I am clearly better at some things than others. This comes as no surprise. It’s not headline making news. Sometimes, though, I end up feeling horrible because of one of the things I’m not so good at.

Way back in September I was given the One Lovely Blog award. But you wouldn’t know it. Here is what I wrote on October 4th.

I am humbled and honored to have received the One Lovely Blog Award from three beautiful BLM’s (baby lost mamas). Charlotte’s mama, Angela; Riley and Peyton’s mama, Jessica; and Ailis and Noah’s mama, Vera Kate. What I’m supposed to do is pass it along to ten blogs I love. What I’m going to do is break the rules. You see, I’m pretty sure everyone I know in the BLM world has been awarded this already and all my favorite writers from elsewhere, well, I’ve already given them awards from my previous blog and as wonderful as it is to be awarded, when you’re super popular (as most of these women are) the awards start to feel a little like those chain emails that you have to forward to nine friends or else and I can’t do anything that makes me feel even the least bit yuck these days.

I never hit publish. I kept meaning to. Two things stopped me. The first was my desire to have it be the grand unveiling of my blogroll – my favorite places on the internet to sit and read a while. The second is I couldn’t remember how to make the darned badge show up. Instead I seemed like a complete ingrate.

Clearly, the technical side of blogging is not one of my strengths. I know the badge thing is simple. I used to know how to do it. But these days – and particularly back in the first 3 months after Ben died – I have no patience for things that don’t come easily. And the blogroll? Still haven’t gotten that done. So the post languished in my draft folder and now…

Now I’ve been honored again and I would undo a whole lot of personal acceptance work if I didn’t do something about it, and fast.

Huge thanks for the Stylish Blogger award go to fellow BLM, artist, teacher and mama to two unborn babes, Jessica and to the sassy, hilarious and endlessly talented Stereo. I adore you both. Thank you. Please take a moment to click through and check them out. They are undeniably stylish themselves, in very different ways.

The rules for acceptance are as follows.

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award. (obviously a rule for ingrates like myself)
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 5 recently discovered great bloggers. (am going to focus on the recently discovered bit so I don’t drive myself nuts trying to limit to 5)
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

And now, 7 things you don’t likely already know about me.

1. I was a can-can dancer in Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. Three shows a night, six nights a week, fully clothed.

2. I graduated tied for top of my high school class, a year early. I got a scholarship but no speech. Valedictorian in our school was a popular vote. Enough said.

3. I would rather sweep than vacuum – hence my penchant for hard wood floors.

4. I used to wake up every birthday and Christmas for years and hope that I was getting a horse. Never happened. Maybe I’ll get myself one some day.

5. I hate washing lettuce and eating green peppers.

6. I have spoken French since the first day of kindergarten. I spent the 8th grade living in France, attending a French school. I think everyone should live/travel outside the country they are born in at some point. It’s an education.

7. I wish I could still play the violin.

And now, in no particular order and in the hopes of not awarding people who’ve already received it 12 times, here are five of my new favorite places where my minutes disappear into beautifully written moments…

Head The Gong

MujerZen

WriteMuch

Canopy In The Sunlight

Carry it Forward

I will not be offended if anyone chooses to stop the madness love fest and doesn’t move the award along. Just saying.

And I’m still working on that blogroll.

I am meeting another baby lost mama (BLM) next week for coffee. She’s not quite two months out from her son’s death. Full term baby. No problems. Gone. I wish I could remember which BLM blogged about dead baby math (thanks for the reminder Angela – check out the original post from Emily at Aidan, Baby of Mine). This is where a mama secretly compares other losses to her own. Are they > (greater than), < (less than) or = (equal to) what she has experienced. We all do it. In my book, a problem free pregnancy, no warning signs and a baby that dies at term or shortly after birth is one of the most heartbreaking losses possible.

And it happens all.the.time.

When I was pregnant with Ada, only one miscarriage under my belt and full of desire to reclaim birth from the hands of doctors, I thought my OB/GYN’s concern about amniotic fluid and baby’s size at my due date were nothing more than scare tactics. In fact it’s very common to hear complaints about getting pressure from a doctor to induce before 42 weeks, for no real reason.

Birth is natural. Our bodies have been designed to do this for millenia. The baby will come when she’s ready. Due dates are really guess dates.

