good, really happy.
 
I remember it was summer and we went in in July for our anatomy scan and the first time seeing the baby on the ultrasound you know it's very exciting and right before the scan as we were kind of walking into the room I had this sinking feeling and I was suddenly very nervous and looking back on it I wondered if I had some kind of intuitive moment there but also going into a scan and sometimes just nerve-wracking and you're wondering if everything's okay.
 
So I'm up on the bed and they're doing the ultrasound and the technician is really quiet.
 
And I'm looking at the monitor and the heartbeat's there and everything kind of looks good by my novice eyes, but the technician did not say anything.
 
And there was no questions of what's the gender and like, how are you guys doing?
 
There was just silence.
 
And I said, is everything okay?
 
The technician said, the doctor will interpret the results.
 
Something like that.
 
And I just went white.
 
No doctor came into the room.
 
We were then asked to put my clothes back on and go down the hall to a room, a private room.
 
And we went in with a counselor.
 
And the counselor explained, essentially, our baby had fluid all around the lungs and the brain.
 
And they showed on the scan, it was all this black space.
 
That's fluid.
 
And that's not a good sign.
 
They didn't know at what point in the gestation this had begun.
 
But it meant that the lungs had really not been able to develop properly because there was so much pressure.
 
Can I stop you for a second?
 
Yeah.
 
Tell me.
 
The fluid around the lungs. Inside the child's body, over the lungs, and not, I'm going to say wrong words here, but I want to know, not draining?
 
Yeah.
 
Is it supposed to be just a certain amount of fluid in that early stage or none?
 
If you imagine your body swelling up with water, that's what was happening to the body, and it was creating so much pressure on the body.
 
It's called fetal hydrops, actually.
 
Okay.
 
We were obviously a mess there, you know, just kind of taking this information.
 
I felt like I had been hit by a truck at that moment.
 
You know, it didn't really give me a lot of context.
 
We were left with sort of two big sweeping thoughts here.
 
One was this could be viral, in which case there's a possibility that this could correct itself and go on to be a healthy baby.
 
And there's another choice here that it could be chromosomal, in which case that nothing is going to change in this trajectory.
 
And it's essentially not viable with life. So we went down this path so we were like okay there's these two things we're so hoping for viral we don't even know what it means so we we hope that this is what it is we waited for those results that were going to determine viral a chromosome I think she said it was going to be five to seven days and it was like two weeks actually. I remember going to my midwife's she had this tiny apartment but a beautiful like backyard and she said just come over and sit with me and let's just talk.
 
I felt very held by her in that moment that she let us just come and sit with her and I remember her saying as we poured the story out to her and told her all the details I remember her saying it sounds like you are seeking clarity and I was so relieved that someone could put to words what I was feeling was that's it that's it I just need clarity because I could move forward on some path if I knew where this was going but I was sitting in that uncertain place for so long so after a couple weeks of waiting we got the results so it's neither chromosomal nor viral. 
Okay 
Which is really confusing and didn't know that was an option.  
Okay it's not peanut butter its not jelly, its sour cream. 
And I'm still baffled as to, like, why this was how they went down the path.
So, even more lack of clarity.
 
And we went through a lot of research.
 
We were contacting neonatologists out of Chile.
 
We were looking at fetal high drop studies.
 
There's apparently quite a lot of things that can cause fetal high drops.
 
And at the end of the road, our neonatologist said, who was wonderful, said, you know, we've eliminated most of the possibilities here. Everything left on this list of what the causes are, they're not viable with life.
 
This is not, this baby is not going to survive.
 
And so here's what could happen.
 
You can try to carry this baby to term.
 
At best, you may pass in utero at some point, or you may be born at full term and then pass within the first couple of weeks of life.
 
And at this point, I was 24 weeks, so six months pregnant and there were risks involved for me to carry the term there were increased risks of preeclampsia and blood pressure disorders because your body does something interesting it can mirror the babies the baby is swollen your body is a mirror syndrome where my body can mirror what's happening in his body which is leads to high blood pressure and preeclampsia which is very dangerous.
 
