Editor’s Note: This blogpost is about miscarriage. If your heart is too tender to enter into this topic today, please be gentle with yourself. We will see you in the next post.

April is Infertility Awareness Month, a time to recognize the silent journeys of hope, waiting, and loss that one in six couples walk. This letter is to our miscarried daughter who changed our lives in ways the world cannot see, and whose existence was a miracle we will never forget during our long journey of primary infertility.

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Our dearest Marian,

You are our first and only child after many years of prayers, tears, and waiting.

April 2, 2026, was supposed to be your birthday. Your due date. A day we marked quietly on the calendar. This year, it falls on Holy Thursday, the night Jesus gave us His Body and Blood. The night love chose sacrifice. The night suffering began not as defeat, but as gift.

Holy Thursday has carried weight for our little family before you: seasons of discerning surgery, bearing intrusive questions from others, waiting, and surrender. Yet, it feels fitting that this day would belong to you. Because you, Marian, were given to us through love. A “yes” that did not come without pain. A love that echoes Christ’s own: “This is my body…given for you.” (Luke 22:19)

In silence, you made us parents.
No birth or pregnancy announcements.
No nursery preparation.
No Advent or Christmas journeying in pregnancy with Mother Mary.
No first cries or first breaths.
No first time to hold you in our arms.
However, we were changed forever by your existence.

We named you Marian after our Blessed Mother, who said “yes” to God with her whole being (“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38), even though that “yes” would one day lead her to the foot of the Cross. We also named you after Saint Anne, Mary’s mother, who knew the ache of infertility and decades of waiting before God answered her prayers with new life.

Your name carries the faith of women who trusted God when the path forward was hidden. Strong women who bore miracle and mystery together, teaching us that fruitfulness is not erased by suffering, but often revealed through it.

Before you, we learned to guard our hearts. Years of infertility taught us restraint. We stopped ourselves from dreaming too far ahead, from imagining too much, from hoping too boldly. Like so many in scripture who cried out in barrenness (“Give me children, or I shall die!” Genesis 30:1), we wondered if God saw us.

And then there was you.

With you, dreams crept back in – quietly at first. Dreams we had once forbidden ourselves from allowing.

We imagined the little traditions we would have shared with you:

  • reading books together curled up on the couch;
  • arts and crafts spread across the kitchen table;
  • baking cookies side by side, flour on our hands and joy in the ordinary;
  • holiday gatherings filled with the familiar;
  • both daily and special experiences through your eyes for the first time;
  • tea parties;
  • ballet;
  • simple moments with you.

We dreamed of celebrating your sacraments: your baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, and all the ways you would grow in faith. We imagined selecting your godparents who would model our Catholic faith for you alongside us. Even now, those dreams remind us of the sacred life you were given and the love surrounding you.

Instead, now, your mother wears a bracelet* with your name on it during holidays and special moments; a small, visible reminder that you are with us and part of our family. You are not forgotten when celebrations feel heavier than expected and joy feels complicated.

Even now, we still think about life in reference to you.
How old you would be.
What milestones we would be approaching.
Who you would become.
Today, we should have been welcoming you to this world.
Instead, we visit your grave**.

There are moments when we don’t know how to answer the question, “Do you have children?” because the truest answer – that we have one in Heaven and none on earth – doesn’t fit neatly into the world’s expectations.

Your life has taught us that parenthood is not measured only by what is visible. You made us parents, not in a way the world easily recognizes but in a way God does. We trust that one day, all that is hidden will be fully revealed.

Sometimes, we imagine you being held by those who went before us. It is a great comfort to envision you safe in the arms of your great-grandparents. We imagine our Blessed Mother holding you close, introducing you to her Son, loving you with the tenderness only a mother who lost her own child can understand (“…and you yourself a sword will pierce…” Luke 2:35).

So much of physical and spiritual parenthood is spent trying to raise children to love, know, and serve the Lord; teaching them how to pray, how to trust, how to recognize God’s voice in their lives. And yet, Marian, you are already doing this. You are already loving Him face-to-face, knowing Him without distance, serving Him without struggle and without the hardships of an earthly life. 

A friend who has experienced multiple losses once shared with me that she and her husband choose to look at this situation as building their treasure in Heaven (“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Matthew 6:21). I love this outlook. Our hearts follow you, Marian, drawn upward and fixed on eternity with our Lord more than ever before.

You are a miracle.
After many years of infertility.
After medications, injections, and protocols we stopped.
After adoption application submissions.
After hope that felt risky to reclaim.

God created you on purpose for such a time as this (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” Jeremiah 1:5).

The December 19, 2025, Mass readings spoke of barrenness during the third week of Advent. Both St. Elizabeth and Samson’s mother were women who waited, suffered, and wondered of God’s plans for them. 

Our priest spoke about miracles at Christmastime and asked whether, as we age and carry crosses, we become too hardened to believe in them anymore. He reminded us that Samson, John the Baptist, and even Jesus Himself were all miracles, yet they still suffered and died.

That day after Mass, we talked about you differently than we had before.

We realized that your short life does not negate the fact that you were – and are – a miracle.
Your death does not erase your existence or significance.
Your absence from our arms does not mean God failed or that your passing is our fault.
You lived for however brief a time, and that alone is extraordinary.

God does not make mistakes. Because you lived on Earth, and now in Heaven, you have purpose. Your life has meaning. We cannot begin to understand what work you are doing for God, but we trust that even now you are participating in the mystery of redemptive suffering as we do, too (“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” Colossians 1:24). We believe you are a powerful intercessor.

In a conversation with a friend who also miscarried a child, she shared that we are the only ones who ever touched our children on Earth. This brief, hidden intimacy is a sacred privilege.

You are ours.
We are yours.
And above all, you are God’s.

It was all worth it.
Every appointment.
Every tear.
Every hope dared.
Every suffering endured.
Every “yes” to God.
We would wait, grieve, and labor all over again no matter the outcome. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) 

Until the day we meet again,
please pray for us as we pray for you.
Pray we continue to trust our Lord.
Pray we continue to love bravely.
Pray we continue to say “yes” to God’s will.
Pray for all those journeying the path of infertility and loss. 

Your mother carried you in love every day of your life, and we will continue to love you every day after. You will forever be our beloved child – a gift. We are honored God chose us to be your parents.

With all our love,
Mom and Dad

We remember all children who touched our hearts, if only briefly, and all those walking the hidden path of waiting and/or loss. Marian’s life reminds us that each child is a gift, known and loved by God. As St. Zelie Martin said in a letter to her brother after the loss of his stillborn son, “We shall find our little ones again up above.” (Society of the Little Flower) Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin, parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, experienced the heartbreak of child loss multiple times. 

Whether our parenthood is expressed physically and/or spiritually, each of us is also a gift from God to the world. Our lives have meaning because we exist, and that is a very beautiful thing. 

Resources to consider:

Written by an anonymous Springs in the Desert writer.