Coming and Going

I wasn't going to write here anymore.
I made the crazy decision one morning while brushing my hair and pondered it some more while making breakfast for myself and drinking coffee and while i did the grocery shopping and as the silence wrapped it's way around my evening.
I wasn't going to write here anymore.
I made the decision that I was going to let go. I was going to be super woman, I was going to never speak the name of my daughter again.
I was a little delusional and crazy that day. it was also the day I wanted to get her ashes out of my house so much that I set her little jar of ashes on my back porch.
They are now back inside my house, by the way, back on my bookshelf.
I just wanted to get rid of her. I know that sounds cruel but I can't think of a better way to put it. I wanted to do some spring cleaning in my heart even though it's the end of November and I wanted to brush out all the cobwebs that have been there since she died and I wanted to think of her death not so much as her death.
I wanted to not be haunted by memories of my dead daughter.

As I'm sitting here now a lot has changed. Obviously, because I swore I wasn't going to write here anymore and I wasn't going to talk to any other baby loss mama's and I wasn't going to surround myself with stifling sadness.
I feel better. I spent time talking to friends who love me and praying and journaling and I did crazy, spontaneous things like going to the zoo when it was so cold I could see my breath and my cheeks turned pink, or dying my hair back to blonde - which was the color it was when Mia died - and making the effort to reconnect with old friends.

A lot has changed, and now I feel my heart whispering to me, "You can never let her go."
She's there when I look in the mirror every morning and she's there everytime I take a painful breath. Even when I didn't want to acknowledge her or my loss, she was there.

I don't know what this means for me or my little blog.
I'm not who I thought I was. She's not who I thought she was either.

this whole come back was actually inspired by Angie's post I don't know if that's what she meant for someone to get out of reading her post, but that's what i got.
thank you, Angie.

Transition

I saw this show a while ago, in the spring, when I just found out I was pregnant, when I was blissfully happy and complete.
One of the quotes I remember went something like "When my brother and I were younger, my dad used to take us out sailing. Sometimes we weren't moving, but we were always sailing."
I loved that quote, even then, full of happiness and wide eyed wonder, naivety and hope.

And then the baby I was carrying got sick, and then she died, and then I was left to wander through this life on my own.
For the past 2 months, and sometimes even now, I can't eat. I can't sleep, or think, or breathe. How is it possible to miss someone you never knew?

I was stuck. I remember waking up a few weeks ago (Weeks? Days?) and thinking, "Wow, it's November," not remembering the last half of September or any of October.
I was stuck. My wheels were spinning and mud was flying up and covering my hair and my clothes, covering my skin until I looked like brown sludge. I wasn't making any progress, just a mess.

I doubted my experience, as a mother, as her mother, as a woman. I doubted that what I had experienced was enough. After all, I never knew her, how could I be her mother? After all, i created her, she was created in a time of desperation and need, does that still make her real? Does that still make me her mother? I wondered about the mother's who watch as their children cling to life in the NICU, wondering if somehow seeing their children  makes them more of a mother.

Over the last week or so, I've began to feel my vehicle moving out from under the mud, the roar of the tires as they groan and ache, trying to release me from this pit of mud.

Sometimes I wonder if I want to move on. Sometimes I wonder if I really am. I haven't gone back to the places where my friends gather, and talk and laugh about things other then hospitals and dead babies.
But my friend told me today about her new boyfriend, and I listened and for once I didn't want to scream at her.
I feel like I'm moving on, and to be honest, that scares me to death.
I don't want to move on. What if moving on means forgetting? What if, in moving on, I take away some of the value of Amelia's life?
What if, in trusting my experiences, accepting that what happened happened, what if it means loosening my hold on her just a little? What if I lose her again? I already lost her once, I can't lost her memory. It's all I have left. Sometimes I'm not so sure i even have that.

I feel like I'm putting more trust in myself, in what happened. This is my truth, therefore it is enough. I'm worried that doing this will mean I'm letting go of her.

I'm slowly getting unstuck, or at least I feel that way. I feel change happening, on the inside, though it hasn't managed to peak it's shining face through to the outside yet.

I still miss her with everything I am. I still write about her everywhere, because I can't stop. I can't stop thinking about her.
But I'm picking myself up off the floor. I'm no longer weeping at every little thing, no longer screaming at people who don't understand, or who try to talk about something other then her.
My grief is in transition, I am in transition, and it's scary because I feel like, sometimes, transition means loosening my grip on her.

I'm getting unstuck. While I was still sailing, even when I was stuck, I am now starting to inch forward. I feel like gripping the rails of this boat, like even the slightest movement will make everything I've built up regarding her and her memory come crashing down.

I am in transition. I don't know how to be in transition, just like I didn't know how to be in grief.

How do you be in transition?

28 weeks

I failed her, you know.
That's what my mind keeps saying, whispering over and over as I lay here in the dark, alone.
I failed her.
I failed to keep her inside of me, safe and alive.
Instead she was born at 28 weeks, so tiny, so small.
I failed to give her the things she needed to survive, so that when she was born they could take her into surgery and fix her.
Instead she was born with a broken heart, dead.
This is where I fail. This is where I am not enough.

She was tiny, so tiny. She was 28 weeks, but she was perfect. She was perfect, aside from the fact her heart was broken and she was dead.

I failed her. I feel like I failed her. I feel like this is where i wasn't enough. I was sick, I wanted the pregnancy to be over.

I thought she would get better. I thought she would be born alive, that the doctors would fix her, that we would get our miracle.

She was born at 28 weeks, so tiny. Her heart was broken.
It was because of me she died. She is dead because of my body. It is because of me she got sick, because of me she died.

I can't stop thinking about that tonight. it feels like it's on repeat in my brain, like a broken record. I've tried writing this post over and over again, and every time I write it it doesn't come out like i want it to. It's not poetic, maybe not even coherent.
What about grief is poetic?

I feel like it's my fault, even though so many people have told me it isn't. I don't know if I fully believe them. It is because of me she died.
Ah, but it is also because of me she lived, lived for those 28 magical weeks.


I'm not sure what I wanted to get out of writing this post. I don't want to be told this isn't my fault, that i did everything I could. maybe I want companionship? someone to come along side me and say that, as a mother, it is the worst feeling to feel like you failed your child.

I feel like I failed her.
But in the dark, if I listen hard enough, I can hear her whisper, "But mama, I'm ok."