Tag Archives: grief

An open letter to my grieving self.

You are going to make it.

It won’t always hurt this intensely.

You’ll experience joy again.

These are the words I give to myself on days when the grief feels so intense that it might just swallow me up; so powerful that I physically can’t stand, can’t breathe, can’t think of anything else other than the gaping hole in my heart.

Sometimes, it comes on slowly so I have time to prepare myself, like I’m getting ready for company; an unwanted but familiar guest. Other times it comes crashing in when I least expect it, during a moment where I’m finding myself smiling or laughing or when I’m doing nothing at all. It’s a quick punch in the stomach that leaves me reeling, second guessing every step I’ve taken since the day Evelyn died.

In the immediate weeks following her death, my grief was a constant and infuriating companion, always following me, never allowing me a break to breathe. It sat heavily on my chest, on my shoulders, screaming in my ear. During those days it was all-consuming and out of control.

Grief is still my constant companion, but it’s changed and I’ve changed. It allows me to take care of myself now in a different way than just meeting my own basic needs. Sometimes, I can tell it to quiet down when I need it to, when I have to work or when I need to focus my attention on someone else. Sometimes, the quieting doesn’t work and that’s okay. It’s during those times that I allow it to wash over me in whatever way it needs to. It’s unpredictable and I’m learning to find peace with that. It lives alongside of me, always present, never leaving.

I often remind myself during my most difficult days that it won’t always be like this. I call attention in my mind to our earliest days of grief to show myself how I’ve come since then. I remind myself of something that other loss moms have told me: It will get better. It won’t be like ripping a bandaid off a fresh wound every day. It will still suck, but it just won’t suck 100% of the time.

When I’m having what I call a “bad grief day”, sometimes I don’t believe myself when I say that I will feel happiness again. I always think that surely this is the time that it will never leave me and I’ll always be hopeless. During those raw moments of pain when the tears don’t seem like they’ll ever end, I find myself looking for reassurance from others, from the people I trust the most, but I’m now finding that I can also look inward for the answers.

So, to myself, when grief feels like it will win:

Some days are just dark. You wake up and you feel like you can’t get out of bed, like if you just stayed there that somehow everything would be different and Evie would be here again. But you remember, you promised her you would get up everyday and try. If not for you, then for her, or for Bill. You will have dark moments, and you’ll have them forever. You’ll experience that low level sadness or the intense crying or the flashbacks or the debilitating anxiety. You are not impervious to these feelings just because you make it to six months, one year, or five years since Evie died. But these moments are just that–moments. They may be minutes or hours or days, but the intensity will not last and it will not shatter you. You will make it out again.

You’ll go back again and again, but you know that now so you can be ready. You can give yourself grace. You can be gentle with your own broken heart. You can know that you’ve been here before, but it didn’t break you. You will feel glints of happiness again. Eventually, they will be full moments. Your grief will live alongside happiness and joy and every other spectrum of human emotion. You will never not be sad because Evelyn isn’t here. You will never not look at your family and know someone is always missing. But you will always hold her in your heart and know that she’s safe there. You will love your baby from afar, always looking for signs from her. You get to be her mom, forever.

So keep going. Do not give up. This time won’t be the time that crushes you, I promise. You will get through it.

Keep going, mamas.

Secondary Loss.

Evelyn’s rainbow for us on our hike in Hocking Hills.

When I wake up every day, I say good morning to my daughter as any mom would. I imagine as I enter her room that there’s a crib and a beautiful baby laying inside, smiling at me, ready to be held. I imagine smiling back at her, picking her up, holding her close.

Every morning, I remember that this is not my reality. Every morning, I have to reckon with the words, “your baby died” swirling around in my head.

I still go into her room every day. There’s no baby for me to hold, so I hug her bears—her bear that holds her ashes or her bear that weighs just as much as she did at birth. I talk to Evelyn. I sing to her. I tell her what we’re doing that day. I tell her about our hopes and dreams for her.

When Evelyn died, we didn’t just lose her. We lost a lifetime of memories with our daughter. We lost the innocence of enjoying a pregnancy. We lost everything that could have been and should have been.

Every future event we envisioned for her was gone instantly, events that we had planned for the rest of the pregnancy and everything after. We’ve already had to contend with canceled baby showers. We’ve had to find a place for clothes she will never wear and books we will never get to read to her. Her due date is looming, like a dark cloud following us around, getting ready to pour down on us and remind us that what we thought would be the happiest time in our lives is no longer.

The weekend after she died we drove past the elementary school by our new house, and I broke down. Every image I had conjured in my head of dropping Evelyn off on her first day of kindergarten, going to parent teacher conferences, volunteering at her school, all gone. These are things I will never get to do for my child. They’re visions that only exist in my head, events that will never come to be.

It’s not only the big events, like the birthdays or all the firsts. I overheard a new dad talking several weeks ago about how tired he was after constantly being up all night with their newborn. The person he was with asked how he liked being a dad and he just brushed the question off and kept complaining. I wanted to shake him and tell him our reality, that he could just as easily be us, with no baby to wake him in the middle of the night. I would give anything to be up all night with our daughter. I would give anything to be sleep deprived for a different reason. It’s not only the happy events I’m grieving—it’s the every day moments that others take for granted.

We will never experience a pregnancy the same. We lost the naivety of thinking we were “safe” after the first trimester. We will hold our breath every day, if and when that day comes. I will be considered high risk in a pregnancy, and we’ll never breath easily. We will never have a baby shower. We won’t plan and prepare for a new baby, because we know nothing is guaranteed. I’m grieving the innocence of thinking pregnancy meant having a baby.

Our grief is everywhere, in the plain moments and in the big moments. It’s never ending. Every day is some reminder of not only losing Evelyn, but losing ourselves, losing the way we thought the order of the world worked. We grieve Evelyn and the loss of her presence here, but we also grieve the what could- and should-have-beens. The memories we will never share with her.

As I’m working through what feels like never ending loss, I’m finding ways to hold onto our memories of Evelyn and create new ones. I feel her presence everywhere. I believe she sends us signs when we most need them, no matter where we are. We took a trip to Hocking Hills a few weeks ago and she was just everywhere with us. Everywhere we go, she is there.

The secondary losses are always just another reminder of everything that we’ll never have with our Evie, but we will always have our love for her. Even though I didn’t think it was possible, I love her more each day and look for ways to help us live in this new reality without her. The losses are so devastating, but our love for her persists and grows despite the pain.