Atlanta mom launches online support network in honor of late son: ‘Brody inspired this’
ATLANTA - A metro Atlanta mom, whose son was stillborn, has turned her grief into a new social network for moms who have experienced similar loss.
Katherine Lazar says when she lost her first child, hearing from other moms in Atlanta who had experienced the same thing was the only way she was able to move forward.
"In January of 2022, our first son was stillborn at 37 weeks. And what I found was that life completely changed. Everything changed," Lazar said.
She says she didn’t know if she would ever feel happy again after losing her first child, Brody.
"I had a wonderful support system with my friends, my family and my husband. It was amazing. But I really needed to hear the perspective of someone who had been through a term stillbirth before, because I needed to have someone look at me and just say, ‘I understand,’" Lazar said.
Then she connected with three other moms in Atlanta who had also lost a baby. Lazar says they call themselves "loss moms."
"Those women saved me. I did not know how to survive the death. I gave birth to a baby that was gone, and I didn't know how to move forward. They showed me not only how to move forward, but that it was okay to move forward. They taught me how to laugh again and smile again," Lazar said.
When she got pregnant again in 2023, she says she tried to join Facebook and other social media groups to try and connect with other moms.
"It was always kind of framed with ‘No negativity, please! Don't want to be scared, only positive comments’… and so, I saw a lot of us getting censored off of groups saying we were scaring people," Lazar said.
Katherine Laza, who launched losslink.com, a new social media site dedicated to mothers who have lost their children, shows the feet of her stillborn son, Brody. It is an image which had been removed from traditional social media sites. (Supplied)
So, she started her own Facebook group. Soon she began connecting with more local loss moms.
"And we now have happy hours every month and dinners every month. I see my friends for coffee every month. And there's something to be said about sitting across from somebody who understands it… We talk about our babies that have died. We talk about life. We talk about everything," Lazar said.
She noticed people in other cities and states were having a hard time connecting to other loss moms in their areas.
"People started messaging me and saying, ‘Hey, I want what you have in Atlanta, can you hook me up with someone in my town?’" Lazar said.
Katherine Laza, whose son was stillborn, launched losslink.com, a new social media site dedicated to mothers who have lost their children. (FOX 5)
So, she started connecting people just by herself, but it was not long before she thought there had to be an easier way to do this. That is when she thought to start her own social media site just for loss moms.
"Losslink.com…essentially like a Facebook meets LinkedIn for mothers who have experienced pregnancy loss, stillbirth, TMFR, infant loss and child death," Lazar said.
It took working with a developer for over a year, but she says the result has been worth it.
"The day that it launched, all these profiles were popping up, and I was like, ‘I’ve never seen all of them in one place.’ And it was so overwhelming because so many broken hearts and so many babies gone and I love all of them," Lazar said.
On Losslink.com, Katherine says no mom is censored.
"You can share a photo of your baby, which a lot of times is not allowed on regular platforms, because nobody wants to see a baby that's an angel baby. But we’re proud of them," Lazar said.
She says it is been incredibly rewarding to see women use her site to pull each other out of the same darkness she once found herself in.
"Women are meeting each other, and they're having coffee, and they're sharing doctors, ‘Hey, go to this doctor, they're really kind.’ You know, ‘Hey, go to this therapist.’ They're really great. So now they're sharing resources with each other. It's been really cool to see," Lazar said.
Katherine Laza, whose son was stillborn, launched losslink.com, a new social media site dedicated to mothers who have lost their children. (FOX 5)
It is also rewarding for her to see a new legacy for her son, of connection through pain and loss.
"To be able to say ‘Brody inspired this, Brody is behind this. Brody is connecting these angel babies, mothers together,’ has been really rewarding as a mom for a baby that's gone," she said.
You can sign up and create a profile here: losslink.com.