So for all of the reasons of relieving suffering in our child, relieving suffering of our family, to have to go through all of that, we did make the decision to terminate the pregnancy.
 
I remember going to the car after that appointment and just sitting in the parking lot and crying.
 
Finally able to grieve, I think, was actually quite healing in that moment, to be able to have concrete steps and moving forward.
 
And now there was a path of, okay, this is how it's going to be handled, and they're going to guide us on this path going down that road.
 
And what happened from there?
 
You made that decision.
 
You let the nurse's doctor know what's next up?
 
It's a really interesting thing.
 
I feel very lucky to live in the state of California because our neonatologist said to us, I'm going to write this up as a fatal diagnosis, which it is.
 
Doing so will allow you to go to UCLA and have the termination there, give birth under the care of the doctors there.
 
In another state, and also perhaps another time, this could have been something that was not covered by insurance, not acceptable in the medical community.
 
You might not have had a choice here.
 
You might have had to take different measures to terminate this pregnancy.
 
I couldn't even fathom what that was at the time, and I was so relieved that we did have that.
 
There's two choices here we had.
 
One was to have a DNC, which is you go under general anesthesia, and they remove the baby.
 
But because we were on this cusp of 24 weeks, after 24 weeks gestation, you must have a vaginal delivery.
 
And because we were on that cusp, we weren't really sure where we were going to land.
 
And I really had to sit with what kind of delivery do I want because I'm being given a choice here.
 
And although the DNC feels less painful because you go under for it and you're not witness to it, I deeply wanted the experience of giving birth to this child and going through the physical pain of it to match the emotional pain that I had inside.
 
I even told my midwife I want no epidural for as long as possible because I want to feel in my physical body the pain that I'm feeling inside in my emotional body.
 
So we made the choice to have a vaginal delivery in the hospital.
 
I'm going to get a little technical here on termination at this gestation, six months pregnant.
 
We had to go into an office and have an injection that injects a substance that dropped into the baby to stop his heart.
 
However, it doesn't stop the heart right away.
 
They told us the baby will pass on his own any time in the next 24 hours.
 
So we had to then leave and go home.
 
And my mom was there and my two-year-old daughter was there.
 
I had to kind of live life normally that day.
 
All the while, I felt like I had a ticking time bomb inside me.
 
I don't know at what point my son goes from living to gone.
 
And that was all I could think about as I was having to make dinner and do sort of normal mom things.
 
And then the next day, we went to the hospital for an induction.
 
And they did confirm the heart had stopped.
 
That was kind of the first moment of knowing he had passed.
 
And then they began the induction.
 
And induction is a long and slow process to induce a labor that is not...
 
Your body didn't decide to go into labor on its own.
 
And I did sit with a pain without an epidural for quite a long time.
 
I had not had labor with my firstborn.
 
She was born via cesarean section.
 
So this was my first labor.
 
And I was feeling all of the feelings throughout it.
 
And then at a certain point, I said to my midwife, may I have to ever tell them to feel like I am done with this compounding experience.
 
And she said, absolutely.
 
We see in movies the story of the birth where there's so much emotion, of fear, of sometimes aggression, anger, strength, power, giving in, surrendering.
 
What was it for you?
 
It's just deeply sad.
 
I know that's oversimplistic to say perhaps, but it was just, I mean, we were there in the labor and delivery ward where everyone around us is having babies and it's kind of, you know, it's a journey and there's a lot of pain, but there's a lot of joy on the other side.
 
They actually had to put a sign on the door that is their code for don't come in here with a happy we're having a baby today attitude.
 
This is a sad occasion.
 
Wow.
 
That sounds like also the first time there was any gentleness in this. 
Yeah. 
Doctor and nurse hospital area at least that I’ve heard
 
Yeah the staff was really wonderful they were really really wonderful um I can think of one exception but most everybody that walked in the room was they came in with a tone of they knew exactly what was going on and I couldn't I couldn't take it any other way I think if someone had walked in and not known what the situation was and I said okay, all right, I have a baby today. I think it would have lost it.
 
