I had planned to come here and ramble incoherently about spirituality and astral planes and my deep profound understanding of my life without my daughter.

Instead I'd just like to complain. I'm sure that will be more interesting, wont it?

To say I'm tired and I'd really really appreciate it if i could get some decent sleep.

I'd like to say I don't like babies.

They are in my face today and I don't like it.

Makes it hard when you need to make post natal visits with mothers and their squishy screaming newborns. Even harder to listen intently as they cry and complain about not getting enough sleep and how sick of feeding they are. To be sympathetic to their worries and complaints.

Pregnancy and birth. I'm freakin' excellent at supporting. When it comes to the real live baby at the end, well I really suck. I really do. I just can't be around babies and this is a new feeling.

It makes me feel so uncomfortable and I'm not exactly sure what it is.

More to ponder and analyze. Brilliant. Just what my already over active brain needs.

Perhaps I should go and do some hard core boxing on the Wii. That should help. Or maybe chocolate cake?

Today

Today.

Today I am happy.

I feel the light in my voice.

I'm enjoying my blueberry polenta breakfast.

It's got maple syrup in it. That would make anyone smile!

I'm enjoying a coffee while listening to Florence+The Machine.

It's cold and I have a headache but meh coffee shall be my cure today.

Today is just today and I am okay.

What is your day today?

Shifting

I've really spent the last few weeks healing, listening and looking after myself. If I've learnt anything at all over the past two years it's to look after myself. To go within and to listen to the messages I'm receiving.

I really feel a shift of energy. It's quite difficult to put into words but I guess the mantra playing over in me is about letting go, moving forward and really gaining an understanding of what happened to me, my family and more importantly my daughter.

"To hold her forever in my heart, to have her with me and remember her out of love. Not out guilt, sadness or grief."

That sums it up really well. This came to me during a session of healing/ energy work. It seems so simple yet so profound in my ability to shift the stuck feeling. I really feel like I'm making progress.

I had a conversation with a very dear friend and we acknowledged that yes this will always be unfair and sometimes won't always make sense but it's what you do with it that really counts. You're entitled to those days when everything is black, when you really don't want to get out of bed and when you see a baby and your heart aches for what you lost. That's okay.

I am not defined by my grief. I am privileged enough to have had this experience and I've been taught some really valuable lessons about life, death and human emotion. Both positive and negative.

I am ready to process this. I am ready to listen. I am open to understanding.

Floating

I am floating
without boundaries
making sense of it all
letting go
adjusting
figuring it out
wishing
hoping

I can't put my finger on what I'm feeling right now.
A little bit sad, a little bit lost and a little bit numb...

I do know I'm just floating through it. Letting whatever it is take it's course.
I wish I understood more or perhaps had more of a faith to place it on. To blame. To understand.
Thus the lack of boundaries with all of this.

If anything grief is about winging it. You just do it however it comes. I've never been to a support group, really haven't had intense therapy. I just process piece by piece. Maybe that's the problem?

I'm not angry so much. My daughter died. It's a fact. There's no point being angry at myself or anyone else. It just is. It hurts like hell but it's fact too.

A great portion of this journey has been me figuring out who I am. Wow that sounds so cliché! But truly. I am such a different person, well I WAS such a different person when I was pregnant and preparing for Yuna's birth. Or maybe it's all in my head and I still AM that person?

It really was transformation and now I'm not sure where or who I am. What that transformation was, if it's relevant to me now or what I've learnt from it.
Or more to the point what I want. What I need from all this.
I can't just keep being that woman who had a baby and that baby died. Now that said woman is, well she's just sad.

What do you want?

I want to move far away

I want a fresh start

I want to pick up the pieces of my life

I want to remember

I want to forget

I want to love

I want to smile

I want to do something meaningful

I want to be loved

I want to be someone

I want passion

I want to focus

I want to run

I want to hide

I want to tell my story

I want no one to know me or my story

I don't want to hurt

I want to know who I am

I want to know why

Today I've had a shit day.

Today I feel like I'm lost.

Spiraling backward into the abyss that is grief.

The black hole of nothingness.

I just want to move on and pick up the pieces of my life.

To forget this sadness.

To just be me. I don't know who I am though. I feel like a miserable awful ugly person.

I just want to be happy and love life again.

Without you that is so very hard...

The Sound of White

The words of this Missy Higgins song keep playing over and over in my head.

Like a freeze-dried rose, you will never be
What you were, what you were to me in memory
But if I listen to the dark
You'll embrace me like a star
Envelope me, envelope me...

If things get real for me down here,
Promise to take me to before you went away
If only for a day...

But if I never feel again, at least that nothingness
Will end the painful dream, of you and me...

I only seem to feel the deep urge to write here when I'm feeling raw, broken and full of emotion. I guess that's when I reach a point where I can't keep it inside anymore.

There's something about this place that keeps me hiding in the shadows of grief.

Keeps it lurking inside me.

I feel trapped by it.

I need a fresh start.

Fresh air.

I completely understand that to move past grief you must process it but being here I'm stifled. I'm just swimming in it over and over again. I'm not connected to this place. Yuna's not here. She's somewhere but not here. I will always have her, my love. This place isn't it.

You know it's the place that hurts you and causes you repeated pain when you want to vomit at the thought of the hospital.

When you can't go for a nice walk along the esplanade without feeling anxious because it's in your line of vision.

When you're at the local shopping centre and your partner grabs you and hugs you so tight in order to protect you from seeing the surgeon who had his hands inside you.

The person who stole so much of me.

Who broke me into pieces.

Who just so happened to be shopping too.

When you can't go back to work because everyone knows your story

When they don't trust you and don't want to involve themselves.

When you can't breathe.

When you can't start over or even go back to where you were.

Echoes

I'm sure it's the presence of the moon that sucks me into this deep dark vortex. I just can't seem to cope with anything. Everything is hard, breathing is hard.

I miss you. I miss us.

Perhaps it's the energy it takes to support another woman to birth her baby. It takes me so far back. Back to when life was beautiful. Back to when you existed.

I love it but it's just so painful too. Yet the good seems to outweigh the bad so far. So I forge on. I love and support. I nurture and cherish all while wondering where it all went wrong.

Another woman will be giving birth in the same pool I did. It's so bittersweet.

That's not where I wanted to go with this post though...

Actually I've no idea what I needed to get out.

I'm confused about relationships, about friends or complete lack thereof. Confused about decisions, about choices. About me.

Lots of flashbacks, nightmares and dark moods the past few weeks. I'm struggling to keep afloat I think.

Feeling a lot of guilt but at the same time just wanting to move so far forward it's impossible.

Denial? I skipped that one. I want to just forget. That sounds so selfish.

Something crafty...

I painted a little case with a leather handle today to put Yuna's blanket and a few pieces of her clothes she wore in. I have them sitting in the cupboard in a plastic bag. It's knotted so tightly closed just in case the smell disappears.

My head screams every time I see them. It seems wrong to just have them shoved in the cupboard. They need a place too. It's all I have left of hers that needs to be put somewhere.

After that there's nothing.

That last sentence echoes in my head all night.