By Thomas A. Parmalee
Everyone knew that Madelyn Elizabeth’s life would be short lived.
In fact, it was a miracle that she was born alive May 19, 2010.
“We knew that ‘happy and healthy’ was not necessarily in the cards at 32 weeks,” said her mom, Crystal Webster, the (co)-founder of Sharing Solace, which empowers grievers through keepsakes that can be passed along to others. “And they said, ‘We don’t know more than that … she could be stillborn, or she could live for some amount of time.’ We just did not know.”
A few hours after taking her first breath, she died in her mother’s arms, and joy turned into grief.
“We got some great support at the hospital – they didn’t balk when we had pictures taken,” Webster (pictured at top) said. “They did all the same things they would have done if our baby was going home with us – handprints and footprints and all those types of things. They gave us as much time with her as we wanted.”
The local funeral home, McGilley & Frye Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Olathe, Kansas also did its part, with a funeral director visiting Webster and her husband, Kyle, while they were still in the hospital.
Overall, the experience was “about as good as it could be” given the circumstances, Webster said.
“But even with all that support, I didn’t know at the time anyone who had gone through this,” Webster said. “Our friends and family were very supportive, but they didn’t quite get it. So, while feeling supported, I was an alien in my own world. I think that is universal with grief.”
Over the years, Webster has learned about memorialization options that she wishes she had known about – and has also discovered resources that would have helped her realize a bit more quickly that she was not alone.
Her daughter’s death was the impetus for starting Sharing Solace – a name that recognizes how important it is to support those who are grieving. She is also the author of “Confessions of a Griever: Turning a Hot Mess into an Haute Message (Laughable Lessons for When Life Just Sucks).”
Writing the book, which she published in May 2020 as Madeline’s tenth birthday present, was part of the grieving process, she said.
“It’s my story and also tips and tactics that have helped me through my darkest times,” she said.
It’s also a “pick a path” book, so at the end of every chapter, the reader gets to decide where to go next.
“Because that is how grief works – you get to decide where it goes next,” she said. “You can sometimes go around and around in circles, which is what grief feels like a lot of times. The pick the path format was the best way I could come up with to represent the journey of grief.”
As for Sharing Solace, its mission is to “empower grievers to grieve and lovers to love their griever through our technology-elevated, pass-along-able keepsakes wrapped in an ever-growing community of strength and support,” according to its website.
Webster calls herself the “(co)-founder,” as the other founder is her daughter who died much too soon. Webster and her husband, who she calls “a pretty cool guy,” never had any other children. They discovered through genetic testing that Madelyn Elizabeth’s life was cut short through chromosomal translocation.
“To say she didn’t have anything to do with starting Sharing Solace would be blasphemy,” Webster said.
A Tremendous Loss
When you are pregnant, no one ever thinks, “Let me plan for death,” Webster said.
So, her experience was very traumatic, she explained.
“Nothing prepares you … but it felt as though the funeral home we worked with truly cared. They were able to do anything we wanted, and this was 15 years ago,” she said.
Webster and her husband held a traditional Catholic funeral for their daughter, who was cremated. They couldn’t find an urn at the funeral home that felt “right,” so they ordered one online.
Her husband took care of all the arrangements as she was in no condition to do so, she said.
“We keep her at home; she lives on a nightstand with her pink turtle that she got at the hospital,” Webster said. “When I travel by car overnight or for multiple nights, she comes with me. When we fly, we take her over to Grandma’s, who keeps her on the mantel. And when it is time, she will be interred with us. She is very much a part of my family, and I see her every day.”
She admits that to some people, that may seem odd.
“But she has made me who I am, and I still want to mother her … I just look up when I am talking to her,” she said. “It felt right to have her with us, and it still does. At some point, maybe it won’t.”
After her daughter’s death, it was challenging to move forward as a couple with her husband, but they just celebrated their nineteenth wedding anniversary, she said.
“We have different grieving personas,” she said. “But we recognized that we both do it differently and gave each other grace and space to do that … I think it made a world of difference.”
The Idea Behind Sharing Solace
Sharing Solace revolves around a physical token and locket set, which a griever can wear as a necklace or carry as a keychain. Anyone who buys a token or locket set also becomes part of an online community.
“The necklace comes with a sterling silver box chain (available in a variety of lengths) and the keychain comes with a standard split keyring. Both are ready to immediately wear,” Webster said.
Pricing can vary if you want to customize your set, but a token and locket starts at $119, Webster said. The locket alone starts at $89.
All Sharing Solace pieces and products can be ordered online through SharingSolace.com and display sets (specifically for funeral homes and support organizations) can be viewed here.
