Meh

It's raining
I'm cold
I'm exhausted

Nothing profound to share
Just another shitty day

Mother Woman

We all imagine our lives contain chapters or phases. We generally move through them without much thought or notice. I guess we take that for granted but when you are forced into a new chapter or phase in your life you're left wondering how to cope.
How to keep turning the pages. How to learn who you are all over again.
I spent a good seven or eight years discovering who I am as a woman and also as a mother. Only in the last two did I fully develop this new sense of womanhood.
I embraced it and really found depths of myself I only ever dreamed of, or saw in other women.

I wanted to be that warrior, that goddess, that nurturing mother. I finally found her and suddenly I feel like I've been swallowed up by the enormity of this new part of my life.
I've spent so many years in that role as life giver and mother, now that chapter has ended.

I never imagined I'd be walking this path, living this chapter so soon.
I thought I'd be that crone.
The wise woman, an older woman.
Not me. Not now.

Who am I? Or more importantly what to do with me now?
I guess it's just adjusting to the reality of my life.

Who ever thinks they'd wake up without a uterus one day? Seriously. It's not something you think about on a day to day basis is it?

Perhaps I let motherhood define who I am?

A dear friend said that she's a woman and parenting is something she does.
I find it hard to separate the two.
I have for so long felt like a mother and rarely saw the woman in me.
I'm faced with the reality that bringing life into this world is a memory now.
Past not future.
So how to get that woman back?
How to look inside me and remember the woman warrior goddess?
I felt like I found that woman within me by becoming a mother and birthing.
Can they really be separated?
Womanhood and motherhood.

Roads

I find it interesting when I speak to people they ask if I've had counselling, as if that's some kind of helpful statement. I guess some people just don't know what to say or feel that the death of a baby requires treatment. Yes it's traumatic and incomprehensible but it's a part of the great cycle. Like the GP who on more than one occasion tried to tell me I needed sedatives and anti depressants in order to get my life in order and feel better.

I guess you can only whole heartedly accept that death and more specifically the death of your child is a plain truth, a part of our cycle when you are slapped square in the face with it.

In short I just cannot sit in a chair and be counselled through this grief. Some can, not me. Perhaps blogging is my therapy?

I'm rational and I'm functioning. Not so well ALL the time but hey that's fine by me.

I simply living one day at a time. Sometimes it's hour by hour.

Admittedly I'm sitting in a foreign place sometimes just holding on to my grief. In some kind of other world. A world that belongs only to me, yet knowing there are others.

Those experiencing grief or loss or trauma or a combination of all of those walk their own path. You can read all the 'right' books and do all the 'right' things but ultimately we walk this path alone and eventually we walk to somewhere in the future and we've miraculously survived.

I've read many a story of loss. It's like my drug of choice. You find a sad kind of comfort in reading about other people who know what you've been through. Not that you'd wish it upon anyone, you find a place of peace knowing your not the only one. It's tragic. I've shed many a tear not only for my daughter but for all the children who've returned to the great mother.

For the parents who've got empty arms and broken hearts.

So back to walking this road. One thing I've learnt from sharing my experience is that you do survive. It doesn't always look so bright, I can say that honestly because some days ARE bleak and you can't hold back the buckets of tears. You don't ever forget, you may move forward but you don't forget. I imagine I'll still be shedding tears for my daughter in 20 or more years.

A common thread in the web of loss is that one day something within you will shift. It might be a series of little shifts or a big massive one. You wake up and it's not so hard to breathe. You see joy. You feel the presence of love. It can be overwhelming. It took me a long time to realise that's what was happening.

I feel my daughter all around me or perhaps it's the enormity of my love for her radiating from within me? Or both?

You haven't forgotten.

You never forget.

It's all we've got.

Memories.

Gee you look good.

I find it amusing when people tell me I look good after they hear what I've been through in the last few months, as if that's some kind of compensation?

I tell you what I wouldn't give to be told "gee you look like shit."
What I wouldn't give to be still in my pyjamas at three in the afternoon.
Pyjamas that are covered in baby vomit.
What I wouldn't give to wake to my baby during the night.
To hear her cry
To carry her in a sling
Feed her
Dress her
Hold her in my arms...

But I look well? What's that supposed to really mean?

Slap In The Face

For a fleeting moment surrounded in madness I felt that urge, that pang, that "Oh how I'd love to have a baby." The maternal rush.

I know it's impossible so I dismissed it, squashed it as deep as it would go, covered it in darkness. We all know these kinds of things feed and grow in darkness. Like a fungus.

 Somehow it felt better to push it away, out into oblivion. Far far away. 

I too realise that I cannot deny these feelings. They exist and I need to acknowledge them. It's easier to write about it than to actually voice them. That way they're not as physically real. You say them and someone might hear you...

I'm always going to have these feelings, I always have. Albeit it's the first time I've felt this way since Yuna's birth and death. I never thought I'd feel this way again. I realise I've got a very long life to live with these feelings, those pangs in the heart, in the pit of your stomach, in your aching empty breasts and the constant slap in the face reminder that, that's all they'll be. Feelings. Dreams. Wants.

Never a reality. My days as child bearer are over and it kills me. A huge part of me is gone, my life, my purpose, my existence.

How do you heal from that too? Am I supposed to be learning something from all this? It all just feels like a cruel joke.

Haven't I been challenged enough?

Ebb and Flow

Full Moon Saturday 9th May 2009

The weather is cold and miserable and I feel about the same. My emotions feel so out of control and extreme today. It is a full moon. I guess it's to be expected. I'm just having so many feelings rushing through me, I feel like I'm going to burst.

