To Be Born Again and Other Things of Consequences

"The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us—the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand."

On Mother's Day I got an email from a friend that said " I would have sent you a card but I couldn't find any that said Crappy Mother's Day, Life Sucks." I would have loved that card. I definitely appreciated the email. I am really touched by all the people who reached out to me that day in kindness and wished me a mother's day. No one said it in a celebratory way, but in a we love you and acknowledge you are the saddest kind of mother way. Thank You.

I recently got back from a trip to New York. I went into the trip aware of all the potential triggers since New York was one of the last places I was in when I was pregnant, and I stayed in the same apartment with the same people. Never would I have imagined going back there without my baby. Overall I think I did pretty well. It helped that I talked about it before hand with my support group and with my therapist and with some friends. I understand why people move away from places where traumatic events happened to them. I never drive by the hospital where I gave birth. I never sit in the same restaurants I ate when I was pregnant. Because those things didn't happen in Orlando. I am not triggered in the same way many of the women in my group are. I knew that going up to New York would be hard but I really wanted to be there for my best friend's graduation. The trick was honoring the joy I felt for her while simultaneously grieving. It helped that my other friend who lives in New York, in the same apartment wanted to talk about Mateo. She asked questions and since she is a labor and delivery nurse she had some insight. I don't like pretending he isn't on my mind. I don't like actively not talking about him when all I want to do is shout I miss my baby over and over for hours. I don't like not having the space to cry. Sometimes I want to cry. Sometimes I need to. So I think I did pretty well on this trip, I celebrated when I needed to and I cried when I needed to. By the last day I was ready to teleport into my bed and hold my Mateo 's blanket I usually sleep with. Still, I am glad I went and witnessed such an important moment in my best friend's life. It wasn't about pushing my feelings to be there for her, with grief- that's impossible. It was about stepping out of the narrowness of my pain and being able to feel the full spectrum of what it means to be alive. Just as I weep in sorrow, I weep with pride. I am allowed to feel all of the things I do with reverence instead of judgement.

I am becoming painfully aware of the cycles my grief manifests itself through. Sometimes I feel like I will have worked through one specific area only to find myself needing to process it again months later. Sometimes I miss who Mateo would be today. How old he would be. What those cute little toes would like. I'll spend days, sometimes weeks wishing I could see what he would look like today. Then at other times I miss future Mateo. All the things we would have done. The trips we were supposed to take. The milestones. Graduations and Weddings. The pride of raising a baby into a man. I'll spend weeks mourning that. Sometimes I miss my pregnancy. The kicking and the round belly. The glow. Even the heartburn. And times like right now I miss the Mateo I knew. The little guy I got to hold. The baby I stood next to in the NICU for those couple of days. He had the sweetest face. And my nose. He was so little and soft. That's the only version of him I'll ever get to touch. I can't describe what it feels like to want to touch somebody with every cell in your body. I want to touch him, to hold him more than I want absolutely anything else in life. I don't usually use absolutes because I feel that there are exceptions to most things. But I can say with all certainty that I would do anything to hold his little hand again. To kiss his little face. And not even in heaven would I get a chance to do that because that would be then a different experience. Time does not go back. No matter how much I want it to. If sheer heartbreak and desire could take me back there I'd live in that moment. Holding him in my arms and kissing his face. I'd create some sort of Groundhog's day time warp, where every day I would wake up to the one time I got to hold him. I often wish that I would have held him longer. That they would have had to pry him out of my hands. But I was just so tired. And so sad. And his little body was cold and I knew it was time to wrap him up in his little blanket and let go. But now I am so sad that I didn't spend more time with his body because it was the one and only time I ever got to hold my son. What an awful thing to know and not be able to fully understand in the moment. This is the one and only time you will ever hold your baby- here you go. What an awful thing to do to a person's heart.

How do you ever come back from that? I don't think you do. A new version of you is born the moment your child dies. I will never love with reckless abandonment. I will never have a future pregnancy free of stress and heartbreak. I will never not expect the worst, because sometimes the worst happens and sometimes it happens to me. The day the new me was born at the mercy of my child's death I lost all innocence. I can't tell you what it is like to look at the world through this lens. It as though I have sobered up and now I see that there is no limit to the pain one can endure. There is no limit to the love one can feel. I am now a little more serious, a little more dark. I am sadder behind the eyes. I fear I'll always be. I am tainted by my heartbreak and it is though I leave a small stain on everything I experience. Nothing goes through me without being touched by my loss. It is the filter of my life. I hear it becomes less intense. That the pain dulls some. But the changes are permanent. I was born again the day my baby died and now this is the life I live.

