Beating Back the Dark

Reading through my drafts folder, I found this post I'd never published.

I wanted to share this now for everyone who is grieving.

This was a hard place for me to be.  Life without Sweet Baby is still hard, but visits have become a once or twice a month regular part of our lives now.  We take her and her younger bio sister for the weekend and give her dad a break.  It is time we treasure, but sometimes it is still hard.  When she calls me "Mommy", when she says she doesn't want to go home, those are hard moments.

But, overall, I feel so incredibly blessed to have been her mother even for the short time I had.  Read more thoughts on how truly worth the heartache she was here.

For all those walking in the darkness, seek support, seek help, seek joy.  Finding little bits of joy helped bring me back to life.  Working on my hormone imbalance with a doctor made an immeasurable difference in my recovery.  However you find your way back, seek the joy and know you have my prayers. 

And now, the unedited pain of April 2014:

I haven't talked about Sweet Baby lately.  Because it's hard and it hurts.  Her bio-family is at liberty to choose whatever level of communication/contact they care to maintain.  I have no great certainty that I'll ever see her again.  But I've been in this spot before and seen her again, so I know there's no way to calibrate my expectations.  I will see her or I won't.  I have no control.  I hate this space.

Just when I think I've grown as much as I possibly could be expected to, I look up to realize I haven't come so far internally.  I have to practice something painfully difficult - detachment.  I have to detach from the desires of what I wanted for her life and ours and give that offering to God.  I have to trust that there is plan and purpose here. 

About two weeks ago, I was having a moment where everything seemed too much.  I was still suffering so much over the loss of our child that I was frozen in place.  I cycled through grief, anger, and depression.  I could feel no lessening of that great burden.  I woke up everyday knowing a member of my family was out in the world wondering why I'd left her with someone else......trust me when I say that'll pull the plug on any productivity you might have thought you had.

My everyday joy has been in a quagmire of grief.  Two weeks ago, I found the grace to make a change.

I'd known for about six weeks that I was in a place I couldn't stay.  I had to stop recoiling from life at every turn.  I had to stop retreating beyond the reaches of my daily life.

I had to stop the sad.  The deep, aching, unable-to-get-anything-accomplished sadness.  Since we are trying to conceive, I didn't want to go the route of anti-depressants.  Had I felt they were necessary at any time, we would've delayed conceiving to get me back to me, but I still had enough clarity to know that I was depressed.  Maybe a functional depressed person, but I knew the joy was gone.

I've been trying to get back out of the dark place basically since I got there after Christmas.  I've been focused on working out or maintaining the house, but I wasn't finding joy.

Two weeks ago, inspiration struck.  I am sad at the loss of my child.  I need to focus on reveling in my children.  Not just making it through the day with them, but looking for ways to bring them joy.

So, we signed up for Mommy & Me gymnastics for SP and me and Tumbling for LB.  It's been a little thing, but it seems to be the start of a ball rolling.  Spring is begrudgingly making itself known in these parts and the sun is shining again.

I won't be my old self when I'm finally back to full speed.  I'll always be someone different than I was before SB.  But maybe, little thing by little thing, I'll work my way back to happy.

A baby in a leotard and leggings is a sure fire pick-me-up :)