Day 39 of 100 Days of Grief

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."

-Winston  Churchill

I have a friend that lost her baby a few weeks before me.  She was little bit farther along than I was when she lost her baby.  This friend is one of my best friends I would say.  We moved in around the same time and then she ended up selling her house a couple different times and now she lives about an hour and a half away.  Our kids are close in age and I felt like almost immediately we formed a bond.  She was easy to talk to and very real with me.  

Yesterday we met up.  When I first lost my baby I feel like I relied a bit on her to help me figure out what was normal.  Was it normal to be this sad.  Was it normal to feel angry? Was it normal to for me to struggle with certain things?   She came down to me probably about a month after I lost Hope and we talked for about an hour.  After things kind of spiraled.  I don't think it was because of our visit but a combination of hard circumstances.  

I worry about her a lot.  She has been on my mind many times this last month and I hadn't really heard from her.  I reached out to her because I missed her and was worried about her.  I hadn't heard from her much.  So we met in the middle and had lunch together.  Our lunch lasted about three hours.

Lately I've felt like I was through the hard part of the grief.  I've felt like I've been able to find joy and happiness in where I'm at.  I felt like there wasn't a ton of grief left in me.  Granted I knew there were going to be things and reminders that I struggled with but I felt like I wasn't having "bad days" so much.  After leaving her I felt heavy.  We talked almost that full 3 hours about our losses and what we were feeling.  Things we feared.  Our futures.  Things that were complicated now that we'd experienced our losses.  We cried together and told each other the really hard parts that we don't talk about to others.  

I drove home and I just felt heavy and like those clouds were coming back.  I even apologized to Nick after I got home because I had wanted to do fun things with the kids that afternoon but I was exhausted.  Physically and emotionally just so exhausted.  I felt like I just needed to close in on myself and hide.  I didn't though and I pushed through and I did movie night with the kids and made cookies with them.  But I struggled sleeping.  Conversations ran through my head and worries and fears.  

Today I just feel beat down and emotional.  I feel empty.  My bucket is empty.  I've cried off and on today and I feel like I'm realizing that just because my days are normally full of joy I still have some things I need to look at and confront.  I feel like I'm doing the best that I can.  Right now I'm still struggling with some mixed feeling of hurt and anger but I'm sincerely trying hard to work on them.

But those very basic questions of why did she die?  Are we really done having more children?, they are all still there.  And the confusion of each day is still there.  As we talked we talked about how it's effected our children and families.  We talked about things that we are being drawn to now because of what we went through and I really started questioning if I've worked through some of those hard things.  Or did I just put them to the side because they were too hard?

I'm honestly not sure and today I feel heavy.  I'm not sure if there is any other word to describe it.  Just beat down and exhausted and... heavy.  

Today's chapter talks about knowing that there are no bad days, just "necessary" days.  This chapter really seemed to coincide with where I was at.  It talked about how if we push through the hard days just to get through them and don't work through the grief the harder the grief will be.  It also talks about how there are days where you can't do anything productive.  You just completely shutdown.  

I remember those days being lots more frequent and they were full days and sometimes weeks.  Now it's pretty rare to have days where I get lost in the grief all day.  Today has been hard but not as hard as the first month or so.  I guess it's just nice to see that even though today is really heavy, it's getting better.  

There was a paragraph that I really liked though.  It says, "yet these 'bad' days are actually days when your body and mind have insisted that you mourn.  What would happen if you were able to perceive them as 'necessary' instead of bad?"  I think on these heavy days it reminds me to check in with myself.  This last week was really busy and I've found myself cutting out the "me time" things.  I stopped creating.  I've stopped reading.  I've stopped taking time for myself and I feel like when I don't do those things, things get heavy.  Or maybe things are heavy and I'm realizing I need to add those things back in to cope with them.  I'm not really sure.  

Today's post is: What does surrendering fully to your grief mean to you?  Describe to your partner or companion in grief what the moment that you full surrender to a wave of grief is like.

To me fully surrendering to grief can mean different things.  I remember this last week there was a day where I was praying that the grief just consumed me.  I cried silent tears as I sat next to Hannah doing her preschool on the computer.  Today fully surrendering to the grief feels like just acknowledging that today is hard.  Taking the time to slow down and realize my body is saying, "hey you need to get back in balance of what you need".  

I think surrendering to grief looks different each time.  It's moments where I have to pull away from what I'm doing and just be.  I feel like I wish I was a turtle and could just pull into my shell.  Surrendering to grief means allowing myself to cry.  Surrendering to grief means sitting with my Hope box and going through everything there because I miss her.  Surrendering to grief means creating.

The last couple days have been hard and I feel like I need to ponder on those questions some more.  I don't feel like I can today but is it bad to put off until tomorrow?  Am I just pushing things to the next day because they are hard?  I'm not sure.  

It all feels so complicated and confusing today.