“So listen to this fleeting world, a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”- Diamond Sutra Gatha

International Bereaved Mothers Day: The Shittiest Remembrance Day Ever

Moments of Purposeful Solitude 

You need to pause at least once a day and spend a few moments breathing silently.  Use these moments to think and consciously separate the past from the present and future.  Responsibilities, obligations, unfinished business, family and friends can all survive without you while you take these moments for yourself. You deserve this time away. You deserve to think peacefully, free from external pressure.  No problems to solve, hands to shake, or people to please.  Sometimes you need to make time for yourself, away from the busy world you live in that doesn't make time for you.

I have had a handful of conversations this week around the idea of purpose. I have had this restlessness in my heart lately. This feeling that I am not doing enough, being enough, trying enough- that I am not living up to my life's purpose. I know so much of it comes from having to redirect my life from "I should be a mom right now" to who am I right now? But even when I was pregnant I knew that while being a mom is the most important role I could play in my life, it isn't the only role I am meant to play. I am a daughter and an activist and an organizer and a friend and a writer and on and on. I am meant to do and be all in one, all at once. So these last couple of weeks of really feeling like I am not living up to my life's purpose have slowly but surely sent me towards depression. I find myself retreating, not calling people back, spending lots of time alone in my room knowing the possibilities are endless but the motivation is none. Grief does not just run its course. It isn't a bad cold. It does not have an expiration date. I have to work through it and depression is part of it.

After talking out this feeling of restlessness I came to a better place with purpose and where I am in life. I let go of this gran-dios  notion of how I am meant to be amazing and remembered that the only way that happens is to do amazing things every day. I give purpose to my life. What I do matters in every way that I make it so. The person that I bring to every situation and interaction, that person matters. The person I am when I am at work, the person I bring into support group meetings, the person who makes time to write this blog. I give those moments purpose therefore I give my life meaning. This transitional period in my life, this period of grief, I will honor that. I will be here with it so that eventually I can create purpose in other spaces of my life. Sometimes I resent having to take this time, feeling like I lost a year or two or however long this part of the process will take on top of losing my baby. Haven't I lost enough? And you know what? I am right. It fucking sucks. But its my life. And I will take a year or two or however long it takes to be in this part of the process. My life isn't on hold while I grieve. Grieving is a part of my life.Life is happening now. I am not losing this time, I am trying to make the most of it. This is life, welcome it.

Today is International Bereaved Mothers Day. What a shitty holiday. Quite possibly the worst remembrance day ever. I once heard the statistic that one in four pregnancies ends in child loss. Losing a child seems to be as common as having one except no one likes to talk about the loss part. No one prepares you when you are pregnant and everyone collectively sighs after the twelve week mark- all clear. Bullshit. It is never all clear. You can never collectively sigh. Life is fragile from the moment of conception until the moment you take that last breath. Health is guaranteed to no one and nature is as random in its selection as it seems to be cruel. Nature does not take into account values and ethics. It doesn't care about morals. That's why a 15 year old can have a completely healthy baby and leave it in a bathroom stall at her prom and the mothers in my group can spend their whole lives trying to bring just one healthy baby home. Nature doesn't care about fairness. It doesn't put mothers on a scale where the ones with better life circumstances all deserve children and all other moms need not apply. Nature doesn't know that I would have been a great mother to Mateo and it doesn't care. I am not owed his life anymore than the 1 out of 4 mothers whose pregnancies have ended in loss. I am not owed my child any more than any mother who has lost and loved. But God do I wish I were....

Next week is Mother's Day. What might also turn out to be another crappy remembrance day for me. It has been brought up in different groups and the question keeps coming up- Do I want to be honored that day? Am I not still a mother? Will I be hurt if no one wishes me a happy mother's day? Honestly, I don't know. I am a mother, even if I am the saddest kind of mother. So do I want people to wish me a happy mother's day? Sure. Do I want people to not wish me a happy mother's day? Ok. I'll welcome the kindness and forgive the rest.

This week for our support group we have been asked to write a letter to our children. I wrote Mateo a letter and had it places in his casket. I think sometimes of the worlds smallest skeleton lying in the world smallest casket and this long handwritten letter preserved in a way he never could be. In the letter I told him many things but mostly that I was sorry and that I love him. Boy, do I love him. In this very deep way I never knew possible and so therefore I hurt in this very deep way I never knew possible. So now I will write him another letter and share it in my support group. I am not sure what it will say, something along the lines of I love you...that's all I really have to say these days....

