7 minute read
Hope Again Collective
Finding Hope and Healing in Grief + Loss
Written by Lauren Sawdey Photos Courtesy of Hope Again Collective
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Dainty florals, speckled studs, shimmering gold and pastel-hued hoops — these are the beautiful handmade earrings you’ll find adorning the pages of Hope Again Collective, a shop dedicated to sharing the stories of women who have experienced miscarriage or infant loss. Before these earrings evolved into the present collective, they started as an outlet for Rachel Lohman, founder and pastor, as she experienced anxiety while carrying her daughter following the loss of her first child. Something that started as a fun hobby soon turned into constant requests from friends and family to purchase her earrings. In the months following, on one July morning in particular, Lohman felt a distinct stirring in her heart as she began to realize a deeper connection between her creative outlet and her own story of loss: “What if these earrings could tell the stories of women who’ve walked through some of life’s hardest seasons and found hope again?” Lohman says it was in this moment that the idea for Hope Again Collective was born. “It was like an ah-ha moment. I saw how the two of them could be connected. It was so cool for me to see that God took such an unexpected turn in how I thought this was all going to unfold. He created this idea, it was not anything I would have ever thought of. It also showed me that nothing I pour into, or nothing that he pours into his people, nothing I have an interest in, none of it is wasted,” Lohman says. “He showed me how making the earrings can be a bridge for women to share their stories. It was about opening up this community of women who want to process together and have a space for their stories to be told. They also have a physical token to memorialize their baby and something beautiful to wear that symbolizes hope.”
From that moment forward, the process to create Hope Again began, with Lohman striving to fill a void in the space around miscarriage and infant loss. The collective allows a place for women to share their stories, which are then transformed into earrings that honor them.
In sharing her story publicly, Lohman was amazed to see the outpouring of women, of all ages and backgrounds, stepping forward with their own stories of grief and hope. After personally experiencing an ambiguous grief, without the socially operated constructs of grief, Lohman knew she needed to build a space that allowed room for grieving mechanisms not often found in traditional types of loss.
“This is almost like a social grieving in some ways. It is a safer space than doing it with your friends and family because we built this community of women across the country — well, there are even a couple of women from other countries,” Lohman says. “It is so cool to see how ➤
Above: Lohman moves through each step of her creation process for a new collection of earrings.
they have formed their own friendships, commenting on one another’s stories, calling their babies by name and remembering the special dates in each of our stories.”
As Hope Again began growing, with more women sharing their stories of loss and hope, Lohman found her own initial wounds also began to heal — feeling validated about the things she felt in her experience: loneliness, confusion and feeling lost without a mourning space.
In this moment, Lohman paused in consideration and poignantly expressed her shifted perspective on grief and pain in relation to her faith journey.
“I think I’ve become more comfortable in this space of having really honest conversations with God and being able to say that I haven’t experienced part of who he is for myself. What I was asking God for when we were losing our baby, He didn’t answer with what I wanted, which was keeping our baby alive,” Lohman says. “But how he answered that prayer, I think I’m living that out now. It has been bringing purpose out of something that was really horrific.”
Hope Again has proven a reflection of that realization, bringing purpose and healing in women’s unimaginable experiences of pain and loss.
Becka Applegate, Lohman’s sister-in-law, who has also experienced the loss of two angel babies, testifies to the healing found in giving grief a purpose.
“Being a part of Hope Again Collective has given me a place to share Rosie’s story, the beauty of her life, and what she was able to teach us in the 17 weeks she was with us here in my womb,” Applegate says. “Sharing has given my grief a purpose, and grief with a purpose can be healing. It helps to keep the bitterness at bay and allows the soul to grow, rather than rot.”
Lohman has also cultivated intentional practicality in this space through the creation of beneficiaries that receive financial support from collection sales, along with sending out grief boxes or self-care packages and providing resources around miscarriage and infant loss.
“The most recent collection we did was for a girl named Chelsea. Chelsea also had multiple miscarriages, and because of an autoimmune disorder they weren’t a candidate for IVF. So, she was leaning towards the surrogacy route. Surrogacies are an extremely expensive procedure, but she and her husband really wanted to pursue that. We were able to give her that,” Lohman says.
Chelsea Watzig recounts her loss journey, first shared on Hope Again’s Instagram, reflecting on the community she’s found through the collective.
— Rachel Lohman, Hope Again Collective founder
“There have been so many tears on this journey. I am still healing, but I am finally starting to be at peace with the hands we were dealt. Infertility has made me question my faith. Infertility has made me angry at my body for failing on me,” Watzig says. “We have been blessed to find a surrogate, and although it’s a long road ahead, we believe she is going to give us the best gift on earth someday — our baby. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in our case, it takes a village to have one, and that’s OK, too.”
As the collective evolves, Lohman finds herself dreaming of the ways it can continue to support and encourage this community of women. Whether that looks like providing grief boxes and resources to each woman who finds the shop, providing customizable or personalized earrings representing the child that was lost, or curating meaningful gift items for family or friends to purchase, Lohman is committed to expanding her shop into a multi-dimensional community support space.
“That is the future hope and dream. I’m working with my business coach to brainstorm ways to make this more of a collective atmosphere in terms of doing mom support groups or one-on-ones. It wouldn’t be counseling, but more of a mentorship,” Lohman says. “Having services available would be something I would like to step into in the future.”
She also hopes to one day move the collective from solely a virtual space to a physical brick and mortar space where women can build connections in an established community of women experiencing the same grief and pain.
“I envision an exposed brick, urban mixed-use space: a gallery with the photos and stories of loss moms lining the walls, a shop with rotating earring styles, a studio where earrings are made on-site, and a workshop space for classes that help women own their stories and wade through their grief,” Lohman says.
While she is preparing for the future expansion of the collective, Lohman also recognizes the immense impact Hope Again has already had in its short life. Staying near to the collective’s mission, Lohman wants women to know, above all else, that their stories matter, that their pain and grief matters, and that they can hope again.
Applegate echoes this mission, encouraging understanding and grace when experiencing seasons of intense grief.
“There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no timeline for it. You don’t ever really ‘get over’ grief. I heard a speaker once say that you move forward in grief, but you don’t move on from it. That resonated really deeply for me. I think that sharing your story can be one way you move forward in your grief and find healing, and, in that healing, hope,” Applegate says. “Sometimes hope is simply the confidence that good can still come out of terrible, that redemption exists and that loss does not have to be wasted. Those are the truths, for me, that sharing my story has helped me to find and I think can be beautiful things for other women to find as well.”
The initial stirring that pushed the founding of this collective has since provided a place of respite and peace amid miscarriage and infant loss for hundreds of women. In a season of unthinkable pain and grief, women finding this collective can find unwavering hope again. ◆
