So, I wrote.
And wrote.
And cried.
And wrote.
And fumed.
And wrote.
And pondered.
And wrote.
And questioned.
And wrote.
And wrote some more. And some more.
Years have gone by. Four of them. Like lightening.
As I type, at this very moment, a wee lass with sparkling blue eyes is nursing at my breast while hopping on one foot. A toddler. Only yesterday, it seems, she was nearing the day of her birth. Being very coy about her entrance. She had her own plans about her birth day and it had nothing to do with charts and assumptions about estimated due dates. She took her time. It is her way.
As the mother of many, I am not surprised at the lack of time I have for myself...for my writing...for my other interests. As the woman who has known the sting of losing children, I am not taken aback by the massive desire I have to embrace my daughters every moment of existance.
I was always attentive to my older children. My son's have known no lack in my love, though they have experienced what it looks like to have a grieving mother. In that, they have learned empathy. Compassion. A massive respect for the amount of love a parent has for a child. Even, and perhaps especially for, a dead child.
However...attentive as I was, it was nothing like the magnitude of my attention for my rainbow daughter. My Ali Ve.
Because....now I know. I know I can lose my children.
That is a truth you can't unlearn.
So, four years later, I am a new being. A mother to six living children. And dead twins. I love them all and am influenced by all on a daily basis.
To celebrate life, and the metamorphosis that occurs when one is LIVING this life--in all it's twists and turns and ups and downs, I am venturing out into cyberspace again. My sweet toddler is easily satisfied playing at my knee. She hops back and forth from blocks to my breast, and from my breast to her dolls. She has no interest in weaning, and I have no interest in pushing her away. Change is happening in it's own way, in it's own pattern.
I'm writing today to talk about change. Change in the reality that is loss. This post is for all you momma's who doubt you will ever know the ability to smile again. I was in your shoes four years ago. I was in agony. I remember hearing babies crying in the night....only to wake and find that I was baby-less. Only in my dreams could I see their faces. I walked with my eyes averted to the ground, in the hope that no one would make eye contact with me, least I crumble into a mess of despair. Nervous breakdowns were my new normal, and I assumed I would be crippled by them for the rest of my life. (and for all of you who fear the same...I promise you, with all of my heart, you WILL smile again. You WILL heal. And....you will never be the person you were before losing your child. And even more....you won't want to be the person you were before, because the person you were before never knew what it was like to love that deeply. To lose that much and to live to tell the tale--You will be bigger than you ever dreamed you wanted to be. And you will have your loss to thank. I'm sorry....it's just true. It's true that loss can and will be be the catalyst for everything beautiful in your future. Everything.)
When Ali Ve was born, a new kind of terror was born along with her. It took the past two years of vivid adoration to understand that she wasn't going to evaporate in some mysterious way. She wasn't going to drown in a glass of water. She wasn't going to be eaten by a rouge squirrel. She wasn't going to disappear and only visit me in my dreams. She was actually....here.
Ali Ve.
Alive.
I woke up this morning, thinking about how we grow. How we change.
I am not the mother I was 24 years ago when my first son was born. Time and circumstance have altered all that I was at that tender young age. I am a different mother. An older mother. I am no better, though I am more experienced, and am certainly not worse, even if I am more aware of the realities life can deal out. I have changed. And grown.
This blog is changing and growing along with me. I am not sure where it is going...yet. But, today, I knew that it was growing. That there were new things to talk about.
Everything that I AM is colored by my loss. Everything I know has been shaped by my journey.
I am excited to share my reflections with you.
Let's grow together.
