To read more about my journey through loss, click the link at the beginning of this blog. I am honored to have Scary Mommy find my message so important that they would publish it.
As always, I am saddened to have a story of loss, grief, despair, and emptiness to offer. There is a multitude of ways loss manifests itself; all of us has felt its lashing sting. My writing continues to convey my personal story, yet it connects with everyone. Loss is loss. Grief is grief. Healing is healing.
Losing Sophia felt like a hurdle I would never overcome. Having two more miscarriages felt like obstacles far too large to get around. Yet, I moved forward from all of it. I carried the sadness with me and found a way to mesh it into my ever-evolving life. Holding all the pieces together, my heartbreak found a way to tag along as I nurtured fragments of happiness and normalcy. My babies’ hearts may have stopped, but nothing else did: my work overflowed my desk, traffic sped through intersections, newborns took their first breaths as they joined us on Earth.
What we do with our heartache changes the contours of our lives still left to experience. Stuffing it into the farthest depths of ourselves, hoping it will disappear, rarely is without consequence. Allowing it to breathe, thrive–and sometimes dominate–in our world gives it the attention it deserves. Ironically, the more I paid attention to it, the less it reared its ugly head.
Emotions are complicated. Emotions commingle. Emotions are felt together, like the blended colors of M&Ms as our soft serve ice cream melts at the bottom of an almost empty cup. One does not end to allow another to begin. They co-exist, dance together, and form something new.
When I contemplate how I ever managed to survive the overwhelming melancholy that followed the loss of my daughter, I realize I played the game as well as I could have. The co-dependence of one emotion to another saved me. Allowing pieces of happiness filter in gave me the specks of hope and joy I needed to find the ending to each day. Sophia–and my other two angel babies–are always with me. I think of them each day. I speak to them each day. And I am grateful for their existence in my soul. While I continue to feel heartbreak over what is gone, it has never blinded me to what still exists.
Laura Gaddis 