Today, I'm pretty excited to share something with you. I have been working on adding a page to the blog for the past few weeks. Mostly, it's been just a jumbled mess in my head, but I finally got around to organizing it onto the computer.
Check out the "How to Journal through Grief" tab at the top of the page. Let me know what you think.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Saturday Mornings
I remember Saturday mornings. So used to getting up for school at 6, I'd wake up at 8 feeling like I'd slept in. Mike would still be unconscious next to me - often times also snoring. The cat and the dog would have put aside their mutual distain for each other to curl up together on the floor. And it would just be the two of us. Mother - daughter time in the soft light of the morning.
I'd prop myself up onto the seven million pillows I had acquired during my pregnancy and look down at the blossoming roundness of my belly. My little ninja moved all the time. All. The. Time. But, Saturday mornings were the times I could really stop and appreciate it. The times I could push pause on the rest of my life and focus on just one thing. How wonderful it was to have her there, twisting and swirling in her own private jacuzzi.
I'd push my hands around on my belly, searching for my little girl. Pop! She'd push back. "Hey, Mom! Good morning!". She'd flutter around, wiggling, stretching, kicking. At the beginning, it felt like popcorn popping. Like my belly was a hot pot on the stove and tiny kernels shot around inside, exploding into softness. As time went on, her movements developed into different kinds. I could feel her somersault from one side to the other as she tried to get comfortable. It was a strange shifting of heaviness. The solidness on one side of my belly suddenly became soft as she moved over to the other. Sometimes, as she got bigger, she'd slide a knee or an elbow alongside me - and my stomach would ripple on the outside - like a whale surfacing with its fin in the air and then sliding back into the ocean. Other times, she'd punch or kick in a quick, sharp motion. One spot on my stomach would jut out for just a second and then snap right back.
She moved like this often, but these mornings were my time to pay attention to them. I loved these mornings. I remember looking forward to them all week. Just one more day of work and then it's just you and me, kid! For an hour or two until Mike woke up, I would just lay there and smile as she danced around for her Mama. I was so in love with her, it's not even funny. I would imagine what she looked like - how beautiful she would be. I imagined how her chubby legs and outstretched arms would look in a few months when I changed her diapers. I imagined her laugh, her cry, her babbling. I dreamed of the future as my future bounced around inside of me. Those were great mornings.
I could lament right now about how I want those mornings back. I could tell you, truthfully, how there are tears streaming down my cheeks as I write this. But, I do not want to taint those golden days with sadness. Those days are mine and Kenley's. Those days were the days I spent with my baby, and they were the best days. They always will be.
I'd prop myself up onto the seven million pillows I had acquired during my pregnancy and look down at the blossoming roundness of my belly. My little ninja moved all the time. All. The. Time. But, Saturday mornings were the times I could really stop and appreciate it. The times I could push pause on the rest of my life and focus on just one thing. How wonderful it was to have her there, twisting and swirling in her own private jacuzzi.
I'd push my hands around on my belly, searching for my little girl. Pop! She'd push back. "Hey, Mom! Good morning!". She'd flutter around, wiggling, stretching, kicking. At the beginning, it felt like popcorn popping. Like my belly was a hot pot on the stove and tiny kernels shot around inside, exploding into softness. As time went on, her movements developed into different kinds. I could feel her somersault from one side to the other as she tried to get comfortable. It was a strange shifting of heaviness. The solidness on one side of my belly suddenly became soft as she moved over to the other. Sometimes, as she got bigger, she'd slide a knee or an elbow alongside me - and my stomach would ripple on the outside - like a whale surfacing with its fin in the air and then sliding back into the ocean. Other times, she'd punch or kick in a quick, sharp motion. One spot on my stomach would jut out for just a second and then snap right back.
She moved like this often, but these mornings were my time to pay attention to them. I loved these mornings. I remember looking forward to them all week. Just one more day of work and then it's just you and me, kid! For an hour or two until Mike woke up, I would just lay there and smile as she danced around for her Mama. I was so in love with her, it's not even funny. I would imagine what she looked like - how beautiful she would be. I imagined how her chubby legs and outstretched arms would look in a few months when I changed her diapers. I imagined her laugh, her cry, her babbling. I dreamed of the future as my future bounced around inside of me. Those were great mornings.
I could lament right now about how I want those mornings back. I could tell you, truthfully, how there are tears streaming down my cheeks as I write this. But, I do not want to taint those golden days with sadness. Those days are mine and Kenley's. Those days were the days I spent with my baby, and they were the best days. They always will be.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Shifting
My grief is changing. I can feel it. It's shifting and transforming. It's settling in.
At the beginning, everything is so raw and open. Sorrow and rage and shock join forces in the dark and rush at you full force. Grief stabs you repeatedly in the heart with the sharpest knives imaginable. Blood pours, thick and metallic, from your wounds. It bubbles up and out, choking your screams back into your throat. The beginning is flashes of pain, thunderous screams, and gnashing teeth. You lay on the floor, weak and beaten, helpless to do anything about the fact that all the light and goodness that once filled your soul is seeping out onto the cold tile. You wait to die. You are pretty sure that you will. After all, what else could you really expect? You have just been torn open like a gutted fish. But, you don't.
