What does life for parents look like a year after loss? A few years? Many? Well, it LOOKS pretty much like life prior, honestly. They saying “life goes on” is incredibly harsh to say to a loss parent but it doesn’t make the notion untrue. For a time, our worlds stop. For a time, we feel like everything and everyone is moving forward around us; kind of like a slow motion scene in a movie. Eventually, though, we just start moving with them again.
Returning to work often becomes inevitable. Reinvesting in our living children gets easier. Talking to and seeing friends and family seems commonplace again. Shopping, social activities, chores, smiling, laughing… living… all make their way back into our daily lives. Some of us finally begin to make plans to try for more children, or at least fathom the idea.
How long does all of this take? I can’t answer that for the masses. One breath at a time is the best advice I have. At first each one will be more painful than anything you can imagine. And you may even wish to actually stop breathing sometimes. Hell, I still do now and again when I’m deep in my feelings. But it gets more and more manageable. Even though there’s no going back to being the same person as before, there’s a new being that gradually emerges from the dust. One tbt is able to carry on with life.
We’re not who we once were, yet are still here, going on. The loss hurts forever, that won’t change. We never fully recover from that dull ache in the recesses of our souls, but we do learn to hold it there in its sacred place, and go forth in honor of our angel babies.
The Reinvented Mom 