There wasn't a lot to say.
 
No one really knows what to say, including my partner and I.
 
We didn't know what to say to each other.
 
It was just so quiet.
 
I remember getting the epidural.
 
I remember the relief of that.
 
I don't remember a lot about the delivery, but once he was born, a baby at 24 weeks, took weight roughly about a pound, a pound and a half.
 
And he was three and a half pounds because his body was so swollen from the fluid.
 
He was born and we named him Wilde.
 
And it felt very important to us to name him.
 
And what I felt I was doing was setting him free.
 
And the name Wilde comes from this idea that he's now in the wild.
 
And he's not mine.
 
He's not of me anymore. he's out in the wild where he came from.
 
And then at what time did you decide, or when did you decide to tell your daughter?
 
We consulted a therapist for this process to help us walk us through that.
 
And so she actually knew before we went to the hospital to have the baby, she was well aware of what was going on.
 
We talked about it in really simple terms with the guidance from the therapist.
 
At two years old and a half, we made a little two-page booklet, and it said, you know, on the cover, we really want another baby.
 
The next pages, we found out that this baby could not be with us.
 
We were all very sad.
 
This baby is now no longer with us, but he always lives in our hearts.
 
Something really simplistic for her to put on the shelf and pull out when she wanted to talk about the baby and didn't know how we needed to talk to her about it.
 
I mean, our grief was all over us, and it seemed very wrong to hide that from her.
 
Often people, when they're in moments of tragedy, loss, and breaking in their life, they ask a question.
 
Why me?
 
They blame something.
 
They want to get spiritually, religious, or ask some sort of mysterious questions or something.
 
Do you have any of those thoughts of reaching out for something beyond yourself?
 
Oh, sure.
 
I mean, there was a whole lot of why me's in this.
 
I think I was a person at the time that really believed that I was going to plan my way through all of life.
 
And this was not my plan.
 
I was not a spiritual person at the time.
 
I didn't have anything to hold on to in terms of a higher power.
 
But I was looking for it after the fact.
 
Not necessarily a god or a source at the time.
 
I just was looking for what was going to be different about my life after this experience.
 
Because I held on to the fact that I knew he, my child, had my best interest in mind.
 
I couldn't believe anything else.
 
And so I really looked for, okay, what happened after this experience that wouldn't have happened had this been a normal pregnancy?
 
What beautiful thing came out about?
 
And I could list 100 at this point, but I was seeking that.
 
That was my seeking.
 
What's something beautiful that's going to come out of this?
 
because I cannot find anything else.
 
It was just too much pain.
 
And I would jump back to the hospital for a moment because in all that quiet in the hospital where we were kind of doing the unthinkable, we just, who in the world wants to be in that room at that time?
 
We had an incredible nurse who was with me the entire labor and delivery.
 
Now, in the hospital setting, nurses change shifts every 12 hours.
 
So typically, you're changing nurses over a long labor.
 
And by some miraculous intervention, we arrived at the top of her shift, and the baby was born not long before she had to leave her shift.
 
So we got her the whole time.
 
I thought about her so much in the aftermath of his birth and death, because she was so attentive to me and was holding space for me and she was telling me about the sunflower she was planting in her garden and that image is like I don't know what her face looks like in my brain but she looks like a sunflower and I just kept thinking she is beside my partner and I whatever doctor was in the room I don't remember my midwife, this woman is the only person who has ever met my son and I hope someday I will meet her again because it gave me just one pillar of strength you know there was another person that kind of validated the experience and no one else got to meet him. 
What's the next step after you leave the hospital or that room at least?
Yeah it was just all so awful after that it was just so awful it was like this quiet all the way up until his birth It was a thunderstorm of turmoil and all of these logistical things.
 
We had to decide, are we going to have a burial or a cremation?
 
And so we decided to cremate him.
 
And then, well, at some point you're going to have to go pick up the ashes from the cremation place.
 
Oh, okay, well, I'm not going to go do that.
 
And so my partner ended up doing a lot of those logistical things because I was just a mess.
 