I'm not big on the whole Mother's Day consumer rubbish but for some reason I'm feeling a little flat that this year I should have been celebrating our first mothers day with Yuna. I should have been woken up far too early, bleary eyed and looked down to see our chubby 7 month old girl staring back at me. Instead I'm left looking at her photos and a jar full of ashes dreaming about what might have been. That is not how I thought I'd ever have to spend a mothers day, any day for that matter.

I just haven't been able to stem the flow of tears today. Everything hurts far too much. I'm so tired of this ride. I want it to stop, just for a moment.

I'm supposed to be organising a family trip to Sydney in October but I jut keep putting it off, as if it wont ever be October. I am terrified. 

It's been day to day for so long and you almost don't realise that time is passing and passing far too quickly. Well you do realise, it's always present somewhere in your mind. 

I just never imagined that I'd be anticipating the twelve months since my daughters birth and death. Not one whole year, look how big she's grown. I know it's only been seven months but the thought of October looming makes me want to vomit. I guess the anticipation is far worse than the day itself? 

I just wonder sometimes how I keep going. I guess the same way I managed every other day. How I managed to survive even though I willed myself to die after she was born and yet here I am. You just do. You wake up every morning and the nightmare still exists. You feel the fire constantly breathing down your neck. The darkness always one step away. The claws scratching at your soul.

I've come to realise now there are so many women and men that know the pain of losing a child yet despite this knowledge and access to this sometimes secret society I'm left speechless and shocked by it, time and time again.

I watched a montage of a couple's baby daughter who was stillborn and through the tears all I could think was that no one should ever have to place their baby into a coffin. No one should ever have to feel that pain. Yet many of us do. Those are the images that rip me open to the core. Twist my insides and shatter my heart into a million pieces. I never knew you could physically feel your heart break, yet I'm left feeling rattled at the numerous times I've felt it over the past few months. It never feels any less painful. 

That blow is never any easier to take.

Keys of Use

On some days I'd like to

Select All
Cut
Delete
Erase
Shift
Esc
Pause/Break
End
Ctrl

If only those keyboard keys applied to my life...

Loving and Living and Marshmallows Too

In the spirit of this blog 'from loss to living'. I'm taking it one step at a time. I'm learning that life does go on. That I need to enjoy it while I've got it. 

Yeah there are days when I'm not feeling like that but that's okay too. 

My major lesson from my daughters birth and death is that I need to love to live and ultimately live to love ;) Got that? Sound simple? Not all the time.

It's about finding balance too. You cannot surround yourself with grief and expect to feel anything but that. I'm not saying we cant, wont or don't grieve. I'm saying there is a time for other things too. We need to cry and be angry but we also need to see beauty and nature and love. We need these things. I'm reaching a point where I feel that my daughter came to teach me something. She didn't come to teach me pain and anger and saddness. This is the human reaction to loss and to the physical/material world. She's physically gone and I'm grieving that,  but in reality, she's still very much surrounding me. Filling my heart.

Perhaps I'm having a better day than usual?

So back to the point about finding that balance in life. 

Finding those ways to love and live. 

What do you do? 

You bundle the family into the car, buy a tent along the way and you sleep in the bush. 

Watch in awe as your children marvel in the bugs and the dirt. 

You do something you would have only attempted to do as a child, you let go. 

You feel the wind in your face. 

You squeal in excitement along with your children.

You watch the sunset and watch it rise again on a new day

Oh and you eat far too many marshmallows toasted in the campfire...

Wild Tree

If I could capture in just one image all my thoughts and emotions for the moment, this would be it. Something drew me to this tree. It almost felt like she was calling my name. Whispering it in the wind. I made Brendan stop the car on the side of the road so I could take her picture.

I see me in this image. It expresses me. 

There is darkness surrounding her, yet there is light.

The storm clouds lingering, 

ready to pour down on the earth. 

This lonesome tree in the middle of a field. 

She is complicated and delicate. 

Her branches are twisted and bare. 

Yet she stands strong,

Her roots planted firmly in the soil.

Those roots so intricately entwined around the deep heart of the earth.

She continues to grow despite her harsh conditions. 

Standing the test of time.

She continues to survive.

There is more to her than I see.

Her wild branches reach for the skies, 

Searching, 

Searching for something.

I read about a farmer who saw great trees sprout where young calves were born still.

Perhaps I share in the pain of loss with this great tree?

Honouring what once was.

It is nature

It is life 

It is death

It is life...

Worn out

I've been so busy I've hardly had time to think. I don't know if I like that feeling. I think I have become accustomed to moving at the pace of a snail. Blending into the background. I don't enjoy busy life. I thought I used to but it seems such a waste.

I'm trying to make parenting decisions and I feel like I'm failing miserably. I'm trying to do the very best, perhaps trying to hard? I want my children to be nurtured and cared for, why is that so hard to understand for some people. Our daughter is a huge part of our lives, after all she is one of the family despite not actually being living. I don't know how to integrate this concept into my life. Or more importantly how does my son integrate that into his life without it being a major problem for him.

So far I've let my son grieve in any way he needed to. I've tried to nurture him and surround him with love whilst he's dealing with his sisters death but now we've reached a point where I don't know what to do next. I miss my happy carefree and spirited boy. He's so sad and depressed. It breaks my heart to see his spark lost.
I know I can't fix this. I wish I could. I wish I could take away that pain he's carrying.

Just venting my thoughts...