It’s not been easy this past week. It feels like my diffuser has been on overdrive every time I’m next to it.
I’m not actually 100% certain why I’m feeling this way. Emotional, tired, quietly stressed. I feel like I need another holiday. I want to be removed from everything that is happening. I want to be removed from my feelings. I feel like I’ve barely smiled this week. I want to be happy and I am trying to… not make myself be happy, but just decide to make that effort. I know how sometimes I can get in a rut mentally and be stuck in it with no good reason, then it’s up to me to change things. But it’s difficult to do tbat when it feels like you really need to cry some decent tears but they’ve got stuck somewhere on the way out and nothing is going to improve until they get unstuck. I suppose it’s just another one of those things that I’ll have to take moment by moment.
Karl and I both decided that I should stay home today. I’m thankful for that. He is such a trooper. For 4 years now I’ve been stuck in some state of grief, and he has supported me so well while dealing with his own grief. It seems so much simpler for him. I’m sure it’s not. Sometimes I wonder, why is it that I feel everything so much? Why do I hurt so deeply? I know I feel the positive just as much, but this negative stuff just hangs around like a bad stink. I wish it would go away. I know that there is an element of decision with this too though, and trust me, I try. I know it’s rooted deeply in me not wanting to let my babies go. And I know that will never happen, they’re my babies and I love them. I’ll never forget them, even though I barely knew them. But I also suppose it’s just the unfairness of the situation that keeps these feelings present. With every pregnancy announced and every baby that is born I’m reminded of what I don’t have. Yet again a decision on my part to accept that feeling or to acknowledge it and gently kick it in the bum. And as nice as it is to see people’s happiness, people just don’t stop breeding and it just makes life hard. Once again it’s one of those feelings that I feel so deep. Mother’s day is coming up in a few months and already I’m wondering how I can avoid it. I hate it. Let me smile politely in silence and look happy for you while inside I scream “I’m a mother too!!!” I read this awesome quote the other day (I can’t actually remember where I read it or who wrote it so I’m very sorry I can’t give credit where it’s due)…
Identity shifting is a huge piece of the postpartum experience for every new parent, and yet moms who lose their babies are not able to show the world their mother-ness. If you feel like a mom, and yet are not able to participate in the experiences that the mothers around you are included in, know that this is a shared experience and that, whether or not the world can see this, we value you as a mother too.”
It’s nice to know that I’m valued as a mother too, at least by those who wrote that quote. But those who know that I lose my babies, still no acknowledgement of my motherness. I was pregnant too. I grew life inside me too. My body still told me to “push” too. But I don’t get to see my babies grow up. I don’t kniw what colour their eyes are and I certainly don’t have the joy of experiencing all their firsts like all the other Mums who birth live babies do. Instead I live in silence. Isolating silence.