They send you home from the hospital. now you imagine you're leaving with a baby and there's balloons and all of that we send you home in a wheelchair out to your car with a box all of these mementos and a hat that they had given him and it's just a box I didn't open for two years it was just a sad box that I happened to carry in my lap on the wheelchair on the way out.
And then suddenly the story has to be re-told my mom was asking what happened how did it go I didn't have a version of that for my daughter I can take that in um and we did have some pictures of that I couldn't look at for at least a year and it was it's just awful I there's no way around it it's just awful. 
Leading up to this my second baby six months pregnant I was very big there was no hiding this pregnancy so everybody knew I was expecting I had made all kinds of arrangements.
 
I was going to keep both my kids at home.
 
My daughter was not going to start preschool yet and everything had to change.
 
Suddenly I'm coming home and there's no baby.
 
I'm not ready to have them get pregnant again.
 
It was just, you know, it's a massive grief.
 
But because everybody knew that I was pregnant, I was faced with this choice of how do I tell people?
 
My worst fear was go to the grocery store one day you bump into a friend and they haven't seen you in a few months and they knew you were pregnant and they see you're not pregnant now so they ask the uncomfortable question hey where's the baby you had your baby?
And I could just suddenly I visualize that experience and I don't want to go through that and I certainly don't want to put anybody else in that position.
I made a blanket decision I’m going to tell everybody the whole story and I’m going to write it out we sent it in an email to every one of our friends and family even people that didn't know we are pregnant. Anyone that we could possibly run into at the grocery store on either coast we sent out the whole story. 
And we shared his name we even sent out cards with his name and we said a picture of me pregnant and basically an announcement of the loss. And then I went public on the media at the time as well and I shared my story and I continued to share it every year on the anniversary of his death a memory of it.
And that was like the only way through for me but I don't know that I had a choice in the matter it just seemed like this was what's in front of me. 
 Still, a very selfless thing to do in a time where you have the complete green light to be very selfish, very what do I need right now?
 
You thought I'm doing this in the way with the most integrity, the most honor, but also the hardest way as well.
 
What I didn't expect from that, both the email and the social media piece, was the number of people that would come out of the woodwork and tell me their loss story that I did not know and that many people did not know.
 
And they would say to me specifically, you telling this makes me feel brave enough to tell you my experience of loss, of miscarriage, of infertility sometimes because of its own kind of grief.
 
And I was very honored by everyone's vulnerability and nonsense.
 
And so I did feel like it was the right choice.
 
Also, remember, I was looking for ways to find something good out of this experience because everything I could see was very dark.
 
And that turned a light on for me in that, oh, this was also the right choice for me to share this.
 
That's not necessarily the right choice for everybody. I was privileged enough to be very well supported by friends and family and by a therapist who was walking me through the grief.
 
So I felt like I could also be vulnerable to my community.
 
Anytime anyone in my family and my friends are called, remembered the day he was born and sending a text on his birthday, they got a card, so they had the date, right?
 
So a lot of people would do that.
 
And over time that dwindled, but one person always would text me on his birthday or say his to me I remember Wilde and that was I cannot tell you how impactful that was for me to hear other people say his name. 
And so when I learn that someone has lost either a baby or a loved one father I try to remember to say their name because I just remember how important that was that I know he's gone but  bringing him into the conversation right now helps me remember that he did exist there was no blueprint for how to mourn the loss of a baby.
 
No one gives you that handbook.
 
No one really tells you what this was going to be like.
 
And no one told me that after having a baby that far along, your milk may come in because your body thinks you gave birth and letting you see that baby.
 
And having already breastfed my daughter three days after I delivered Wilde, my milk started to come in.
 
And it felt like such, like, the universe is just trying to punch me in the gut right now.
 
Because I don't want to be reminded anymore that he was gone.
 
And I was really angry about it.
 
I had heard beautiful stories of people who had lost who decided to pump and donate their milk to babies who needed breath milk and adopt the babies.
 
And that is so beautiful.
 
And that was not my journey, not my path.
 
I could not.
 
