Finding the words...

It's not always easy to find the words. At least...it wasn't always. Nowadays I realize that the words are flowing forth in an ever present bombardment of productivity. Last night in fact, I was telling my husband that the only real problem with being a freelance writer was that I simply don't have enough time to do all the writing I'm being given. Not if I want to write my book. Not if I want to actually get it done... and I DO.

See, I write for money...and I write for me. I write for money because it allows me to take care of my children without having to send them off to school (we home school) or daycare. I can arrange my days to play, cook, and educate...and clean from time to time...I can allow myself the protection of the hermit life that is allowing my healing from the theft of my babies lives, and the trauma that ensued. I can allow myself to cry as needed... I can walk here at my treadmill desk as Ferdinand and Felix hang out in a strange yin yang formation on my bed nearby. I enjoy earning enough to help make ends meet, to lift the burden from my husbands shoulders a little bit.

But...I also write for me. I write about my experience, and it's connection with society...a commentary on grief from a personal and psychological perspective. Now, some people would say that I'm still writing for money...because this is a book that I am going to sell when it's complete. But, I'm not writing for the money, I'm writing for Simon and Alexander who have given me the words. Given me the voice. I'm writing for the women whose breaths are taken away and hearts are broken only to find themselves in a world that doesn't understand. In a way, they aren't even my words....they are being given to me in a fervor of understanding and piecing together what was into what is. Yeah....this is writing in it's most beautiful form. . .because it's authentic and done for the process rather than the product alone.

Many of my dear babyloss friends are also talented writers...and I implore them at this moment to write....write...and write more! It is YOUR words that will change this loneliness into a place of understanding so that one day, when a woman loses a child, she will meet with faces that UNDERSTAND her pain, so that she will not find herself in a room with familiar faces that hold strangers behind their eyes. I recently read a book of a babyloss mama who started the ezine I write for, "Exhale"... Monica Murphey Lemoine has written Knocked up, Knocked Down and her story is compelling, surprisingly humorous and delightfully tear-jerking. I wanted to share it with everyone...because words matter.

So...on that note, keep writing. Even if your words never see a publishers desk, they have inherent value, because they are YOUR story...and that matters.

They really are a gift.