I’m writing this post in the midst of deep emotion.
joy after loss (of any kind, in my case the loss of a baby) is so difficult.
it’s something that has to be cultivated when you are so deep in sadness, loneliness, and even depression at a time when it’s a struggle to even find the energy to even think about cultivating anything ….. much less joy.
in my case, the loss of a child we waited years for (9 to be exact) while now being in my 30’s is incredibly difficult.
even hanging out with my own “age group” feels so isolating and hopeless.
when everyone else is talking about what their toddler did that day, how their pregnancy is going, etc etc you are sitting there with nothing to relate to – even men (and my husband) feel the affects of this in certain groups we’ve attended off and on.
so, you stop going to them – and feel even more alone.
everyone else’s life is moving forward in the general way it does; boy meets girl, they get married, pink lines form, baby carriages arrive.
but what if that’s not how your life looks? what if your halls are devoid of little feet running down them and bare of little fingers that wrap around yours so tight it hurts?
unfortunately, I’ve found being religious compounds it all even more because traditional expectations of couples never change and tend to leave out those they don’t understand or relate to themselves.
I’m calling this my lonely girl summer, and I’m actually okay with that.
even the people you’d like to rely on have lives of their own and not a lot of time to walk beside you, it’s the way the world goes round even if it isn’t meant to harm. they stop texting because they also live a busy, chaotic life and have their own qualms and sorrows.
so-
I’ve done a lot of reading.
a lot of gardening.
lot’s of redecorating in our home.
and a fair amount of journaling.
in the evening I watch the fireflies and the trees and clouds as they fade into red dusks and starry skies.
and during the day I work hard at my job, perhaps a bit overzealously but always to perfection.
when my head hits the pillow at night, I daydream before drifting off to sleep.
my circle of people I talk to is incredibly, minutely small and the people I meet for coffees and lunches is even more minuscule – but I like it this way, because trustworthy folks for true friendship are a rare and dying breed.
I don’t have social media. I think if I did at this point in my life, I’d truly have already had a mental breakdown.
when I go out, I try too hard to appear put together – the product of a socially-focused, perfectionist household.
I haven’t dressed this nice and took care of my appearance like this for years.
its an overcompensation, but it works.
if the inside is falling apart, the outside is worn like a shield of okay-ness.
my spouse and I have mostly stuck to one another like glue, because I’ve come to find that men can often feel the same as women when it comes to such a loss.
we are our own anchors, when we can’t trust anyone else to keep us floating with heads above water, we keep each other up.
it’s pushed us apart as spouses, yet glued us too – it’s hard to explain.
when I’m left to my own devices is when I tend to heal the best (even though one never gets over this type of loss), little bits at a time.
I like quiet things – soft piano, my cat, the breeze, a sunrise.
the key to joy is perhaps best found in simplicity, in the simple little everyday things that are beautiful to look at and kind to the mind.
my mother, though our relationship was never the best, was right about one thing – simplicity is key.
it was her life’s motto in her final years.
humans tend to overcomplicate almost everything we do – even grief, loss, and joy.
when I first started wading in the waters of grief after our loss, I thought it would look completely different than it does and absolutely complicated all of it to a point I wasn’t even grieving at all because it was overwhelming.
our loss happened in full the day before Christmas Eve, and truthfully it was probably in May before I even remotely started grieving in full.
I learned that simplicity was key – there isn’t an instruction manual on how to grieve and reconcile a life and love you were so close to.
you figure it out on your own, individually, different than anyone else on the planet.
you will even grieve and navigate it differently than your partner.
and I’ve learned that’s okay.
writing has, and always will be, my outlet – it’s stayed me in some of the most pivotal crossroads of my life on very rough seas.
some things I’ll never share through writing in a blog post, but the tip of the iceberg (like these words laced together) I will, because maybe, just maybe, someone will read this and feel a little less alone.
it’s something I can’t find out there myself, but I know that often where there is one there is more – so if you’re reading this and these words resonate with you, I see you and feel your pain because I’m living it everyday with my spouse.
you are not alone.
~ A
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