Grief.

It really does come about in different ways and we really all do deal differently with it. It surprised me how I dealt with the grief of losing Chickadee. The anger attached to it and the bitterness I felt, which were uncharacteristic for me, took me by surprise and made me feel badly about myself. The amount of hurt and sadness I felt and the depth of my grief for something that I had seemed to expect surprised me.

I felt often that I ought to feel another way; when I was sad, that I should move on already, when I was happy, that I wasn't mourning properly. I tried for about a week to ten days to force myself to believe I was doing ok. When I finally allowed myself to not be ok and told others I wasn't, I was suddenly free to be not ok and that, I think, is when I finally began to heal.

These days, I'm feeling normal. Apprehensive about ttc again, of course, and terrified about another positive, but doing ok. I mean, there are things which are sensitive, and I feel stabs at the oddest times, but nearly a month after losing Chickadee, I feel like I can talk about it objectively and that I'm not wearing Chickadee as an albatross around my neck. I am doing ok.

I do think a piece of me is gone or altered forever by this grief. That there will be times in which I feel sadness and grieve for my lost child. There is a piece of me that will always belong to Chickadee, but I do think I can move on from the loss.

Not everyone is the same. I didn't feel this way the first time, this absolute devastation and desolation. I don't know how I will feel if this happens again in the future. I just know that I can survive. Maybe I won't be the same, maybe I will have more scars, but my grief is not all encompassing; it doesn't dictate how my life will be lived. It just is, a piece of me now, an acknowledgement of something lost, never to return. There is a peacefulness now. I begin to feel as if God and I might find our way back again.