Wendee Foley lights a candle with her daughter Gloria in their Mounds View home. Foley uses candles to honor each of her six children who died before birth.

Wendee Foley lights a candle with her daughter Gloria in their Mounds View home. Foley uses candles to honor each of her six children who died before birth. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Christine Kellett-Hunt lost seven babies to miscarriages — and her brother, Peter, whom she called “Petey,” died when he was 6. So, whenever she envisions heaven, she pictures Petey “leading all these little babies to me.”

“I just see him leading these little ones that I didn’t ever get to properly meet, but he knows them up there,” Kellett-Hunt said. “It brings me comfort. And I want to live my life in a way that makes them proud.”

Kellett-Hunt, 28, a parishioner of St. Patrick in Oak Grove, also found comfort and healing when she participated in a miscarriage retreat held in 2019 at Epiphany in Coon Rapids. The retreat offered talks on healing and grieving, small group discussion, Mass, and time for adoration and confession.

“With every miscarriage, it felt as though a bomb went off in my heart,” Kellett-Hunt said. She tried to pick up the pieces and put herself back together, but she said each time, the pieces became smaller and harder to salvage. “Finally, I felt like I was left with a pile of dust that was unrecognizable.”

During the retreat, Kellett-Hunt gave “that pile of nothingness” to Jesus. She said she realized that he is never indifferent to her pain, but always working to rebuild her, “filling in the gaps of the empty spaces within.”

Bernadette Gockowski, a parishioner of St. Agnes in St. Paul, organized and led the retreat, and a dozen women participated. COVID-19 delayed a second retreat, now scheduled for Nov. 20 at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton.

Gockowski said she miscarried her first baby. Married four months, she heard the words at her first ultrasound, “Oh, there’s no heartbeat.”

“I was just absolutely floored,” she said.

Seeking support, she found online groups but no day-long, comprehensive retreat for loss of an unborn child, except Rachel’s Vineyard, which offers healing related to abortion.

Gockowski wanted to organize a retreat, but after giving birth to two children, postponed plans. “But then I lost two more and it immediately came back that I must do this.”

Gockowski, who was a novice in a religious order for two years before working as a youth minister in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, had studied with the Institute for Priestly Formation, based in Omaha, Nebraska, and developed retreat content based on the institute’s way of prayer. “I had them read the retreat and confirm it’s in the Ignatian spirit of prayer that they teach their priests,” she said.

Gockowski also spoke with Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens about her plan, and he encouraged her to proceed.

Admitting some apprehension, she said “these women showed up and there wasn’t a dry eye within five minutes.”

“Lots of different stories,” Gockowski said, and they all said at the end, “You have to keep going.”

Wendee Foley, a member of St. John the Baptist in New Brighton, also benefited from the retreat. She and her husband, Donovan, have four children, ages 4, 6, 8 and 10 — and six children who died before birth, including four during the second trimester of pregnancy.

Foley said pregnancy loss groups exist in the Twin Cities, but they’re not all faith-based. Finding a Catholic retreat was important to her, with the Church affirming the value and dignity of life from conception. She also felt more supported in her decision to have more children. “I’ll love as many babies as God will give me.”

“But while you’re grieving, your faith is so challenged,” she said. “But this was a little more affirming because our faith acknowledges that our child has a unique soul, and I think that actually deepened my faith.”

After their positive experiences last year, Kellett-Hunt and Foley plan to assist Gockowski with the Nov. 20 retreat.

Foley said simply sharing one’s story out loud at the retreat and saying the baby’s name is affirming. “It affirms that life mattered, that it was real, it wasn’t something to be disposed of. It was good,” she said.

While it is heartbreaking to explain pregnancy loss to a child, Foley said her children want to honor the babies. They say their names and light a candle for them on the babies’ birthdays.

It can be isolating to experience a pregnancy loss, she said, because it’s difficult for families and friends to understand the depth of that kind of loss. That shows the need to find people with that shared experience, she said.

Through prayer, testimonies and small group discussion, Kellett-Hunt said the retreat team offered a “beautiful balance” of fully acknowledging the pain and helping participants turn their focus beyond the suffering to resurrection.

“It’s so easy to feel worthless, guilty and broken,” she said. “This retreat reminded me of my dignity as a mother to these children for all eternity.”

The miracle Kellett-Hunt prays for today isn’t so much to have different circumstances, or to avoid suffering, but to have the strength to trust in God’s love amid “the gut-wrenching moments of life.”

She left the retreat feeling “so incredibly seen, known and loved.”

“Through the grace of God, I can carry this cross,” Kellett-Hunt said. “I never carry it alone.”

KNOWN BY GOD

– “Known by God, a Retreat for Mothers Grieving the Loss of a Miscarried or Stillborn Child” 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 20 at St. John the Baptist in New Brighton

– Preregister online ($40, lunch provided) at stjohnnb.com

– Contact Jill Fink at 651-633-1540, ext. 1280, or [email protected]