to linger on hot coals poetic gathering

Hi friends! We are so excited about our next community event- Sweet Pea Project's to linger on hot coals poetic gathering presented by OBGYN of Lancaster. We are just 3 weeks away from this lovely little gathering and want to make sure we have enough books and refreshments, so please click over to https://hotcoalspoetry.wufoo.com/forms/to-linger-on-hot-coals-poetic-gathering/ and let us know if you plan to attend. 

We hope you will join us at 1pm on Saturday, March 8 at the beautiful Mulberry Art Studios in downtown Lancaster for an afternoon of poetry, music, and community in a candle-lit art gallery. From 1pm-2pm you can mingle and relax with a glass of wine and a plate of delicious hors d'oeuvres served by Food For Thought Catering, while listening to the gently strummed guitar of singer/songwriter Bobbi Carmitchell.  156 candles, each with the name of a deeply loved and missed child handwritten on it, will be lighting the gallery.  Copies of to linger on hot coals will be available, and several of the contributors will be signing books and chatting with guests.

At 2pm, Dr Joanne Cacciatore- founder of the MISS Foundation and Center For Loss & Trauma- will open with a short presentation via video about her involvement in to linger on hot coals. The poetry reading will immediately follow and will include pieces from each of the to linger on hot coals contributors. Angie Yingst, Devany LeDrew, Catherine Bayly and Stephanie Paige Cole will read live in the gallery and, since they live much too far away to attend in person, Kara LC Jones, Sherokee Ilse, Laura Seftel, Carly Dudley, Tara Hart, Beth Morey, Amy McCarter, Hannah Logan Morris and Anne Morris will share their poems with us via video projected on the gallery wall.

Learn more about to linger on hot coals, which was released a few weeks ago and is already receiving some amazing reviews from high profile members of our community, at www.tolingeronhotcoals.com.

Thank you to our event sponsors: OBGYN of Lancaster, Food For Thought Catering, Mulberry Art Studios, Loving Memories Photography & Continental Inn!

(PS... Think warm thoughts and save the date for our next community event: 4th Annual Sweet Pea Sisters & Brothers Picnic at Lititz Springs Park on June 7!)

New book available now!

I am beyond excited to announce to you that my second book, to linger on hot coals: collected poetic works from grieving women writers, was released on January 24th and is now available for purchase!  It will be released as an eBook in the near future, and is currently available as a paperback on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.  Here are more details about the book, and I will paste the links in at the bottom of this email for those of you who may be interested in checking it out.  Thank you so much for your support of my work.

Poets explore the lasting effects of grief in new anthology released January 2014

“Most of the time, we consider grief ugly, and most of the time it is.  But, sometimes you find something that moves that kind of loss beyond horror to something clear and pristinely honest— beautiful… Stephanie Paige Cole and Catherine Bayly have collected a deeply beautiful gift of poetry in to linger on hot coals.”  -Melissa Miles McCarter, Editor of Joy, Interrupted

to linger on hot coals was born from the imaginations and lives of two mothers.  Artist-writer, Stephanie Paige Cole, and poet-teacher, Catherine Bayly, crafted their brain child in memory of their first daughters, Madeline and Sophie.  Both girls were stillborn at full term, and the experience of mothering their memories became paramount in the writing and daily lives of their mothers.  As the years passed, the need to mother them has changed, but the desire to keep them at the center of Cole and Bayly’s work has remained.

This book represents a multitude of women’s voices, at various stages of grief-mothering.  Within the pages you’ll find raw cerebral iterations of the infinite ripple effects of grief and the raw visceral howls of grief’s earliest days.  Cole and Bayly hope the book will take part in an ongoing complex conversation about motherhood and work—and that it will speak to the hearts and minds of those mothers who’ve lost.

to linger on hot coals features a powerful foreword by MISS founder, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, and poetry from Cole and Bayly along with Kara LC Jones, Angie Yingst, Sherokee Ilse, Laura Seftel, Carly Dudley, Tara Hart, Beth Morey, Amy McCarter, Hannah Logan Morris, Devany LeDrew and Anne Morris.

