Sometimes the day or the week after a holiday seems extra hard.
Deflated. Exhausted. Weepy. Irritable. Discontented.
All words that can describe a heart once the dishes are washed and the celebration ended.
Some of y’all probably woke up thinking, “I did pretty good on Mother’s Day” only to be blindsided by the tears you managed to hide and the grief you managed to stuff.
Read the rest here: Holiday Hangover
Seven years and most days I accept that it’s real like I accept the Theory of Relativity-factually true but I don’t really understand how it fits in my life.
When I pause and focus on, ”Dominic is gone” it’s just as shocking today as the very first day.
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Even therapists get it wrong sometimes.
Especially therapists that only know what child loss is supposed to look like from books and lectures.
I understand how logical it seems that a parent should be able to accept his or her child is no longer alive. After all, most of us saw our child’s lifeless body and performed whatever rituals our hearts find most comforting.
Read the rest here: Am I Refusing To Accept My Child Is Gone?
When it first happened all I could think about was getting through a minute, then a day and then all the decisions and days leading up to a funeral or memorial service.
There’s no road map.
Even when others come alongside (and many, many did!) there’s just no easy way to navigate that part of the journey.
And then I realized that in addition to all the “regular” days that absolutely, positively break your heart, I had to forge a path through “special” days.
It was overwhelming!
Read the rest here: My Seventh Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother
I post this around Mother’s Day every year since my daughter, Fiona, wrote it in the voice of her brother who is in Heaven.
It helps my heart sort the mixed emotions that this day stirs up.
I’m not ONLY a bereaved mother. I’m a mother and grandmother of earthbound children too.
I’m grateful for all of them. So very, very grateful.
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My daughter, Fiona, wrote this several years ago, in the voice of her brother who ran ahead to heaven.
I am so thankful for her and so sorry that she has gained this wisdom at great cost.
Some of the bravest, most loving women I know are those who have suffered one of life’s greatest losses. I hope you know how truly beautiful you are.
“Dear Mom,
Read the rest here: From The Child Not Here on Mother’s Day.
Just think-when our hearts hang onto hope in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, we are taking back territory from the enemy of our souls.
We are shedding light and spreading salt.
What a powerful testimony to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.
Read the rest here: Defiant Faith
I first shared this post about two years ago.
I was planning my daughter’s wedding and juggling a number of other pressing responsibilities. I managed to keep my composure most days when talking with caterers, family members and vendors but all that pent up stress kept me from falling asleep when I finally put my head down at night.
I had just begun to settle back into a decent sleep pattern when my mother suffered a stroke and died a few days later in September.
That threw me right back into the sleepless cycle that plagued me for years after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven in 2014. I couldn’t fall asleep or when I fell asleep I couldn’t stay asleep. What sleep I managed to get was filled with terrible and terribly vivid dreams.
I’m back in that pattern once again for no apparent reason.
I’m not sure I’ll ever enjoy the blissfully ignorant and pleasant slumber I knew as a young girl.
My heart won’t let me.
❤
For the first couple of weeks after Dominic left us, I couldn’t fall asleep.
It was impossible to close my eyes without a dozen awful scenes flashing behind the lids.
Silent darkness was not my friend.
Read the rest here: Sleepless Nights
I’ve probably thought more about the nature of time in the past seven years than in the fifty before that.
I can vaguely remember contemplating eternity as I drifted off to sleep as a teen but it made my head hurt and I gave up.
Now, though, the relationship between time as I know it and eternity-which I can’t really comprehend-is something I think about often and long.
Years may stretch before me until I join Dominic at the feet of Jesus. But years compared to forever will be but a blink of an eye.
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It’s just not comforting for my heart to think my son is looking down on me from Heaven.
I can’t reconcile the idea that he might be watching my sorrow with what the Bible says about Heaven being a place of joy and peace.
Read the rest here: Blink of An Eye
We all have a story.
So often we try to hold it in lest someone think less of us for sharing. But that’s not helpful-for us or for them.
Everyone needs validation. Everyone needs to know they are not the only person on the planet that hurts in this particular way or thinks this specific thought.
Whenever I choose openness I nearly always find that another heart comes alongside to say, “me too”.
And isn’t that really what we all hope for? Compassionate companionship?
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We CAN hold some of it in.
For awhile.
In certain circumstances.
Read the rest here: You Can’t Hold It In, So Let It Out
I belong to several bereaved parents online communities and this question comes up again and again-it was the first thing I asked a bereaved mom just after Dominic ran ahead to heaven:
“Will this suffocating pain remain sitting on my chest, smothering the breath and life right out of me? Will I ever be able to stop crying? Will it ALWAYS feel like this?”
The short answer is, “No, it won’t.”
Read the rest here: Will It ALWAYS Feel Like This?
Dear Mama,
I know that you never-in your wildest imagination-thought that you would need a day set aside for your broken heart and your empty arms.
Who thinks when they learn a new life is growing inside that this same life might be cut short? What heart is brave enough to consider the possibility?
Yet here you are.
I’m so, so sorry.
But there are a few things I want you to know.
Read the rest here: International Bereaved Mother’s Day: An Open Letter to my Fellow Sisters in Loss
thelifeididntchoose 