In all the ways I am changed, I honor him

Grief is hard work. I haven't blogged for the lat couple of weeks because I fell off the wagon. I stopped doing grief work. I didn't journal, or blog, or read. I neglected the tools I usually use for mental balance, oh and I was eating like shit. I am doing that seven week course on infant loss and grief, and well I am exhausted from grieving. It is hard work. But ignoring my grief work only made me feel worse. I once read a book about a girl who had Turrets, she described the overwhelming need to shout out and how exhausting it was to feel that way all day. Sometimes she would hold it in, trying to ignore it, but it would just build and build until the point where she literally felt she was going to implode and boom! She would shout at the top of her lungs, wondering why she ever even considered holding it in. Release. Oh yea, she was holding it in because she's exhausted. I have Turrets of the soul. Grief Turrets. And when I hold it in, it just builds and builds. I'm exhausted. Still, this week I decided to return to my practice, that while time consuming and energy consuming also give as much as they take. Consciousness and being present with my pain is not easy. It is so much easier to pretend I'm okay. But inside I am building and building up. Begging for release.

A friend once told me of a study she read where they explained why people slow down to look at car accidents. They mapped the brains of people and found that we don't slow down to stare at accidents on the side of the road because we are nosy or morbid, we have this built in impulse to look because our brains are trying to learn from it. We have this built mechanism to witness tragedy and to protect ourselves from it in the future. I think the need to talk about losing a child works similarly. At support group meetings we witness each other's wreckage, our heartbreaks and life changing accidents. We do this to learn from each other. Not to learn to not lose children in the future, but rather to learn everything we can about it right now so no matter what the future holds, we have learned something. I listen to some stories and think "I could never go through that" the same way I am sure someone thinks it about me. It forces you to unload some of your own pain and witness someone else's. It allows you to find some things to be grateful for in your own story, it teaches to cry with others through theirs. So I am not done retelling my story. I am not done learning from it or teaching from it. I "shouldn't" be over it by now. People who judge the status of my well being by pictures on Facebook, pictures of me smiling, and being a human being who feels a range of emotions, well I wish they would ask me how I am doing. But maybe it's easier to look at the pictures and say, oh good, she's fine, no need to check in with her. There will always be a need to check in with me. My baby died.

This weekend is the March of Dimes Walk. In our grief group we talked about honoring our children. We explored the reality that every time you do something in your life through the lens of your love for your child, your loss, being a parent, being someone who is changed, in those moments you honor your child. There are big public ways of honoring, like this walk. But there are also personal, daily ways. In every way you are changed and the decisions that come from that, you honor child. Wether it's made you a little kinder to your other children, a little more grateful to the people in your life, a little more humble about your place in the universe, a little more faith in your religious beliefs. All of it, any of it. You honor your child. Whenever I reach out and touch someone through the lens of my experience, I honor Mateo. And well in his honor I'd do anything, including keeping up and continuing to share with my grief work.

March of Dimes and things of a similar nature

Take in your grief in small workable pieces. One by one, piece by piece. For if you were to try and take it all in at once I believe you would go insane. Mad. Bonkers. So, in order to avoid pure unadulterated insanity, take in your grief in small workable pieces. Sit with each piece. Honor the first as much as the last. Every piece matters and deserves the time and respect of being processed. I think of the morning after Mateo passed away. If on that morning I could have truly wrapped my head around all of it, most of, more than my little piece, I'd never had made it. This method of healing is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it protects you from madness. A curse because at every turn it seems one uncovers a new piece. Whenever I start to come to terms with one facet of my pain another piece is released, ready to be sat with. It is exhausting. I want to stop uncovering pieces but if given the choice Ill take this path over denial or insanity.

This weekend a group of people who love me and I walked in the Central Florida March of Dimes 5k. I do not cease to be humbled by the outpouring of love and support from so many people. You know whats eye opening? The people I thought would be there for me have bowed out for many reasons. But so many more people have supported me in more ways than I can count. Thank You. You know who you are. I am eternally grateful. One of the surprising acts of support came from the Peace Corps staff in Peru. They raised more money than I would have ever asked for and on Saturday showed solidarity from Peru by wearing Team Mateo Shirts they made. Here is part of the letter I wrote in response..