Yep. All true. I’ve said those words. I’ve heard them and for the most part I believe them.

My body? Not so well designed for giving birth it turns out.

And if you’re a doctor and you’ve seen babies die for no reason right around or just after due dates, my guess is as a human being, you’d do everything in your power to keep that from happening again on your watch.

So maybe it is about a vacation, or a golf game, or the doctor-controlled environment of an operating room over the messiness of natural labor. And maybe, just maybe, it’s because they’ve seen too many babies die. And their hearts have broken too.

*****

One of the loveliest connections I have made through this blog is a woman who lives on another continent. She has been kind, thoughtful and supportive in her comments and emails. A few days ago, she woke up into one of her worst nightmares. Her husband was diagnosed out of the blue with a very aggressive cancer. One minute he was tired, as the working parent of two young children often is. The next he was in the hospital and no one knows when, or – the unspeakable – if, he’ll come out.

My heart has been heavy since I heard the news. All I can see in my mind are the smiling, happy faces on their holiday card.

There is talk in our culture about embracing each moment fully because we never know when life as we know it will end. Those words don’t mean much until it’s your life – the one you’re used to waking up to every day – that has vanished.

And then when you tell people, no one knows what to do.

We don’t talk enough about these things in our society. We are tremendously afraid of pain. And we forget

we forget

that sometimes our greatest strengths are found in our tears.

And that sharing those tears with others only makes us all stronger.

Tonight I cry for all of us whose lives have changed in an instant.

Poof.

Gone.

I am down with a horrible cold. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick. It makes me feel like no time has passed since my broken leg, my morning sickness, my bed rest, the surgery. I wonder if I’ve ever been healthy.

If there’s one thing I learned in 2010 it was how to take care of myself. So that’s what I’m doing. As much as possible with an active preschooler. And I know I will be healthy again soon.

Lying in bed last night, coughing, sneezing and waiting for sleep to put me out of my misery, I read my daily dose of Lindsey’s words at A Design so Vast – a beautiful letter to her son on his sixth birthday. As I came to the last line, the wave washed over me.

I will never get to write this letter to Ben.

Sitting in my daughter’s room with her this afternoon, looking at her bookshelf, I noticed my copy of Tear Soup. I lay it on my lap and reread it while she played, then we looked at the pictures together as I explained the story. I couldn’t read the words out loud. Tears choked my throat.

At almost six months after Ben’s death, reading this lovely book was a different experience than when it first arrived at my door. I have more perspective on grief now. The brutally hard work – the sobbing every day work – of making my own tear soup is largely done.

The sadness I felt stemmed from perspective too. Realizing who has been there for me the last six months, and who has not. Knowing how many others have begun their own soup. Realizing I’ve turned off the stove these last few days but it should be on simmer. When the intensity subsides and the sun comes out, it’s easy to want to put grief away. But it still needs an ear, needs a place in my awareness, needs to be held softly in my heart.

I am sad tonight too as I remember my cousin’s young niece, Jaimie, who died last year on January 16, after losing her fight with cancer. Today is my friend Jamie’s birthday. Weird name thing, I know. She died suddenly on Mother’s Day, 2009 and I know her family and many friends are both mourning and celebrating today. The eloquent Emma at PleasureNotes wrote about Jamie here, shortly after her death, and here, on its first anniversary. On this night last year, I felt the first little spirit we had conceived leave my body. In rereading what I wrote then, I am brought to my knees once more by the events that Alana had yet to experience. I am reeling with the news from a new friend that her world was turned upside down this afternoon by a shocking diagnosis. My heart aches for her, for her family, and what is to come. At the same time, I see hope flutter by on purple and gold wings.

Listening to my daughter’s hysterical laughter as she played with her dad before bed, I was overcome by wonder, by a deep awe for life, and by a sense of celebration.

This is life.

Right now, somewhere, someone is dying. Right now, somewhere, there are babies being born. Right now someone is coming to terms with illness and someone else is rediscovering health. Right now, a man and woman are falling in love. Right now, another couple have one foot out of their relationship’s door. Right now a young child is crying and being comforted, while another child’s cries go unheeded and she learns the world is not safe. Right now a family is huddled in a refugee tent, cold, exhausted, and afraid and another family halfway around the world plays games in front of a roaring fire.

Right now.

This is life.

In all its sadness and celebration.