It has been 5 months since I first held our precious baby in my arms. 5 months since I first smelled him, felt his skin, heard his cries, and kissed his perfect forehead. I can still smell him, feel his skin (truly the softest thing I have ever felt), and feel the weight of his body in my arms and on my chest. Not a second goes by where I don’t miss him.
I believe that grief must be experienced. To ignore it and numb it will cause it to become louder and louder until you cannot possibly keep your back to it.
As Brené Brown says, “We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Numb grief, we also numb joy.
Grief is transformative. Which is both wonderful and terrifying.
Feeling that I am a stranger in my own body, mind, and soul has been one of the most difficult parts of this journey, and sometimes it feels as if any more transformation will leave me, Ali, beaten up and dead in a dumpster while this alien walks away to live my life.
I had a wonderful woman ask me to envision myself as a landscape during a meditation. To take my feelings and current situation and allow a landscape to appear. At first I saw a flower here and there and was focused on those flowers, willing them to be more abundant and vibrant. Then, I took a step back to view the landscape as a whole… It was a burned wasteland. My landscape resembled the pictures of California post fires; completely devastated.
I have since thought about that experience and the meaning of it… I am a burned wasteland. Everything I had built before is gone. The old Ali is gone. It feels like nothing has survived this fire of grief.
But, after a fire, the ground is more fertile than ever. Things grow quickly and they grow strong. A phoenix will only arise from the ashes.
My desire to focus on the flowers shows that I am desperate to focus on the positive and the good. Like a life raft I want to hold on to anything that gives me some sense of stability and connection to earth. I want to be happy, I want to move through the discomfort, I want to be comfortable.
I surrender.
Until now, I have been desperately trying to guide the direction of my grief. I have wanted to get an A+ in grieving (yeah, it’s a bit F*ed up), to do it “right,” and to be worthy of the accolades of strength I have received. However, as I said in yesterday’s post, grief has no timeline and it doesn’t make sense.
After 5 months on this journey, I am continuing to find dark spaces when I thought that I had exposed them all (or at least most of them). These dark spaces are deeper, darker, and scarier. My instinct is to run, to push this work away, and to try and move forward, but I know that the deep work will be the most valuable and most worthwhile.
I have Logan guiding and supporting me on this journey, and I have an amazing support team ensuring that I don’t get lost in the muck.
When Logan was alive and in the days and weeks following his death, I continued setting new bars for the “hardest thing I had ever done:”
- Giving birth
- Learning my son was going to die
- Signing my son’s DNR order
- Holding my son as he died
- Giving his body to a stranger
- Saying goodbye to his body one last time
- Picking up his cremated remains
- Breathing
- Getting out of bed
- Etc.
Now, I am setting new bars for the, “most vulnerable I have ever felt.” It is uncomfortable. It is scary. And it is necessary.
On Logan’s 5 month birthday, I am committing to continue embracing vulnerability and to release my expectations for this journey. Here we go…
Good Things:
- Larry is the greatest dog <3
- I love fall weather
- I got my new website up!