CORNWALL, Ontario – Penny Brown’s mission was to help women who have given birth to stillborn children – but she’s found a way to help herself in the process.
Brown, of Apple Hill, is collecting wedding dresses and the like to help create so-called “angel gowns”, which she is donating to area hospitals.
The gowns are provided to parents of stillborn children, for use during funerals.
It sounds like a depressing, perhaps even macabre initiative, but Brown said she has found a home for the dresses – and in the process is helping to ease the pain of her own losses.
Brown has three children of her own, but has also suffered through nine miscarriages, including eight in a stretch from 2008 to 2014.
“It’s just to give these parents something less to worry about,” she said. “And it’s helping me heal too.
“It was a roller coaster, for sure. I said I wanted to do something different. I don’t want my kids to see me crying all the time.”
Brown disassembles the donated dresses, and completes some of the hand-sewing on her own, but also has a pair of seamstresses who are donating time and resources to turn the dresses into angel gowns.
So far 11 have been donated to the Cornwall Community Hospital. Brown said she plans to donate more to the Winchester District Memorial Hospital as well. Hospital staff handle the transition to grieving parents.
“They’re still coming in,” Brown said of the donations she has received to date.
She created a Facebook group, ‘Angel Gowns of Cornwall and Area‘ so that she can create a network of potential donators.
So far the response has been positive.
“Some are women have had a stillbirth, and others who just want to help,” said Brown.