There's a lot of work, by the way.
 
It's a really noble cause, and I could not continue to put myself through that.
 
And then I felt really guilty about that also.
 
I was, I wished I could have been the person who would just pump and donate my milk.
 
I think it wasn't, it wasn't for me because I needed to move beyond where this happened.
 
I needed to end that chapter.
 
After this whole experience in those first that first week or two I just decided I can't sit at home and do nothing I have to go back to work and I have to start finding a normalcy for myself even though it was a new normal and it was not the normal I expected.
 
I just needed some kind of escape from the grief and every Tuesday I have been part of a film collective that was meeting on Tuesdays a bunch of actors and writers and directors we would just get together in a group kind of a community event bring in pages of scripts and put five to ten pages up on their feet in a cold reading every week. 
And I had been a part of that group for a long time it's called Detroit Street Film and I really think that's what pulled me out of my grief eventually I mean everybody knew what had happened but having that ritual every week that felt like a normalcy from before and showing up and doing something creative and being in a space full of creative people who are after something else you know the processing of something else. 
And at the time I was acting I did a little bit of producing um but I really wanted this one piece to get made it was called Brick & Mopsie written by a colleague of mine Gareth Williams and I kept looking for someone to direct it and everyone looked back at me and said you direct it you like it so much you direct it. But also that character that male character should be a woman and we should do you know cast this person and that because someone directed me. 
And at any other time in my life I would have said no thank you I don't do that I'm not a director I don't make decisions I just like to show up and be the actor on that because I had a lot of fear I didn't want to be in charge that was a very scary position for me. 
And in that moment when they looked at me and said it I was like my brain was like you have been through the worst of the worse there is nothing worse than what you just experienced so screw it why not go do it. I was like fine, I'll do it.
And that kind of gave me an external focus in this time yes I was grieving at the same time but to have a project to hold on to to have something to put my attention on that wasn't just me and my at that point I felt like my sad gross feeling and that experience completely visited my entire career.
 
I shot that a couple months later in October and I really just had great time on set and those that were on set with me had a really good experience as well and it could be in a totally different career path into directing.
 
Of those broken pieces of your life at that time, you gathered them, put them back together, made something new with it, and from there, you won awards as a director, you kept moving forward, you saw yourself become somebody you didn't expect out of a circumstance that you didn't expect.
 
It was a really big question of identity.
 
At that time, I was held on really, really tight to my identity, my identity as an actress, as a mother, what I did defined me, and then suddenly I had this new title, and I was now a mother who lost and I never asked for that title I don't want that title I rejected it you know I now had an identity that connected me to people I didn't know that I didn't choose for myself and then I went down a path of directing. 
And I think all along the way I was looking for again something good to make meaning of his life in this experience and I just I had to have a kind of a faith that I would find that that's not everyone's journey but that was mine I was looking for it. 
And every time there was a split in the past I went down and pivoted beyond directing and I you know I went to this film festival not film festival he gave me such a gift I would never be doing this a bit more person.
 
I know in my heart it would have stayed in my lane.
 
And so it kept me branching out and being comfortable with uncertainty, being comfortable with change, being comfortable with changing our identities and taking on new roles and new expressions.
 
Wonderfully said.
 
And then moving forward with your partner at the time, your daughter and then this new career.
 
There's a breath of fresh air in there, so you always look towards the future in life, especially when you're working through the final stage of grief, and then, you know, it comes around again and again and again, but still looking forward, what happens after this for you?
 
Like, everybody is different, and I have talked to so many people who've lost.
 
Everyone's different on their plans to whether they want to or do not want to get pregnant again.
 
It's a big choice to go down that road again.
 
For me, I wanted to be pregnant as quickly as possible.
 
I needed something to look forward to.
 
I knew I had a long pregnancy journey.
 
I had to process and grieve and heal, but I needed something on the horizon that was positive.
 
I was just surrounded by so much darkness, so we started trying right away. And after a couple of months we pregnant again.
 
When you heard that news, do you have any fear, any apprehension, any thoughts about...
 
Of course, everything.
 
