He wrote and drew the illustrations for the story "You're Here!" (NPQ editors, 2023) as if it were a small light in the darkness. Journalist Lorena Ruiz wanted to tell her daughter Lucía de ella, 14 months old, where her older brother Diego de ella is, whom she and her husband mention frequently because they will never forget. She devised a simple story to explain her painful absence to the little girl because since she is a mother she wants to make others understand that gestational and perinatal grief exists. “Breaking the taboo,” she says.
"I wanted to give my daughter a Christmas gift and explain where Diego was," explains Ruiz, who has opened a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to finance the publication. He needs 3,500 euros and at the time of writing these lines he has just under half of it. With the pre-sale of the book he will recover the outlay that he had to make to publish it, so he is looking for financing to sell 260 copies (at least) before the publication of the story.
The story is, according to the author, "a way of teaching boys and girls where we can find people who die, regardless of the religion or culture of each family," says Ruiz. She has felt the need because her son is part of her life, in the present. There are photos of her hanging on her refrigerator, and even on her skin, because she tattooed those few minutes she spent with her little one in her arms.
It is not easy, parents explain, to talk about this loss. Not only because of the pain it entails, but also because of its invisibility in society. And professionals who are experts in gestational and perinatal grief defend that "a lot of delicacy" is needed. They say that it should be put on by the health professionals who care for these families at such a delicate moment, something that has been changing a lot in recent years, but so should the rest of the people.
With the publication of the book, Lorena Ruiz does not seek profit. She explains that she only wants to finance the production costs and that if she has any money left over, she will use it for charitable purposes, whatever the association. "If more money is raised than the goal set, that money will always go to the next printing of the story. If for some reason it cannot be printed again, the money remaining from the goal will be donated," contemplates the website on which has activated the campaign.
Because she only wanted to answer a question that "seems very complicated," she points out, but that hundreds of brothers and sisters will ask, because more than 2,500 babies die each year in Spain during pregnancy or before six months of birth. life. Try to explain where those who left are while they were waiting for them with so much enthusiasm. The report "Sense batec" (Without a heartbeat) from the TV3 program 30 minuts also talks about this, which tells, among others, the origin of the play "Una gossa en un descampat", based on the novel by Clàudia Cedó, about this death. premature, which also sought to break the taboo.
These are not the only examples; theater, reports and, above all, written works have tried to explain to others what that hard moment is like that today, Lorena Ruiz's children's book also brings closer to children so that "the rest of the children with dead siblings they can also discover where and how to find them.
If Lorena Ruiz's campaign goes well, it will be the second solidarity action of this persevering mother that comes to fruition. Last year she already raised funds in the same way to finance 'memory boxes' to help mourn a baby, a donation that she donated to Nubesma, a Valencian non-profit association that supports families experiencing gestational and neonatal grief. . Something moves inside her, very intense, so that mothers like her try to put light among so much darkness.