Dear Carmen and Cuerpo de Paz Team Mateo

Thank you so much for the support. The walk on Saturday was moving and inspiring. Over 6,000 people came together in Orlando to walk in hopes of ending premature labor and infant death. I hope that in my lifetime I will witness the medical advancements necessary so that other mothers may be spared the loss of a child as I have endured. But even if science never catches up with nature, then at the very least I hope March of Dimes investment in education meets it halfway. Sometimes I am asked if anything good has come from this experience. There is nothing good about losing a baby. I cannot describe what it is like to watch your baby take his last breath. But there is something good about people. People who come together and hold me up when I cannot do it alone. Good people who honor baby Mateo whether its through sponsoring a walk or holding my hand. Thank you for your kindness. I feel like I gave so much of myself as a Peace Corps volunteer and I did with no expectations of what's in it for me? Having walked away from my service with such a wonderful support system through all of you teaches me that I underestimated the value of a giving heart shown through hard working hands. I gave of me, but I have gotten so much more in return, including all of your love. For that I am changed and forever grateful.

With a humble heart
Anita


Oh Life...


Sometimes, in the midst of working through frustrations, it's possible to glimpse the truth that, though I'm frustrated, not everything is frustrating. Sometimes, in the midst of sadness, it's possible to glimpse that, though I'm sad, not everything is sad. 

A Question to Walk With: Identify a mood of frustration or sadness that you are currently struggling with. Without denying or minimizing your frustration or sadness, let your mind and heart open beyond your struggle and describe, if you can, life around you that is not frustrating or sad. What does it feel like to allow both to take up space in your mind and heart at the same time?- Mark Nepo

Grief Inside, Love by my side

Your love creates your happiness. – The happiness you feel is in direct proportion to the love you give. When you love, you subconsciously strive to become better than you are. When you strive to become better than you are, everything around you becomes better too. During your youth, love will be your teacher; in your middle age, love will be your foundation; and in your old age, love will be your fondest memories and your greatest delight. (Read The Road Less Traveled)

This week I started going to a 7 week course offered by the hospital on grieving child loss, the HEAL Group. I was hesitant about signing up because I felt like it is geared towards couples, and I am not a couple. I am the only single mom in any of the support groups I attend, at least that I know of. But I decided to try any way and if I was really uncomfortable I just wouldn't go back. The day of the first class was so super hectic, I was late out of a previous meeting, I put the wrong address in the GPS, it was raining. I almost turned around and went home, telling myself you can do it the next time they offer it. But I made it. And when I sat down, all out of breath and stressed and tired and the man who hosts this group started to share what grief means to him, I could feel myself settling back into my body. Like a plant thirty for water, my cells perked up and pleaded for knowledge. My need to understand grief and how to live with it is insatiable. It being my silent life partner, sometimes taking up all the space in my mind, in the room, in the world. How do I live with something like that? So this man starts to describe grief as he sees it and has experienced it and cultivated a curriculum around it. And he describes grief as a wound. A wound I understand. My grief at first feeling exposed and raw and so incredibly painful, a gaping wound in my soul. So he asked, how do you treat a wound? You take care of it. You tend to it. You put medicine on it. The ultimate goal being- the smallest scar possible. Wounds heal, so therefore so can my grief. My grief might heal but I am and always will be undeniably scarred.

The question "How do you parent a child that is no longer with us?" Was asked. I am still a parent. I will always be Mateo's mother. To create a child, let him grow inside if you and have his needs be your needs, his life and development completely in your hands- that is parenting. I have mentioned before that just because my baby is gone doesn't mean my desire to be a mom is gone. I felt so validated when in the teacher made a comment almost verbatim. He followed it by asking How do you parent this child now that he's gone? This is what we will explore in this class.