Everything was fear-based.
 
I was never so fearful when I was pregnant.
 
I would expect that any time you get a phone call from the doctor while pregnant, I would be worried.
 
I would be completely beside myself just with, be ready, be ready, always be ready, always prepared and not have to fall into that uncertainty again.
 
There were so many things we did differently.
 
We didn't go under midwife.
 
At the time, we wanted ultrasounds from the very beginning.
 
There were different markers, right?
 
You get it past the first ultrasound.
 
That was positive.
 
You make it past that first trimester.
 
That was very positive.
 
Making it past the 20-week mark, we found out what happened to Wilde, I was being monitored all along the way.
 
I wanted every intervention I could possibly have to ensure some kind of guarantee, right, which we don't have in life, but I was desperately wanting that.
 
And I was also under a therapist care this whole time, so I was constantly processing that.
 
And thankfully, all along the way, that was a relatively typical, normal pregnancy and had a healthy baby in the end.
 
And that sort of began the next chapter.
 
Now it's been almost 10 years.
 
And you reflecting back on Foster, who received some of the worst things that somebody could receive in that quiet, private room, what would you say to that person now?
 
I think in this time I really understood the concept of surrendering to the moment.
 
The sooner we can accept that there is so much unknown about this world, there is nothing guaranteed.
 
Perhaps I could have reduced my suffering a little bit, but there's really no holding someone's hand through that.
 
There's no blueprint.
 
There still isn't that experience.
 
It's very unique.
 
I expected there to be one big thing that was different that I could pinpoint and say, oh, this is why this happened.
 
So I could have this other experience.
 
It's not better.
 
It's just something else that my son needed me to learn.
 
And in the end, I had a hundred different things that happened that never would have happened without him.
 
Not the least, which is my youngest child.
 
Yeah.
 
I will say from my perspective now, knowing you, seeing how strong you are in talking about it, seeing how open you are in talking about it in any situation.
 
This morning, for example, we were talking about coming here to have this conversation.
 
And someone says, oh, what's the show about?
 
And there's no part of me that's like, ow, they shouldn't have asked that question.
 
Because I know you have such strength, such root.
 
I would say that a lot of that deep rooting comes from grief, comes from the pain, comes from the breaking of things.
 
Even in the moment, it feels like it's the worst thing that would happen to somebody.
 
I see the most rooted, rounded person who has the ability to look at the uncertainty and says, yes, to it.
 
How will I make this?
 
Teach me a lesson.
 
How will I learn from this?
 
How will I become the director of the future for myself?
 
Yeah, that darkness, and we talk about this many times, that dark place is the tree roots going deep into the ground.
 
There is no light it feels very isolating very alone and yet with those deeper roots we know that the tree grows bigger blossoms more branches more leaves more color. 
And I’m now 10 years later living in the fruits of that experience I’ve touched this dark place I can access that at any point I can see someone else with that kind of grief and say I’ve been there I know I I hear you and I can have compassion for because I've touched that dark place in myself as well.
 
And yet I also have all of the blossoming that is the output of that experience.
 
The roots of those trees are a whole network under the ground from one tree to the next.
 
So just as much as you can connect with somebody and grieve for the same sort of loss, I think it transcends grief.
 
I think when I see you, I see your compassion in any particular person for any reason whatsoever because the depth of loss is profound and indifferent to what the loss is.
 
It's pain is deeper and deeper.
 
I think that you connect to that level really, really well.
 
Thank you for sharing.
 
You're the bravest woman I have ever known.
 
You know, we live in a very interesting time where we can talk about everything and sometimes we can't talk about anything, you know?
 
I invite our listeners to reach out to us, share us your stories, because this is part of the dialogue.
 
And if this touched on something within you, in your dark place, please share that with us if you feel comfortable.
 
You can send your stories to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com.
 
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
 
Thank you for listening with your ears and your hearts.
 
And most importantly, as always, be kind to yourself.
 
See you next time.
 
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
 
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
 
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
 
We'll see you next time.
 
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
 
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
 
Original music by Cesar and the Clew.