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I felt holy after she died.

What I mean to say is that I felt disemboweled, ripped open and gutted, my innards in a heap before me.  I, Prometheus, chained to a rock, punished for stealing a daughter for nine months. Grief swept down as I was chained to the cliff, feasting on my liver, or perhaps more like my sanity and sense of justice, as I watched desperate. But still, in that torture, not because of it, I felt holy. Holier than before her death.

For a couple of months after my daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks, my husband and I saw a grief therapist recommended by the hospital and our midwives' group. She served a purpose, mainly by helping us answer the thousands of questions we suddenly had:

How do we tell everyone that our daughter died?

What do we do with the nursery?

Is it okay to tell people that we would prefer not to receive flowers?

How do I eat breakfast in the diner where they fussed about my pregnancy?

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, Ben and Liam's birth was not so much a belief-shattering experience as it was a belief-creating experience. I entered into it in a complete void of faith. What *was* shattered, for me, was my obliviousness. I hadn't realized how deeply rooted that obliviousness had been, and god, how naked and exposed I felt when it was gone.

Gal, this was so stunning. The passages that resonated with you resonate with me, too. They make that occasional yearning for a spiritual home crop up again. I'm not religious in the typical sense of the word, for so many of the reasons you mention here - in too many ways, the bible and church and the people who presume to employ them just don't ring as truth for me.