This weekend I spent some time with a friend from the grief group. First of all, I have to say that apparently child loss only happens to the nicest people in the world. The couples who come into these meetings and groups, these women and men, I have yet to meet someone I did not think was painstakingly sweet. All of them. Every last one of them deserved their child, if kindness in your heart was the prerequisite for bringing your baby home. But nothing is owed to us, not even if you are the sweetest couple who has been trying for years, or the sweetest couple who had a wonderful surprise. All of these couples, excited, with nurseries decorated and baby showers thrown. The nicest people ever with the emptiest arms imaginable. So with that said, I spent some time with a friend I made through my support group. Most of her support system is in another state and we could both use some kinship. This week is especially hard for her and so her two best friends flew in from out of state to spend time with her. It was so incredibly sweet to witness. They love her so much. It is undeniable. They took the week off work to be by her side. To lay in bed with her and keep her company. How blessed she is to be loved so. I once read this article about elephants, when a baby elephant dies all the women in their group come together and surround the mother. They caress her with their trunks, they grieve with her and stand by her side for as long as she needs them. This is what that felt like. I am grateful to have been allowed into their circle and limited time together. I felt cared for by osmosis. It made me realize just how much you need people during your grief. People who want to do nothing but hold your hand and honor your loss with you. While no one is offering to spend a week in my company ( though I would welcome it) I do recognize all the ways people in my life have stood by my side. I have been shown love in so many different ways and my heart hurts with gratitude at the thought. I will add this weekend to the list. Maybe I didn't cultivate the kind if friendships where people lay in bed with me and hold my hand, and maybe I can try to be better in the future. Still I am loved in the ways that I am and I was reminded of just how important it is to have women by your side.

Heart to Heart Resuscitation and other things I hardly do but want to

"Everything that happens helps you grow, even if it’s hard to see right now. Circumstances will direct you, correct you, and perfect you over time. So whatever you do, hold on to hope. The tiniest thread will twist into an unbreakable cord. Let hope anchor you in the possibility that this is not the end of your story – that the change in the tides will eventually bring you to peaceful shores."

Yesterday I spent some time with a group of powerful women who come together for what they called "heart to heart resuscitation". It was wonderful. It was one of those moments in time when you feel connected to the universe and you know you are right where you should be, in the company of strong women, good food and great conversation.

So this morning when I woke up I did something I hardly ever do, I prayed. I thanked the universe for all of its glory and I asked to be touched by it today. I am in the process of processing my hurt around Mateo's father and creating a path towards forgiveness. I get overwhelmed at the thought of starting that process. I get even more overwhelmed at the thought of never doing it.

I also did something else I hardly ever do, I cried, with others. I cried with this couple who lost their baby a week a go and shared their story at our support group. I tried to remember what I felt like 4 months ago, a week out of Mateo passing away. I was a zombie. A fucking zombie. I don't know how I made it past the first week, the first month. I am sure at some point I will add the first year, until eventually I stop measuring the time and then it just becomes- I don't know how I made it past the death of my baby, but I did. So I cried with this couple. I shared in their grief, I allowed myself to feel it and to be connected in this way I have not been able to before. When I tell my Mateo story I do not cry. I do not break down in front of people, I often wish I could. I wish the tears would just stream down my face and I could ask someone to hold me, to grieve with me. I may not be ready to be that vulnerable with my grief but I think it was a real breakthrough to share in someone else's today. Maybe the Universe heard my prayer after all.

I feel like the gravity of what it means to lose a child slowly leaks into my consciousness. If I were to feel it all at once, I am sure my heart would explode. Actually I am certain I would have killed myself. If I would have woken up the morning after Mateo and fully felt the magnitude of what it means that your baby is gone, I would have joined him. I think the mind and the body have instinctual ways of self preservation. They want to survive even if your baby didn't. So little by little I come to understand and to really feel what it means to not have Mateo in my arms. I watched his sonogram DVD for the first time recently. I wanted to see him, to hear his heartbeat. I didn't meltdown. Four months since you lost a child is really not a very long time. I don't know if any amount ever will be, but I can feel that four months might as well be 4 days when it comes to missing him. And yet in 4 months I have taught myself to walk into my grief, to not run from it, to be as present as my mind and my body will allow me to be.

You mustn’t befrightened

if a sadness

rises in front of you,

larger than any you’ve ever seen;

if an anxiety,

like light and cloud-shadows,

moves over your hands and over

everything you do.

You must realize that something is

happening to you,

that life has not forgotten you,

that it holds you in its hand

and will not let you fall.

                       Rainer Maria Rilke

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but thoughts are what really hurts me

I was recently reading a blog (http://www.marcandangel.com) I go to at times for inspiration and I came across this message

"Yes, there are lots of inherent events in life that occur completely independently of you – birth, death, loss, sickness, aging, and unexpected changes of all kinds – but these life events do not have to cause ongoing confusion and suffering.  They happen, you experience a little stress, you adjust, and you move forward.  The problem occurs when you don’t adjust and move forward, when your mind clings to these events in a negative light and intensifies their significance into perpetuity.  If your mind does this, of course, it completely overlooks the subtle feelings of excitement, adventure, love, and joy that come from the essence of overcoming a new challenge."

