I have been awed and humbled by the last three days. By the way everything fell apart and came back together. By the love, support and kind words. By the gratitude I feel for my son, my support system, my friends and everyone who has taken a few moments to download the Picking Up the Pieces guide, talk about it on Facebook and Twitter, or leave a comment on the blog. It is a privilege and a joy to be alive, to be doing this work, to be finding my way.

I keep thinking about how ten years from now I will look back and recognize this time in my life as a turning point. I’ve gone from living partly in shadow, to floundering in darkness, to dancing in the light. I can feel the joy of it all radiating from my core. I’m still exhausted, still prone to tears, the ache in my chest comes and goes. I will miss my son every day for the rest of my life and I will be forever grateful for who I’ve become because of him.

When sad, be really sad, sink into sadness. What else can you do? Sadness is needed. It is very relaxing, a dark night that surrounds you. Fall asleep into it. Accept it, and you will see that the moment you accept sadness, it starts becoming beautiful. – Osho

 

Yesterday morning I woke to pictures of my cousin’s new baby boy in my inbox. I smiled. He’s beautiful. Grief sat squarely on my chest.

I ignored it. I thought about everything I needed to get done. I began to suffer.

My husband recognized the look in my eye, the set of my jaw, and the shortness of my replies. He suggested a solution. Sometimes that goes well, sometimes not. Today it was perfect. The dark cloud began to lighten but I wasn’t ready to cry.

I took time for myself. I asked for direction. I opened a book.

Can you imagine how it would feel if your heart were open, if everywhere you went, you trusted, were relaxed, and knew that the universe was friendly? How would your life flow if you believed that your inner guidance was gentle and kind, and that people were sending you love wherever you went, and that you yourself broadcast a beam of love like a circle around you to everyone? How would your life change if whenever someone said something to you, no matter how it came out, you could recognize the love or need for love behind it? — from Living With Joy by Sanaya Roman

I sat for a moment and thought about love. I relaxed. I remembered that everything will be okay, even when it feels like it won’t. I got to work. I cried.

*****

Today is a big day for me. Let me tell you why.

Picking Up the Pieces: thoughts on grief and growth is available for download. If you’re grieving, or know someone who is, consider this my gentle nudge to read it. It’s free, it’s beautiful and it just might change your life.

I’m also announcing the Picking Up the Pieces Retreat – 3 days and 4 nights that’ll knock your socks off. If you wear socks. This one’s not free but it will be beautiful and it’s definitely going to change your life.

Lastly, I am moving this blog to a self-hosted site. This is way out of my comfort zone and I’m hoping it goes smoothly. Please be patient with me if you encounter any difficulties. If you’re receiving this via email, let me say thank you (!) and let you know that you’ll want to sign up at the new site in order to keep receiving blog posts. But I’m still figuring that out, so I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Here’s to life – let’s really live it.

Over the last 11 months, I have found myself reaching out to women I know who are further along in their mourning process. It doesn’t matter if our losses are similar, because grief is specific to each of us. As I negotiate this life, the guiding hands of those who have gone before hold me when I am stumbling. One wise friend told me she now sees people as a kind of Venn diagram: In section A are those who have had a devastating loss; section B contains those who haven’t (yet); and the overlap, section C holds those who haven’t but are willing to venture into a deeper understanding of what it must feel like.

When grief first knocks at our door, there are great outpourings of love and support. Gradually it fades away and we are left to our own devices, to our own processes, to our own sadness. We belong to group A in that diagram and it slowly becomes clear where everyone else stands.

My husband has his own moments of mourning our son, though they are less frequent and less obvious than mine. This makes sense. He is able to hold me when I cry, as hard as it is for him, because he has learned that this is how I process the pain. Though it is not his way, he understand that it is mine.

My daughter wants her mama to smile, to laugh, to play with her. She watches me closely. She speaks of her brother – less often now – but she is a child. It will only be later, as she grows, that she will begin to understand what this experience means and how it will shape her life.

My parents have their own moments of sadness, though we don’t speak of them often. My in-laws too, hold their eleventh grandchild in their hearts. We give and receive the support we can, loving and forgiving each other for our strengths and weaknesses.

It is with friends that I have seen the biggest changes. Most of those who know loss or are willing to taste it are able to hold space in their lives for me and my ups and downs. Those on the B side want things to return to some semblance of the way they used to be. They have no idea the energy it takes to recover, to stand on two feet after being knocked flat. It seems they want me to do what I did, be who I was and I cannot. I’ve tried.

I do not wish to be that person anymore. I like the new me, though she is not always graceful, has plenty of rough edges and falls apart on a regular basis. I like the way I’ve grown and many of the changes that have come. Most importantly, I accept the new me, in a way I’ve never accepted myself before. This, in turn, allows me to let go of judgments that have held me captive for a long time. It is like shedding a weighted skin. I am raw, born anew, learning to walk again.