How a St. Paul woman who lost her baby turned her grief into art
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Colleen Tapper uses her hands to calm her head.
"Everything else that is happening goes away: stress, sadness — and all I am focused on is how the brush and paint work with canvas," Tapper said.
It's a respite from a life with some lightness and dark. Her art is what put her in the spotlight. As her Instagram grew, her voice did too.
"I don't know, there was a magic created on my page with the people who follow me. I don't know how it happened. I wouldn't trade it for the world," Tapper said.
She now has followers worldwide, who look at her art and listen to her life updates, including her marriage to Jeff, who she unexpectedly met while getting her car repaired. Then, the day she'd been dreaming of: she was pregnant.
But a nightmare unfolded at 21 weeks and five days.
"Basically, the muscles that were keeping her in just gave up and went into labor," Tapper said. "I had no idea what was happening. By the time I got to the hospital, I was like four centimeters dilated."
Their precious little girl was too little to survive. Her name, Sloane Grace, means warrior.
"I am so lucky to have had her even the short time I did," Tapping said. "I have said before, I would do it all again, every moment of pain, to get to know her — any chance to get to know her. But she was perfect."
Tapping had announced her pregnancy on her Instagram and did a gender reveal. So, she very publicly started talking about grief, sharing poems, videos and blunt emotions
"I just was flooded with other women and some husbands — men who had similar loss or multiple losses — just feeling so connected to how I was feeling and what I was saying. I instantly wasn't alone anymore," Tapping said. "Other people would say her name, which felt so important to me and I never stop talking about her. I won't ever, and for a long time, that was the medicine."
The grace of her audience surprised her, and a year and a half later, she surprised them.
"I was so scared to give people excitement, hope, the pass of being excited with me, to kind of take that away again, I wasn't sure we would make it all the way," Tapping said. "So we hard-launched the baby. I just said, 'Here he is.' And the reaction is wild. It's been amazing, really amazing."
She's amazed by Leon Joseph, born at 38 weeks, in perfect health.
"What other human experience is that — than being so overjoyed while also being completely heartbroken and having to exist in that space with both things happening simultaneously," Tapping said. "I can't think of anything more human than that. We continue that. I brought my beautiful, full-term, happy, healthy son home and I will never bring my daughter home."
After two years of seeing life from all different views, she's found her angle.
"I am a lucky mom to have had both those kids," Tapping said.
To follow Tapping and to see some really cute baby pictures, you can search "Colleen Elizabeth" on Instagram. She has a website for her art as well.
