Where Lifestories began

Where Lifestories Began: A Butterfly, Two Stones and a Little Life Remembered

By Maria Barber, founder of Lifestories

Recently someone asked me what made me start Lifestories. It's a simple question, but the honest answer goes back a long way, to a month I still think about every year. This October, Baby Loss Awareness month, feels like the right time to share it.

October 2012

In October 2012 I had just suffered my second miscarriage.

By then my husband and I had been waiting almost ten years for a baby. Year after year, it just hadn't worked out for us. Then came a pregnancy, and a miscarriage. Then another pregnancy, and another miscarriage. I was heartbroken.

Anyone who has been there will know what I mean when I say that, at the time, I couldn't see any future at all. It sounds dramatic now, but in that moment it was simply the truth. I still remember my consultant having to give me the news, and how hard it was for everyone in that room. There is no easy way to hear it, and no easy way to say it.

A butterfly with two stones

In the middle of all that, my mum bought me a little butterfly pendant with two stones in it. One for each little life.

I can't fully explain what it did for me, except that it gave me a way to acknowledge what had happened. I didn't want to talk about it with everyone I met. I didn't want to shout it from the rooftops. But I didn't want it to pass as though it had never happened, either. That small butterfly let me carry it with me, quietly, every day.

And I remember thinking: there must be so many families who feel exactly this way. People who want to mark something silently, but who still want it to be seen. Not loud, just known. If that makes sense.

Fourteen years on

A year later, in 2013, I was pregnant again. Today I have a 12-year-old daughter who is the apple of my eye. I enjoy every bit of time I get to spend with her, and I don't take a single day of it for granted.

When I look at her now, I think back to the woman sitting in that consultant's room in 2012, convinced there was nothing ahead. I wish I could tell her what was coming. I can't, but I can tell you.

Why there is a butterfly in every Lifestories collection

When I sat down to design Lifestories, I knew one thing before anything else: there had to be a butterfly.

I wanted anyone who has experienced any form of pregnancy loss to be able to add a butterfly to their own life story. A small, beautiful piece that means something only they need to explain, for the little life that never got to happen.

That butterfly is really where Lifestories was born. I realised there was nothing out there that let you wear your whole life story and keep adding to it, whatever that story holds. The joyful chapters, like weddings, children, the family dog and the place you call home. And the harder chapters too, the ones we carry quietly. Every one of them is part of who we are.

That's what Lifestories is: your life, your story. All of it.

This October

So this month in particular, I wanted to share where the idea came from, and why it came from there.

If you are in the middle of a loss right now, I'm so sorry. I won't pretend there are words that fix it, because there aren't. But please know you are not alone, and the little life you are grieving was real and mattered.

And if you've worn a butterfly for someone, or bought one for a friend or a daughter or a sister, thank you for letting me be a small part of your story.

Maria