As you lay there, bloody and broken, expecting the darkness to just take you away, you realize it's not going to. You don't get to escape. This is the first shift of grief. The shift from painful chaos to sorrowed silence. In this stage, you don't really do much of anything. You've been ravaged by wolves and you're really too weak to even move. So, you lie there. Drained. Empty. Full of nothing but an echo of what once was but is no longer. You wonder how you will ever get the strength to move, let alone stand. Eventually, you do. You wiggle your fingers and your toes. You bend your knees and your elbows. Slowly, slowly, slowly, you manage to pull yourself upright. You are still a bloody mess, bits of you still raw and hanging.
This is the third shift of grief. This is the part where you attempt to put yourself back together. All of the pieces ripped away and torn apart - you gather them up and you try to shove them back where they belong. Only, they don't really fit. Some been stretched out and ripped to shreds. Other parts of you are lost forever, and you will never have them back. So, you do the best you can with what you have left to make yourself resemble a human again. This stage is never really, truly done. Throughout the rest of your life, you will always have to rearrange your pieces. Tuck things in, pull things out, move things over. Nothing fits right, but it's what you've got.
Then comes the settling in. Once you've figured out the basic mechanics of keeping yourself in place, you have one more thing to do. You have to make room for your grief. You can't leave that behind. It's a part of you now. It's a hard, lumpy boulder that you must fit into yourself somewhere. You nestle it in among your soft insides, the weight of it crushing the air from your lungs. It's heavy and cumbersome. It makes you hunch over with effort. Maybe one day, your muscles will gain enough strength to straighten up, but not yet. For now, you are Quasimodo (which in Latin means almost, merely), misshapen and malformed. You limp through your life, weary and burdened.
This is where I am now. Carrying my grief inside like a rock. Hard and unyielding - and as much a part of me as Kenley ever was. It's exhausting. Day in. Day out. Heaving this load around inside me. I can't set it down. I can't let it go. I don't know what else to do except live with it. So, that's what I do. What I will continue to do until it shifts again.
At the beginning, everything is so raw and open. Sorrow and rage and shock join forces in the dark and rush at you full force. Grief stabs you repeatedly in the heart with the sharpest knives imaginable. Blood pours, thick and metallic, from your wounds. It bubbles up and out, choking your screams back into your throat. The beginning is flashes of pain, thunderous screams, and gnashing teeth. You lay on the floor, weak and beaten, helpless to do anything about the fact that all the light and goodness that once filled your soul is seeping out onto the cold tile. You wait to die. You are pretty sure that you will. After all, what else could you really expect? You have just been torn open like a gutted fish. But, you don't.
As you lay there, bloody and broken, expecting the darkness to just take you away, you realize it's not going to. You don't get to escape. This is the first shift of grief. The shift from painful chaos to sorrowed silence. In this stage, you don't really do much of anything. You've been ravaged by wolves and you're really too weak to even move. So, you lie there. Drained. Empty. Full of nothing but an echo of what once was but is no longer. You wonder how you will ever get the strength to move, let alone stand. Eventually, you do. You wiggle your fingers and your toes. You bend your knees and your elbows. Slowly, slowly, slowly, you manage to pull yourself upright. You are still a bloody mess, bits of you still raw and hanging.
This is the third shift of grief. This is the part where you attempt to put yourself back together. All of the pieces ripped away and torn apart - you gather them up and you try to shove them back where they belong. Only, they don't really fit. Some been stretched out and ripped to shreds. Other parts of you are lost forever, and you will never have them back. So, you do the best you can with what you have left to make yourself resemble a human again. This stage is never really, truly done. Throughout the rest of your life, you will always have to rearrange your pieces. Tuck things in, pull things out, move things over. Nothing fits right, but it's what you've got.
Then comes the settling in. Once you've figured out the basic mechanics of keeping yourself in place, you have one more thing to do. You have to make room for your grief. You can't leave that behind. It's a part of you now. It's a hard, lumpy boulder that you must fit into yourself somewhere. You nestle it in among your soft insides, the weight of it crushing the air from your lungs. It's heavy and cumbersome. It makes you hunch over with effort. Maybe one day, your muscles will gain enough strength to straighten up, but not yet. For now, you are Quasimodo (which in Latin means almost, merely), misshapen and malformed. You limp through your life, weary and burdened.
This is where I am now. Carrying my grief inside like a rock. Hard and unyielding - and as much a part of me as Kenley ever was. It's exhausting. Day in. Day out. Heaving this load around inside me. I can't set it down. I can't let it go. I don't know what else to do except live with it. So, that's what I do. What I will continue to do until it shifts again.
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