Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Surviving


Treading water, breathing slowly!  Wake up, survive! Taking life minute by minute is survival of the bereaving parent. 

In a world where everyone else is living day by day, a bereaved parent is simply surviving minute by minute. We don't know how or even why some days are harder than others but what we do know is to breathe in slow and out slow. We have to learn the "new" us that we have become. We have to put on masks for other people. We have to self preserve and take on what we can. We have to say NO when we can't be in certain situations. We have to look at other parents with living children and ache for our own. We have to breathe harder to survive.

Grieving is a full time job, no days off, no holidays, no vacation time, no clock to punch in and out of. It is full time everyday in conjunction with our real full time jobs, our day to day life and sometimes there just isn't enough time to survive the minutes. 

I will say my surviving time is on Wednesdays. My breath of fresh air is on Wednesdays. My smiles, tears, laughs, shared pain is on Wednesdays. On Wednesdays I get to sit with other bereaving parents. Parents whom have become my friends. Parents who know the depth of pain that we all live in. Parents that let me speak of Delaney with no judgements. Parents that smile when we smile over our daughter and cry when we cry over her too. Parents like many before us, and unfortunately many after us, miss our children with us.  We talk about our babies in an environment where we don't have to own other people awkwardness to talk about our dead babies. Parents who don't tell us things we can't hear, such as we will get over it. Parents that are raw with us and don't apologize for it.

See one of the things about being a bereaved parent is seeing how many people drop off, seeing how many people move on and forget about our children, how many people that can't handle our grief and expect us to be happy again. People who have never lost a child think that us parents who have should just try again. Another baby doesn't stop the pain of the one we lost. The truth is to be a bereaved parent you need to come to the realization that everyday for the rest of our lives we are missing a piece of ourselves. See the thing is when our babies die, part of us dies too! Some of us can continue on to have subsequent babies but still ache for the ones that are missing. Some of us can never babies again. There is even some of us that try again and lose more babies.  

Please if you love us and want to be a part of our lives, don't tell us to move on, don't tell us to get over it. Speak about our babies. Say our babies names! Let us know you miss them. Tell us you don't know what to say but don't keep adding to that statement. 

Delaney taught me that life is too short to care what others think about you. She taught me who in my life would stand by me and who wouldn't. Delaney is my reason for surviving. Delaney is in my every thought, every dream, every tear, every smile. Everything I do in my life now is for her. Delaney made me a mother and for that I'll keep her spirit alive as long as I am. 

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