Softness

I love to read. I would much rather read a book than watch a movie. After losing Maddie, reading was a difficult task. I lacked concentration and wasn't able to focus on anything except how devastated I felt.

Slowly, focus returned.

Last year after the focus returned, I had a strong need to read about other parents who survived the loss of their child. I read many books that told sad, familiar stories of stillbirth, pre-term birth and SIDS. After a month or so, I picked up another book at the library and started to read more stories. I found myself not being able to absorb any more sadness. I returned the book to the library unread. I was full.

I discovered the land of BLM blogs. That was more easily absorbed...short little snippets...much like exchanging an email with a friend.

A few months later, I returned to my beloved books. Fiction was tolerable again.  I found a different kind of BLM book. Ones that were not loaded with so much harsh grief--ones that had perspective after some time.

My grief over the stillbirth of our daughter is evolving. Slowly but surely, I am finding it a little easier to take a deep breath and live...plan for the future. There are still moments that catch me off guard and punch me in the chin. I suppose it will always be that way.

Lately I have read a few books not strictly focused on losing a child, but spoke of how to deal with loss in general. One discussed the topic of closure. It speaks to how Americans fight so hard to come to the point of closure after a loss; a death, divorce, job loss, etc.

I don't know how to frame closure in my mind. I don't think I will ever have closure over the loss of Maddie; but I don't think that is a bad thing. My grief will continue to evolve. It will continue to become softer, tolerable.

Another book I am reading offered this:

Going beyond fear begins when we examine our fear: our anxiety, nervousness, concern and restlessness. If we look into our fear, if we look beneath the veneer, the first thing we find is sadness, beneath the nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up, vibrating all the time. When we slow down, when we relax with our fear, we find sadness, which is calm and gentle. Sadness hits you in the heart and produces a tear. Before you cry, there is a feeling in your chest, and then after that you produce tears in your eyes. You are about to produce rain or a waterfall in your eyes and you feel sad and lonely and perhaps romantic at the time. That is the first tip of fearlessness, and the first sign of warriorship. You might think that when you experience fearlessness, you will hear the opening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or see a great explosion in the sky, but it doesn't happen that way. Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart. Chögyam Trungpa

There is something very beautiful about this passage that I can't even put into words.

Merry Christmas, baby girl. I love you so very much and I know you are happy, peaceful and loved. Til we meet again. ♥