From Thanksgiving to Christmas

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The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas always has been kind of a weird time. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I love the warmth, the union and the happiness that comes with it. It is a meal with the people you love for no other reason than to be thankful. I have heard some people make the argument that all meals should be entered with the same thought process and mindfulness that comes with Thanksgiving, which is a great idea in theory, but it just doesn’t always happen. Every moment I am just as thankful as I am on Thanksgiving, but during that day specifically, I can reflect on the building blocks of my life and properly dissect why I am thankful. Thanksgiving is warmth and love and togetherness.  Continue reading →

Away

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If kisses were snowflakes I’d send you a blizzard.

I have been absent for a bit simply because I am trying to protect my heart. Since Thanksgiving I have felt very, very low. Thanksgiving was so much harder than I anticipated. And moving forward, to Christmas, makes my entire body fill with dread. This has been the hardest two weeks since Sylvia died. So apologies for my distance, emotionally and physically, as I try to at least hold my head upright through the holidays. I want to write, but emotionally, its been hard to go there. Writing has been an outlet, and one that doesn’t necessarily hurt which is good. However, the thoughts and emotions and words are constantly running through my brain at seemingly lightening speed and a snails pace all at once every second of the day. To sit down and get them out, feels like I have to forcefully regurgitate them and digging them back up, as of late, seems like too much emotionally. I am exhausted and run down and I feel like the truck that violently ran us over in August keeps just backing up and hitting the gas again and again. I do not want Christmas to happen, I am terrified and heartbroken and lost.

I appreciate anyone who reads this patience and gentleness with myself and Carlos. I will be back to a regular writing schedule within a couple days, I promise. Hugs and love. xo

Thanksgiving

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Today I sobbed all day. Today was hard. I kept thinking of all the ways different that this holiday should be. I kept watching my niece and nephew play and thinking that Sylvia should be here with them. We should be taking pictures of the three of them. We should be talking about all that we had to be thankful for. We should be laughing and smiling and celebrating. And we were. Kind of. But it was very different and very sad and there was a cloud on all of us. It wasn’t a doom and gloom cloud, rather a little purple fluff floating around reminding us of the way this day should have been. She should have been in my arms as I ate dinner. I would laugh excusing myself to breastfeed or change her diaper. Or Carlos would have held her maybe, speaking to her in Spanish, telling her about Thanksgiving. Maybe that would have been her nap time and she would have been sleeping quietly and perfectly. My tears were seemingly constant today and other family members break downs came and went as well. I watched Carlos when he was silently lost in his thoughts, drowning, just as I was. Today especially, I feel heavy and tired. I try very, very hard to put on a happy face. At work, out with friends, my day to day…I try very hard. Inside, I am still dying. Physically, emotionally and mentally I am exhausted.  Continue reading →

Meet Grief

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I’ve used a lot of adjectives to describe how I feel lately. Drowning, dying, hopeless, fearful, crumbling, useless…they fall under an umbrella of terms hopelessness that all on the surface seem to be red flags for a real downward spiral. I don’t feel the need to preface my statements, conversations, my writing or my posts with a ‘don’t-worry-I’m-not-going-to-kill-myself-but…’ because I think that anyone who really listens to what I write or say somehow understands that hopelessness doesn’t necessarily mean suicide. It seems to be a trigger word for the high school or college level psychology classes that most of us have breezed through, but in real life, it isn’t as simple as a lack of hope equals impending suicide. I also wouldn’t categorize myself as ‘depressed’ in the way that modern medicine has lumped it together. While I imagine a great deal of parents and families suffer from a clinical depression following the loss of a child that has not been my experience. I am however, quite hopeless. And for some reason, more twisted than I can seem to rationalize, there is a big difference.  Continue reading →

The Gunshot

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A month or so after Sylvia died I was told that ‘it would get worse’ by someone in the know. Carlos and I talked about that statement later, only to be baffled at how it could possibly get worse. Surely, we thought, it must at least some how get better. We have been through the worst…right? How could it continue on a downward spiral? How could anything get worse than this? But they were right. It is worse. It has gotten much worse. In two weeks it will be the week that I found out I was pregnant. Any moment past that, I was pregnant a year ago. We are entering the time of year that 365 days ago I had hope. To now be at the same time of year, except without her, without hope and still lost and confused is nearly more than I can seem to bear. The past two weeks or so have been awful. I don’t know if something triggered it or if its just time that is suddenly my enemy. Its truly physically painful. Grief seems to have a tangible manifestation that is present now in my life. Its like a new character, a side-kick. I’d even go so far as to say grief is like a new friend because of its constant presence. Its almost comforting in a way as often I feel like it brings me closer to Sylvia.   Continue reading →

Happy 3 Month Birthday

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Since the first time Carlos and I ever talked about children when we were dating, he told me he was going to name his first daughter Sylvia. At first, I didn’t love the name. I didn’t not like it, but I didn’t love it. When I first took a pregnancy test and it seemingly instantly gave me a positive result, I knew it was a girl. I can’t explain that feeling to anyone who hasn’t experienced such certainty. It was positive and I knew she was a girl. It was as much of a fact to me as knowing my own name. Because I felt so certain and then after confirmation many weeks later, Carlos had referred to her as Sylvia since nearly day one. She was always Sylvia. Carlos talking to her in my belly, calling her by name and so lovingly getting to know her solidified her name to me. She was always Sylvia. If you know me personally or socially or maybe have just seen me via social media, you know I live a very outdoorsy life. I crave being outside, every summer of my childhood was spent camping. ‘Sylvia’ means from the woods. She was always Sylvia.  Continue reading →

