How a St. Paul woman who lost her baby turned her grief into art

ST. PAUL, Min. — Colleen Tapper uses her hands to calm her mind.

“Everything else that happens disappears: stress, sadness – and all I focus on is how the brush and paint work with canvas,” Tapper said.

It is an interruption of a life with some lightness and darkness. It is her art that put her in the spotlight. As her Instagram grew, so did her voice.

“I don’t know, there’s 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 all over the world, who look at her art and listen to her life updates, including her marriage to Jeff, who she met unexpectedly while fixing her car. Then, the day she had dreamed of: she was pregnant.

But at 21 weeks and five days, a nightmare unfolded.

“Basically the muscles holding her down just gave up and went into labor,” Tapper said. “I had no idea what was going on. By the time I got to the hospital, I was about four centimeters dilated.”

Their precious little girl was too small to survive. Her name, Sloane Grace, means warrior.

“I’m so lucky to have had her, even in the short time I was there,” Tapping said. “I’ve said before, I’d do it all again, every moment of pain, to get to know her – every 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 started talking about grief very publicly, sharing poems, videos and blunt emotions

“I was just inundated with other women and some husbands — men who had suffered a similar loss or multiple losses — and I felt so connected to how I was feeling and what I was saying. Instantly I wasn’t alone anymore,” Tapping said . “Other people said her name, which was so important to me, and I never talk about her. I never will, and that’s been the medicine for a long time.”

The grace of her audience surprised her, and a year and a half later she surprised them.

“I was so afraid of giving people excitement, hope and the feeling of excitement in me, only to have that taken away, I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it at all,” Tapping said. “So we launched the baby hard. I just said, ‘Here he is.’ And the reactions are wild. It was great, really great.”

She is amazed by Leon Joseph, born at 38 weeks, in perfect health.

“What other human experience is that than being so overjoyed while also being heartbroken and having to exist in that space with both things happening at the same time,” Tapping said. “I can’t think of anything more humane than that. We’re going to continue with that. I brought home my beautiful, full-term, happy, healthy son and I will never bring home my daughter.”

After two years of looking at life from different perspectives, she has found her angle.

“I’m a lucky mother to have had both children,” Tapping said.

To follow Tapping and see some really cute baby photos, search for “Colleen Elizabeth” on Instagram. She also has a website for her art.