More information about this book can be found online at www.tolingeronhotcoals.com.

Order your copy today on Amazon or Barnes & Noble

And I hope you will all join us on Saturday, March 8 at 1pm for a free community gathering to celebrate the release of this sweet and sacred little book.  Details about Sweet Pea Project's to linger on hot coals poetic gathering can be found at www.sweetpeaproject.org/poetry.

Again, thank you for all your support as we work together to create a more compassionate community for the families left behind after the death of a beloved child.

Sweet Pea Project Presents to linger on hot coals poetic gathering

Sweet Pea Project is hosting a poetic gathering on March 8, 2014 at the beautiful Mulberry Art Studios in downtown Lancaster, PA, to celebrate the release of Stephanie Paige Cole & Catherine Bayly's new book, to linger on hot coals: collected poetic works from grieving women writers. The book features a foreword from Dr Joanne Cacciatore and poetry from Stephanie and Catherine along with Kara LC Jones, Angie Yingst, Sherokee Ilse, Laura Seftel, Carly Dudley, Tara Hart, Beth Morey, Amy McCarter, Hannah Logan Morris, Devany LeDrew and Anne Morris.  To learn more about this book, please visit www.tolingeronhotcoals.com.

Doors open at 1:00.  Guests will have time to mingle, enjoy some light food and wine, leaf through copies of to linger on hot coals and wander through the space to view the candles lining the gallery's windowsills and ledges, each one with the name of a deeply loved and missed child handwritten on it.

At 2:00, Dr Joanne Cacciatore- founder of the MISS Foundation and Center For Loss & Trauma- will open with a short presentation via video about her involvement in to linger on hot coals, and the importance of expressing the full spectrum of emotions that accompany the death of a child.  The poetry reading will immediately follow and will include pieces from each of the to linger on hot coals contributors.  Angie Yingst, Devany LeDrew, Catherine Bayly and Stephanie Paige Cole will read live in the gallery and, since they live much too far away to attend in person, Kara LC Jones, Sherokee Ilse, Laura Seftel, Carly Dudley, Tara Hart, Beth Morey, Amy McCarter, Hannah Logan Morris and Anne Morris will share their poems with us via video projected on the gallery wall.

Stephanie, Catherine, Angie and Devany will be available to chat and sign books after the poetry reading has concluded.  Books will be available for purchase, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting Sweet Pea Project.

Registration is not required for this free community event, but we want to make sure we have plenty of refreshments so please, if you plan to attend, let us know by clicking the link to sign up at www.sweetpeaproject.org/poetry.

There is still time to have a candle added in honor of your little one, please read the blog post that follows this one for details.

Thank you to our event sponsors
Sweet Pea Project
Mulberry Art Studios
Loving Memories Photography
Continental Inn
Food For Thought Catering

Lit with Love at poetic gathering

Have a candle lit for your child at Sweet Pea Project's to linger on hot coals poetic gathering this March.

As you may have heard, Sweet Pea Project founder Stephanie Paige Cole and poet/professor Catherine Bayly have teamed up to create a book of poetry entitled to linger on hot coals.  The collection contains pieces from some of the the most beautiful and powerful voices of our community, and we are so excited for its release in just a few weeks.  You can visit www.tolingeronhotcoals.com or the facebook page for details, reviews and updates. https://www.facebook.com/hotcoalspoetry?ref=hl  We'll be sharing more about it soon.

To celebrate this lovely little book, Sweet Pea Project will be hosting a poetic gathering and community reception at Mulberry Art Studios on March 8.  As we have done in the past (at Beauty in the Breakdown and Five) we plan to fill the gallery space with candles, each bearing the name of a beloved baby, so that the room is filled with their light, lit by our love for them.

For those of us who have suffered through the death of a baby, the glowing light of the candles will be a reminder of their short but precious lives and a tribute to our love for them.  And it will surely move those who have not experienced such a loss to walk into a room and see how our love still burns for our unseen children.