Sylvia’s Plants

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I’ve been in a real low for a couple days. It happens every once in a while, where for hours and hours I can not stop crying. I wander through my house, aimlessly sobbing. I sometimes pick up pictures of Sylvia along the way, or her urn, or her teddy bears or her blanket and move them to another spot along my wander, only to later return them to their original location. I slow down to a pathetically slow pace as I pass by her room, staring inside as it remains untouched still. She has three plants in her room; one is a coffee plant, another is a tiny bird’s nest fern on a shelf and another is clippings in a hanging jar from a variegated ivy I have in the living room. All were bought and placed there with intentions of being hers. I really only go through the door and actually into her room now to water them. I have probably over 20 plants in our home, a handful of which I have had for over 10 years, but those three are most important. For some reason, keeping them alive, in my head, symbolizes some sort of hope.  Continue reading →

Costco and Target and why they are the worst

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I no longer isolate myself as much as I used to. I am far from how social I once was, but I don’t hide like I did just months ago. I have braved Costco by myself, which actually, has been one of my bigger accomplishments as far as returning to whatever normal is now. Costco is overwhelming for many people I imagine, trauma or not. Its such a chaotic, overstimulating place. Also you can never just ‘go’ to Costco. You arrive, avoid getting hit by three cars from the parking lot to the door while trying to find your membership card that, at least I, never seem to be organized enough to pull out while in the car or at least replace it in a convenient location in my wallet. You grab your cart which usually there is at least two elderly couples trying to do the same and moving at their adorably slow place, thereby making you do the awkward try-to-grab-a-cart-fast, miss the opportunity and end up waiting anyways. Then people seem to use that first entrance area of the building to put their card back in their wallet and come to a complete stop in doing do, and causing a traffic jam that they are blissfully unaware of. And then you can’t forget about the great deal on a two pack of mittens waiting by the door that must be examined by at least every other patron, thereby slowing down the flow of people and carts through the door even more. Then you’re finally inside and that whole thing is usually a mess of navigation, swerving around people, carts, kids, motorized wheelchairs and sales pitches about the new Traeger, Vitamix or chimichanga. Its a mess. I can’t do my in and out in 10 minutes routine that I have gotten so good at doing since Sylvia has died. But I did it, alone, and I survived. I also have gone to Target alone. Which again, was a huge accomplishment. Not only was it the place we registered for our baby shower, but it is also the place that is 95% occupied with mothers, young children, babies and pregnant women at any moment. I can’t walk 5 feet in that store without being reminded of what my life isn’t. Go to Costco or Target and for one entire trip just count how many pregnant women or kids you see. Its startling once it becomes something that feels like a slap in the face or a punch to the gut every single time.  Continue reading →

Happy Halloween Sylvia

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Today Carlos and I finalized the design we made for Sylvia’s final urn. He has been working on it for months and it is coming to the last couple details before it gets brought home and we will transfer her ashes from the urn she is currently in to this new one. Both urns are beautiful, but for her to be resting inside one that her daddy made her is so amazing, so special and so heartbreaking.  Continue reading →

Children Don’t Always Live

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I think I function pretty okay. My day to day, moment to moment level of operation is waking up, getting ready for my day, eating well, getting exercise, going to work and spending every moment I can with the people I love. On the outside, that looks like a pretty good life, and it is, I have no complaints other than the absence of Sylvia, but simultaneously my mind is constantly working and processing on a separate plane. That separate area is entirely filled with thoughts of Sylvia and thoughts of being pregnant again. My guilt associated with her death is a constant in that place as well, and now that I am processing and working through the idea and desire to be pregnant again, I have guilt for that too. I have read a lot of articles that I relate to regarding infant and child loss and though they don’t necessarily ‘help’ in the conventional way that I feel better after reading them, they do validate some of my thoughts and feelings and make me feel a little less crazy sometimes. My sister sent me an article recently that was posted in the New York Times that I found of special relevance for some of my thoughts that have been particularly terrifying. What I can’t get out of my head is the idea that all babies we have will be dead. Just as while I was pregnant I couldn’t imagine actually giving birth, now I just can’t imagine giving birth to a baby that comes out crying, pink, wiggling and reaching for me. I know what 40 weeks of pregnancy looks and feels like. What happens after that seems impossible. Like thats what always happens and the people that have live babies are the minority, and birthing a baby that isn’t breathing is the majority. What if I kill another baby? What if another innocent, perfect, little baby of ours dies? What if 40 weeks pregnant is what we get with our children, and then they die? What if we are talking about trying to get pregnant too soon and my body isn’t ready and we are setting ourselves up for failure? If we loose another baby…how will we ever pick ourselves back up again? I don’t know if I can do this again. And I can’t imagine it going any other way than a still birth, because thats all I know.  Continue reading →