While there is a lot of wisdom in these word and some things I really appreciate, I am first going to point out that calling those life events "a little stressful" is obviously minimizing. The death of a loved one causes more than a little stress. I have a little stress when I am running late for a meeting. I am internally shattered at the loss of my baby. Still I was able to read between the lines and take away a couple of really helpful things from this post. One of them being the fact that you allow your mind to turn your pain, your grief and your loss into a state of perpetual agony. I told someone recently that I do not want sadness and grief to be what connects Mateo, I want love to be. Oh, the thought of being perpetually shattered. It is just that, a thought. Everything we are is thought.

Lately I have been struggling with anger. I once told someone I don't do anger. I don't allow myself to get angry. They told me, that just means " you do anger, you just don't do anger very well". While a rude thing to say, it was also very honest. I do not do anger very well. And as long as I keep saying that, and thinking that then that will always be true. I have been exploring different ways to work through that hurt. I have the things that always help, writing and talking it out with a friend. I am trying to tie in physical activity and maybe thinking through some new ways to get things out. A friend who is a dancer was telling me about the connection between therapy and dance, and how it is used as a medium for everything from physical health to mental health. I might not be ready to dance my heart out but I am open to creative and artistic ways of expressing my pain. I may not dance very well, but I gotta be better at that then I am at anger.

The second thing I really liked from this post was the reminder to not miss out on excitement, adventure, love and joy. I have a picture of myself with a good friend hanging on my bedroom mirror. In this picture I am being hugged tightly, my eyes are closed and I am laughing incredibly hard. I remember how I felt that day. I look at that picture every day and wonder if I will ever close my eyes and throw my head back and laugh like that again. Maybe not like that. I can't go back. But can I laugh with every cell in my body the way I grieve with every cell? I am so easily emotionally winded. I will be fine one moment and with just the slightest provocation I am set off to shut down. The slightest thing has me recoiling and wishing for shelter, for the comfort of my bed. The silence and solitude. Neutral ground. The trouble is that in the safe places there is no laughing so hard with my eyes closed that I can hardly stand it. 

The same blog post also had this quote:

 “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  ―Anaïs Nin 

"Your life will begin to improve when you define precisely what ‘improve’ means to you.  The agonies and frustrations will start to ease only when you have something real and positive to replace them with.  Be specific.  Happiness is not a goal, it’s the result of a life well lived.  The question is:  How do you want to live going forward?"

What does improve mean to me? I can't improve death. I cannot make the undead happen. What can I make happen? The line that really struck me was " the agonies and frustrations will ease only when you have something real and positive to replace them with" Now I had to sit this for a moment. My first thought was, I can't replace Mateo. But this isn't asking me to consider that. It is saying the agony and frustration around losing him will start to ease when I redirect myself in a real and positive way. Nothing I do can replace my little guy. Not even having more children. I am not trying to replace him. I am trying to replace the pain. He is mine forever. all the anger and frustration and pain from his loss, I don't want to hold on to them as tightly as I hold on to him. They aren't a packaged deal. So, what positive, real, and specific things am I redirecting my life towards? For one, personal growth. I am being proactive in my grief. Doing as the Buddha advised and instead of hiding from it, I am walking right into it. I am also exploring new ways of growing. Meditating. Sharing my pain with others- this is a hard one for me. Allowing the people closest to me so see me as vulnerable and letting them care for me. This is why I am doing this walk on the 27th for the March of Dimes with friends instead of alone. Really working on those relationships new and old so that I can be sustained through my pain and be there for others in theirs. I am also challenging myself to try new things. Really random things. Calligraphy class. A summer kickball league. I am not looking to just fill my time for the sake of it, or as a way to never be alone with my thoughts. I am challenging myself to come out of my comfort zone in such a way that I can't help but grow. I am taking things I find challenging, or have always said I am not good at, or I could never do that, and saying I might as well as try. I might as well try and grow, try to figure out how I want to live going forward? I know what I don't want, but I'll never know what I do until I attempt to live a life after child loss.

"This moment – right now – is your life.  Say yes to it.  Don’t ignore it by pretending that you’re living in some other time and place.  You aren’t – doing so is impossible.  The only life you can live is the only life there is – the moment you are in right now.  Ignoring this fact is reckless.  Ignoring it is denying reality, and denying reality is rejecting the entire process of living."