WARNING! Today I feel . . .

Every now and then I read something that inspires me - something that speaks my truth through the words of another person . . . another mother. I read a blog of a woman who lost her son at six weeks. She doesn't know me and I don't know her - but she inspires me to be honest and truthful to myself and my feelings. Her words are raw and simple. The truth of that bare emotion strikes so close to my heart that I feel as if we have been thinking the same thing from the minute our baby boys were born.

Here is an excerpt from one of her recent posts . . .

Before all this, I’d shrink away from trauma like cooties. Oh isn’t that terrible and get me outta here was pretty much my instinctual response to anyone pinned to the concrete under an anvil. Not that I didn’t care, or wouldn’t listen, or wasn’t moved. I was simply clueless and oblivious, and preferred to stay that way.

To a point, we all saunter through life like doo de doo and lah di dah until an explosion blows the blinders off our eyes and we realize that all along, we’ve been sauntering along the edge of a precipice.

Then, we can hardly move one foot in front of the other. We whimper with backs pressed against the wall, the one misstep that will send us to our doom playing over and over again in our heads. From time to time the pathway narrows so that our toes hang off the edge, and we are paralyzed.

For some of us, that explosion is the slipping of an embryo, the loss not of a formed being but the potential of one. We can now see the precipice and we tremble and wail for intervention, for our blinders.

For others, that explosion is the NICU. Or the death of a six-week-old son or two-year-old daughter or fourteen-year-old son or thirty-five year-old wife, or any other number of unfair events that give us sudden vertigo.

Despair comes in two flavours, did you know? There’s the ever-popular Rage, the anger that makes you want to rip the heads off anyone and everyone you meet. Then there’s Self-Pity, the woe-is-me that’s even more crippling than the rage.

Standing there peering through the window of someone else’s trauma, you whine friggin’ lightweight. This person thinks they’ve got it bad, but THEY DON’T KNOW BAD. They haven’t had a baby die.

But here’s what you don’t know. Someone else is peering through your window, whining friggin’ lightweight. This person thinks they’ve got it bad, but THEY DON’T KNOW BAD. They haven’t - insert imperssively horrific event here-.

The thing I love about her honesty in this post is that she openly admits we all have difficult burdens to carry. And we can't compare them. I recognized that every single person will feel disappointment, sadness, loneliness and grief at one point or another in their life. I hope that I will be able to "mourn with those that mourn" more effectively now. . . Gavin has changed so much about me. Knowledge of eternity brings more comfort that I think I am able to comprehend - but living on earth without him is excruciating. I am grateful for my blessings. I am grateful for my eternal family. However, a mother and father still suffer when their 94 day old son dies. I know this is part of the plan, but it hurts and I know that others hurt too because of one reason or another. I read a quote the other day that said, "If life hurts, then you are growing." I don't think it means we have to be in agony all of the time - I do think that we are intended to have joy, but agony is an earthly emotion that we have to know. Every single person will feel grief for on reason or another - and then they will grow. I know I never was promised a perfect life, but I was promised that my trials would be met with blessings. I do believe there will be an end to sorrow and there will be a time where we will all feel nothing but peace and joy.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that this is my truth for the day. Brutally honest as it may be . . . it's the way I feel today.