May We All Heal: Part Six

May 18th: Luminous

To be honest, I am not really sure what to write for this one.  Luminous makes me think of hope shining through the darkness. It's just that hope is so complicated right now.  There is huge beautiful hope in that I will see my Mira again in Heaven, but honestly, that hope doesn't help me live here today, that hope makes me want to be in Heaven now.  There is a small shining hope that one day I will be a mother to a child I will get to raise here on Earth.  The small shining light is scary though, because having another child opens the possibility of losing another child.  What you need to understand is, when your first, and only, child has a fatal condition and dies, all you know of pregnancy and birth is death.  In my personal experience, pregnancy leads to pain (physical and emotional) and then death and grief.  So that hope of having a living child is present, but it struggles to shine through the darkness.  I do hope that one day it is luminous.  Though I have a feeling it won't happen unless/until I have a living, healthy child in my arms.

May 19th: Changes 

After infant loss everything changes.  Everything.  All your relationships change. Your perspective on work, children, illness, life, meaning, values, on just about everything changes.  Finances change.  Parts of your home change.  How you spend your time changes.  Your life changes. You change.  You learn that nothing is really a constant and everything will change. And that is scary, I once thought I had certain things in my life I could count on to be true no matter what.  I have learned the only thing that never changes is God.  Even in that though, my relationship and ways to relate with Him have changed.  So nothing is left untouched.  This is a big lesson I think we all learn slowly in life, but with a trauma like infant loss, you have to face it overnight.  

May 20th: Emerging 

Emerging back into life after loss is scary.  There is so much that can go wrong.  And the further back into life you venture, the easier it is to get hurt and the harder you can fall.  I had a great Saturday and Sunday with my husband and I was honestly feeling better than I had in probably two years.  I felt myself "coming alive" more and emerging further into the world again this weekend.  Then Monday I had a hard, hard grief day.  It was like a wave hit me for no reason completely unexpectedly.  I hurt so much more because I had been doing okay the last two days, maybe even doing well.  I had emerged further out of my safe space and then the waves pushed me all the way back, and it felt like it hurt more just because I had further to fall.
But I did have two really good days. And those days were triggered by God speaking to me through a beautiful painting of Jesus holding a lamb in a storm.  So I will keep coming back to that moment of truth and I am not letting that feeling of having emerged go, I know God is still holding me.  He didn't take the storm away, but holds me through it, even though I had to retreat a bit, he is there to continue to hold me when I try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

May 21st: Wonder
I wonder all the time.
I wonder what would you look like now.
I wonder what would your first word would be.
I wonder if I would be a good Mom.
I wonder if you would laugh and giggle all the time.
I wonder if you would be stubborn and give me a challenge.
I wonder why you are gone.
I wonder why any baby has to die.
I wonder why others can't understand.
I wonder when I can hold you again.

May 22nd: Separate and Together
Mira and I are obviously separate, as she lives in glorious Heaven, and I live here on Earth where beauty can be found, but so can so much pain and evil.  But we are together still, as she lives on in me.  I make sure of it.  I do things in her honor to help others.  I speak of her as often as I can.  I love her fiercely.  Since I grew her in my womb, I carry her some of her cells and DNA in my body still. And I feel her here. Joe and I have both been blessed to smell her on occasion, so strong and so out of nowhere that we know it is her scent.  I will never forget her beautiful scent of the gentle flower soap we used to bathe her combined with her newborn baby smell.  It sometimes surrounds and overpowers me, usually when I need comfort the most, and always when I am not expecting it.  I know my daughter lives in Heaven, I don't believe she travels her to Earth to be with me.  I do however, strongly believe, no, strongly KNOW, that God sends us these signs to comfort us and remind us Mira is waiting for us.  She is with us in that way.