During the month of January, anyone who makes a donation in any amount to Sweet Pea Project will have a candle placed in the gallery in honor of their child.  This includes donations made for the Winter Book Drive.  Contributions may be sent by check to the address at the bottom of this post, or be made securely online with a credit card or paypal account at www.sweetpeaproject.org/donate/paypal.  Please be sure to include your child's name when you submit your donation.

Please feel free to contact me at  Stephanie@sweetpeaproject.org with any questions at all.  Thank you for your support of Sweet Pea Project, and for the honor of including your beautiful child in this exhibit.

Sweet Pea Project
PO Box 10351
Lancaster, PA 17605-0351

Sweet Pea Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.  All donations are tax deductible.

Sweet Pea Project Turns Five Years Old

In early December 2008, I sat down at the computer late one night and typed up an email to my friends and family.  It started with, "Christmas is just a few weeks away and we are so excited to see it through Ben’s eyes this year.  Still, we continue to struggle with sadness because his big sister will not be here to share it with us.  She would be two years old next month, and we miss her very much."  I went on to invite everyone to donate a receiving blanket in Madeline's memory so that I could bring them to the hospital on her second birthday, in the hope that I could offer some small comfort to the next mother to deliver a stillborn child there.  Within a couple of weeks I had been in the newspaper, had created a website, named my little effort the Sweet Pea Project and collected hundreds of blankets.  On January 5th, 2008 (her 2nd birthday) I delivered the first box of blankets to the hospital where she was born.  Now, 5 years later, we have donated over 6,000 blankets and 3,200 copies of Still. to 230 hospitals and bereavement organizations in all 50 states of the US and several other countries including Australia, Ireland and Canada.  We've hosted a dozen free community events and our Sweet Pea Babies page honors more than one thousand beloved children.  We've stood up and spoken out at every opportunity in an effort to break the silence and remove the stigma surrounding stillbirth and infant death.  We do all this knowing that none of it will ever take away the pain of their deaths, but with hope that together we can create a more compassionate community for the broken families these precious children leave behind.  Thank you to everyone who has helped us as we build this community, blanket by blanket, book by book, broken heart by broken heart, and thank you for allowing me the honor of being a small part of your child's remembrance.  These past five years with Sweet Pea Project have been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, and I cannot wait to see what the next five years will bring.

Butterfly Tree Children's Mural

The death of a baby can be very difficult on a child. They witness their parents wrestling with overwhelming grief, and struggle with their own feelings of sadness and confusion. These children deserve a day just to be carefree children, playing with their parents in the sunshine and having fun, and each year Sweet Pea Project offers those families that kind of a day at their annual Sweet Pea Sisters & Brothers Picnic.  At this year's picnic, 106 children decorated paper butterflies with watercolor paint, acrylic paint, colored pencils, crayons, markers, and glitter glue in honor of their sisters and brothers.  Artist and Sweet Pea Project founder, Stephanie Paige Cole, then helped the children create a giant mural using their butterflies as leaves on a butterfly tree.  The mural will be unveiled on National Children's Grief Awareness Day, November 21st, with a special cookies and cocoa reception for the artists who created this touching piece of art at Manheim Township Public Library, and will remain on display there during regular library hours from November 21-30.  During the mural's stay, the library will have Sweet Pea Project community event videos available for viewing.  They will also have books specially chosen to suit this topic and Sweet Pea Project informational brochures will be available as well.   To learn more about our annual children's picnic and the ways in which we strive to create fun and healthy ways for children to express their grief, please visit www.sweetpeaproject.org/picnic.  

Extraordinary Give

click on flier to enlarge, download & share!

The Extraordinary Give: November 22, 2013

If your life has been touched by Sweet Pea Project, then please consider supporting us this November 22 as we participate in the Extraordinary Give. 

The Extraordinary Give is Lancaster County’s 24-hour Online Giving marathon, where every dollar donated at ExtraGive.org on Nov 22 will be stretched by a $250,000 contribution from the Lancaster County Community Foundation shared among participating community organizations, plus incentives and prizes that can further benefit our organization.