“Right now, traditional wholesale orders are taken over the phone, in person, or via email –but we’re working on building out that functionality too,” she said. “Our mission is to support the community … we want to make grieving bearable.”
The whole idea is to give yourself time to grieve and to help others as well, she said.
“The sooner you are willing to acknowledge others who have experienced a similar loss and when you stop trying to compare and compete with grief, the sooner you start to heal,” she said.
With that said, Webster does not subscribe to the notion that you “get over” or recover from grief. “You integrate it into who you are as a person and learn to carry it in a meaningful way,” she said.
All these years later, grief can still hit her like a truck.
She noted that recently on her daughter’s birthday, she celebrated with cake. The next day, however, she kind of laid around the house all day in a gloomy mood.
“That’s not an everyday occurrence, but on significant days, it’s OK,” she said. “As I have moved through my grief and loss, it has changed over time – it gets different.”
But early on, she wanted something to hold, which is how she came up with a physical piece of jewelry that you could wear or carry as a keychain.
“You’re supposed to be holding your baby — a little one – when you leave the hospital,” she said. “So, being wheeled out with nothing in your arms is traumatic in and of itself. It’s not the life you envisioned.”
The Sharing Solace token is somewhat heavy, just like the burden a griever carries, but it can be taken out of a necklace or keychain and passed to another griever. It is a way to signify that grief changes – that you still carry it, but it becomes less heavy. And by passing on the token, you are showing someone else they are not alone, she said.
It’s also something helpful to pass on, unlike some other items that are often given to someone who has experienced a traumatic loss, Webster said.
“People like to give you things – here is a plant, a card, here is whatever,” Webster said. “But as I moved through my grieving process, my entire house had become kind of a shrine to Madelyn – and not in a healthy way. There were figurines, poems and all kinds of things I was given. It was everywhere in my house. About four or five years into it, it didn’t bring comfort anymore – it brought back that pain. Instead of it reminding me that she lived it was, ‘Oh, she is dead.’”
She put all those things into a closet.
“It’s too meaningful to throw away and too personalized to give away,” she said. “It will sit in a closet probably until the day I die and someone says, ‘What is this?’ And they will probably throw it away.”
That ordeal, however, informed the design of the token and locket set, as the token is intended to be “paid forward,” she said. If the person who wants to remove the token once grief has become less heavy does not know anyone to give it to, Sharing Solace will play matchmaker, and send it to someone who needs it. Tokens are registered, so you can see who gets yours. “The token allows you a way to pay forward some of the strengths you’ve developed,” Webster said. “It goes into a new necklace and goes to someone else.”
She continued, “This is a low-key and low-barrier way to actually see that you are not the only one going through grief,” she said. “And you continue to wear the empty ring, which symbolizes that you will always have that hole and be missing that person.”
The community that has formed as a result has turned into a valuable support network for those in grief, Webster said.
“Wearing the necklace … it is heavy enough that you feel it when you are wearing it,” she said. “It is supposed to represent the grieving process. You learn to carry it with you, but at some point, I believe your grief needs to change. You need to almost consciously make the choice that you will not let it consume you anymore. You need to integrate it into your life and let it go in a lot of ways.”
As to how people find out about Sharing Solace and buy a token and/or locket, sometimes it is through a funeral home and other times it is through word of mouth. “I have a display that can go into a funeral home’s display room,” Webster said. “There are brochures we give out.”
Losing a pet can be as traumatic as losing a human family member, and tokens and lockets are worn and carried by those grieving pets, too.
“Grief and loss do not discriminate, and we are not going to discriminate,” she said.
Asked what you can do to support someone who is grieving, Webster said it is important to ask about their person or pet.
“I think everyone grieves differently, and I know there are some people who don’t like how I do things,” she said. “But I am going to tell you the good, bad and the ugly. I am going to be authentically me and tell my story and hope it encourages you to share your story. We all have a story.”
Too often, people shy away from sharing the ugly, she said. “And you can go through the ugly and beautiful at the exact same time. It is important to share both,” she said. “Because life is both.”
Supporting people in grief is also good business for those in funeral service, she said.
“When you talk about the death of children in a business context, it feels a little snarly … but we all have to keep the lights on whether we are a for-profit or nonprofit,” she said. “I know funeral directors do not like to deal with the death of a child at any age, but there are nuances to this, and if you do it right – which means do not do it wrong – if you treat these families with true compassion and sympathy, they will be your raving fans for life. So, if you need to look at this as a business decision, there is a business decision here. Burying Grandma and burying little Bobby is semantically and mechanically the same, but emotionally, it is very different.”
Those who lose a child tend to be much younger than the typical funeral home customer, so you get “70 years of a raving fan” when you do it right, she said. “If you go into the situation with compassion … it will do wonders for you in the community,” she said.
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