Ever feel like a snowball right after it’s rolled off the top of a mountain? As speed overtakes and layers fatten. As, having let go, no choice remains but to follow the energy all the way down. I sense a surge, momentum building around Lorenzo’s story, strengthening it and giving it greater visibility as it manages, miraculously, to grow.

First off, I’m happy to share that the Chain-Link Heart Project has surpassed 2,000 hearts! In less than a year! I can’t thank all of you heart collectors enough for pausing to remember, capture the moment, and send it along for the rest of us. Check out the Heart Map to see all the countries now represented, including newcomers Albania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2,000th heart, in particular, means a lot. Like the 1,000th heart, it’s from home and was given before we knew Lorenzo was so sick but while he was very much here and expected and loved. Its meaning changed, as the meaning of all hearts changed. It is changing again as a new heart grows.

Heart Link 2,000 from Laura Lee Mattingly

In other Lorenzo news, my personal essay, “Lorenzo’s Island,” about traveling to Rapa Nui, has been accepted for publication in the anthology Three Minus One: Tales of Loss and Love Inspired by the Film Return to Zero (She Writes Press, May 2014). I encourage you to see and support this film, which stars Minnie Driver and is based on the true story of one couple’s journey after losing their first child to stillbirth. We don’t often come across these stories in mainstream media, but considering stillbirth affects 36,000 families a year in the U.S. alone, I remain surprised that it is discussed, much less represented, so infrequently. That is one of many reasons why I speak out and publish these stories about Lorenzo and why I’m so grateful when you share them in turn.

A family of three on Rapa Nui/Easter Island, April 2013

As for Rapa Nui, Ryan and I had originally planned this trip as a “babymoon” when I was still pregnant with Lorenzo. We didn’t travel there until the following year, after two babies were then weren’t here. I told you all a bit about the trip before, but I didn’t tell you about its origins or what it’s like to travel without, to live without our son, who I continue to see everywhere, think of all the time, and miss with all my heart. 

Looking up toward the sky over Rapa Nui and seeing my son’s name.

Next year, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine will publish, “The Weight of Two,” an essay about a different kind of travel—home, after you’ve been gone awhile and find the familiar ground shaky beneath your feet. In this case, traveling back to California this past May, almost one year after we lost Lorenzo at the hospital where I was born, the hospital just down the road from the house I grew up in and where my mom still lives. The grief mingled with the familiar late spring air as the one-year anniversary of the hour I held my son approached.

Message in a bottle, from a son to a lost mother, Ocean Beach, May 2013

I also recently reviewed Holding Silvan: A Brief Life by Monica Wesolowska on Literary Mama. I first read it during my quest for other mothers like me (Monica lost her first child, a son, soon after his birth and also faced the most heart-wrenching of choices.) When the San Francisco Chronicle published my op-ed about our own choice in the wake of Texas passing a 20-week abortion ban (the 12th state to do so and the 9th where such a ban has now gone into effect), Monica reached out. To start a dialogue with a writer and mother (and a mother writing about her lost baby) made me feel less alone, just as reading her memoir did. I encourage you to read her book and get to know Silvan and what it took to care for him and let him go.

Hearts on the gate where Ryan lived, then where I lived, all those moons ago.

Amidst all this, there has been another essay in the works for several months. I’m hopeful it will still be published, but there was editorial concern that it may yet be too political. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Censored? Marginalized? Like the ruffle through a pristine set of feathers? Maybe even a little proud as I keep writing about what makes some people prickle. Even though ours is a story of love and of truth, it doesn’t fit into the accepted narrative about what babies and their bearing should be. But where does that leave our babies? I don’t take the public platforms who do give voice to my son for granted. As I walk this earth, I will continue to put forth all I can about Lorenzo. It’s what I do for him now.