Your tax-deductible on-line donation to Sweet Pea Project through www.extragive.org on November 22 will allow us to continue offering comfort, support and gentle guidance to families who have experienced the death of a baby before, during or after birth.

Mark your calendar for November 22 and tell your friends!  “When We Give Extra, Extraordinary Things Happen!”

Remembrance Gathering Videos & Photos

October 15th was a beautiful day this year, there was warmth and blue sky and sunshine abounding but the thing that made it so beautiful was not the weather- it was the sense of community that filled the grassy field at Long's Park as we all gathered together- all 700 of us!- to shout to the sky, with wildflower seeds and green balloons, that our children are loved, they are missed and they are remembered.  

If you weren't able to join us at the park, we invite you to hop over to youtube to watch two videos we created. One is a video recording of Stephanie speaking about remembrance and Beth reading each sweet name as the balloons float up into the sky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIWt8V9Y_nw and the other is a montage of stunning photographs taken at the event by Grace Photos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9C6XN8LIvw&feature=youtu.be.

If you were a guest at the gathering and you would like to download a free image of your family from the event, please check your email for a link to our password protected album.  There are 3 or 4 times more pictures in that album than time allowed us to share in the video, so please peruse the album for more amazing images.  Email Stephanie if you are unable to access the album for some reason.

Thank you to everyone who joined us that day and helped make it such a tender, sacred, moving evening. We are already excitedly looking forward to next year's gathering on October 15, 2014.  We hope to see you there.

Sweet Pea Project's 4th Annual Remembrance Gathering

You are invited.

Summer is winding down and autumn will be soon be upon us.  Autumn means a lot of things to a lot of people- apple picking and pumpkins, comfy sweatshirts and crunchy leaves.  Here at Sweet Pea Project, autumn is a season of remembrance.  We invite you to join us once again as we hold our annual Remembrance Gathering on National Remembrance Day, October 15, at Long's Park in Lancaster, PA.  This gathering offers families a chance to come together and remember their children as a community and to celebrate their short but precious lives. We would be honored to have you join us as we gather together to listen to the beautiful music of our children's name spoken out loud in a field filled with love and support.

Sweet Pea Project's 4th Annual Remembrance Gathering is a free event that is open to the community, but registration is requested.   To register your family please visit www.sweetpeaproject.org/remember and click on REGISTER NOW.   Registration will be open until September 30.

We will be offering  commemorative T shirts again this year.   The shirts will feature our event logo on the front and include a list of the names of the children we are remembering on the back.  Shirts are available for $5 a piece and can be ordered online when you register.  All orders must be placed by September 30th.  We are very sorry, but it is not possible for us to ship shirts.  They must be picked up at the T Shirt Table at Long's Park between 5pm and 6pm on Tuesday, October 15.  Payment is due at the time of purchase either via paypal (at paypal.com sending money to Stephanie@sweetpeaproject.org) or mail a check to us at

Sweet Pea Project

Attn: Shirt Order

PO Box 10351

Lancaster, PA 17605-0351

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you at the park!

Kindness Day Giveaway 2013

Today is International Kindness Project today.  If you haven't heard of this beautiful day, brainchild of MISS Foundation's Dr Joanne Cacciatore, then I encourage you to visit www.kindnessprojectday.org to learn more about this meaningful event and how you can get involved.  Here at Sweet Pea Project we are participating by donating 3 copies of Still (one in honor Max Jackson, one in honor of Mark Gauthier and one in honor of Madeline Cole) through a random drawing.  To enter the drawing please send an email with the subject KINDNESS to Stephanie@sweetpeaproject.org and be sure to include your name, your child's name and your address (so that we can ship the book to you in case you win.)  As always, we promise to never share your information with anyone.  The drawing will close tonight, July 27 2013, at midnight and the winners will be announced on facebook and contacted via email tomorrow.  Please feel free to share this far and wide.  Have a beautiful day, filled with kindness and remembrance and love.
peace
Stephanie Cole