Hello again blog, I have missed you.

I spend a lot of time reading the blogs of other moms coping with the loss of their own babies. I feel such a connection to them because what we feel seems to be universal. Some are new in their journeys, and some are years later with a house full of other children they have had since. It doesn’t ever go away completely, this grief. We always hold a candle for these lost children whether we talk openly about it or not. One older woman I know that I talk to regularly lost a baby when she was my age. The loss is always on the tip of her tongue. She wants to tell me that she knows exactly how I feel, but can’t get the words out. I feel the pain in her voice though nonetheless. It is always there no matter where life takes us or what we do.

At the risk of sounding like Shrek with his famous line about onions, like ogres, grief works the same way. You heal what is right before you, and then another stinky layer surfaces. I think that is why so many of us keep blogs. There has to be some way to get it out, and writing is a wonderful outlet. I let this blog sag away and decay, and in the meantime have been following the journeys of others and feeling envious of their open nature on their blogs. That is going to change now. Prepare yourselves for more journeys into the heart and mind of a grieving mother.

For some of you, continuing to read this stuff may be too hard and depressing for you. I don’t take offense. More than that, I envy that you don’t walk through the world with this sort of thing hanging over your hearts and minds. It is a blessing, and you should feel grateful for it every day. For others that don’t mind following some doom and gloom, thanks for sticking with me.

Where am I today on all of this? I did a lot of work up front in my grief for several months. It helped tremendously. I got a nice break for a while when I could walk through the world with it not being so bad. I always felt sad about it, don’t get me wrong there. I would hear a song on the radio while out running errands (I am always freaking crying in my car for some reason), or someone would say something (or not say something) that would get me going. But it wasn’t every day. During that time, I got pregnant again, and now things are starting to change.

There are a number of things that you can kind of deal with by avoiding, especially with the loss of an infant. I think I would feel sad during a subsequent pregnancy whether I waited 6 months or 10 years. The reason why is that the last (and only) time I cared for an infant, he died. I am now beginning to care for another infant. While it is absolutely exciting and joyful, it completely scares me to my core. I am analyzing everything that I did or didn’t do with Noah, and agonizing how I am going to do this again with Aaron.

Rather than sit and ruminate over these things with no resolution, I am going back to the things that helped me in the first place: working regularly with a counselor, going back to grief groups more aggressively, and writing. Lots of writing.

So here goes. Much more to come.