Where to from here?

Seven months, two weeks, and two days ago, my beloved, longed-for baby died. I left him in his hospital crib, with a kiss upon his cool lips, to be wheeled away by a stranger who did not love him as I did and who could not have possibly tended to him as his mother should have had the chance to.

Not long after that, I came here. I made this space on the world wide web where my little son could be celebrated, loved, remembered and mourned. I did not know how much I would need this space for the overwhelming flow of thoughts and emotions that spilled, and continue to spill from me. I needed it a lot. I don't know how I would have survived without this outlet. There's only so much talk therapy a girl can afford.

At the time I also did not know that there were other women like me doing the exact same thing all over the internet. I certainly searched for them in the first vile days after my baby was taken from me. They were invisible then, but slowly I've discovered other bereaved mums pouring their hearts out, too. I stumbled across one blog that resonated with me, and I followed its links to another, and then another, and then one more. There's a baby loss community out there and I've been watching it from the sidelines, silently. For even I don't know what to say to those who have suffered my fate. I am but a stranger, leaving strange words and empty platitudes on their pages. No matter my warm and genuine intent, I always feel like a stranger who has stumbled somewhere she is not meant to be, looking upon the innermost recesses of a person's heart and soul.

I desperately want to be part of that community. I want to offer my story and I want to be there to listen to the stories of others. I want to connect, I want to participate, I want to grow and learn, I don't want to be alone anymore.

The fallout of a friendship back in March, as a result of a public expression of my grief, regret and sorrow, sent me into hiding. Putting myself out there like that left me feeling very much under threat. Whilst the majority of people who had an 'opinion' on my grief were supportive, and other bereaved parents thankful that I had written such an honest piece, a couple of others, who knew the friend in question, offered unduly harsh personal attacks, saying that my nasty, evil true colours shone, well, evil-ly, I guess, in that piece. Their opinions didn't count and I know their wilful misreading of my piece was just that - a misreading. But my sense of safety and sanity did count. I was too vulnerable to ignore those voices as just background noise and I still wasn't sure what I thought or felt about anything I had written. That piece of writing was straight from the deep recesses of a grieving heart.

Given my chance again I might not write that piece in quite the same way. Given the chance, I know those feelings of unfairness and blind, seething pain at the birth of my friend's baby would have passed. As my psychiatrist said so wisely, that piece documented the beginning of a story. My friend's inability to sit with me through that messiness meant that I would never get to come out the other side of that story where I would realise that her baby was not Max, and I could develop a relationship with him, and his mother, that was apart from the loss he initially signified for me.

I didn't know how fearfully offended people are by emotional honesty and by the many faces of grief itself back then. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, I do. Few people outside the baby loss community want to hear the cries of rage, disbelief and sorrow wailed, and sometimes spat, by the grieving mother.

My closest friends and family do. Even if it is uncomfortable to see me suffer, even if I sometimes offend or hurt them by what is currently my very black and white view of the world, they want to come to this space and sit with me. It's all they can do. It's all I want them to do.

I have trusted a handful of people to come here and bear witness to my experience and to Max's life. By opening myself to them, some of those people who weren't close friends before, have become so. This blog has also kept the lines of communication open to those who were already closest to me, during times when I did not feel like talking but wanted them to know how I was. Some friends I would previously have considered some of my closest don't even know about this blog. I don't know how I decided who I could 'trust' here. It wasn't any conscious decision I made, I just had a feeling that some people would 'get' it, and wouldn't feel the need to have an opinion or a reaction to how I feel or what I write. I was right with that feeling. I was spot on.

This blog has been private since those few days I felt so threatened by people's reactions to my grief. I hid myself away like a frightened animal. I deleted my Facebook account. I completely withdrew. I haven't regretted that. My opinion of Facebook remains, at present, that I can do without it. But I want to connect with those who have been here, and those who unfortunately will find themselves in my place in the future. I don't want this to be a static space, a monologue. I want it to be a conversation about how we live with loss. Or, just, how we live, which I know now to be the exact same thing. 


I know that this blog won't always be solely a place of sorrow. It will grow and change as I do, as those who have been following from the beginning will know that it has already done so. But it will always be a place for me to find Max - to think of him, to love him, to mourn him, as I will do all the days of my life. 


You will notice this blog has a new address - http://mydearestinfant.blogspot.com.au - for that's what Max is, and what he always will be. My dearest, darling, first-born infant, for whom my heart longs. 

It's been seven months, two weeks, and two days since I lost him. But there are so many days to come. I'd like to invite you to stay with me. And please, let me know when you're here. I've enabled comments so that everyone with an OpenID can leave a note, or simply tell me that they've dropped by.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for remembering Max. Thank you for bearing witness to my love for my perfect little son, who was taken from me too soon, and who is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night.

I love you, my darling Max. I love you so much.

Where I've been (part one)

This has been the longest break from blogging that I've had since I started here so many months ago. I didn't mean to take a break at all, but I've had a very busy couple of weeks, probably the busiest I've had in months. I missed signing into this space, but I've also had a lot of time to think, for better and worse. Not writing down my every thought and feeling for almost two weeks has shown me how transient those thoughts and feelings often are. I've had moments of despair during this time, but also moments of thorough enjoyment. Each has passed as quickly as the other, and, as the practice of mindfulness teaches us, this is how it should always be when we simply let things be - when we feel what we feel, and think what we think, without attaching layers of extra 'stuff' to those thoughts and feelings - past experiences, patterns of self-doubt, a running interior commentary on what every thought and feeling must 'mean' or 'represent'.

1) My natural brain - 2) The 'mindful' brain!

Not documenting the constant flow of those thoughts and feelings is much less confronting than doing so - the feelings come and go without any evidence they ever existed. For example, I'm having a good day today. On such a day it is easy for me to forget that a couple of days ago I was really low. For many people this would be the ideal situation, for who wants to remember and reflect on the days where they felt that maybe life wasn't worth living? Well, I guess, I do. Not because I'm morbid, although I guess I probably am right now. But because I know how much I learn from seeing my own internal processes cascade past me on this blog. I write about a horrible feeling, convinced this is the worst feeling I've ever had and that I can't possibly have ever felt this bad before in the whole history of forever. This spirals. I go downhill fast, thinking that there is no point to anything as I am always going to feel like this, and that I always have felt like this. Looking at it objectively, of course that's not true. But depression takes away your ability to look outside of yourself. It tells you things that are not true, but that have just enough of the truth in them to make you truly doubt yourself.

My brain, though sometimes of extraordinary things, often uses its powers of imagination and creativity against me. When I have a low day, as you do when you have depression, and as you do even more so when you have a dead baby as the icing on that cake, my brain tells me a lot of really bogus things. Firstly, it tells me that something is terribly, terribly wrong if I feel sad or despondent or anxious or sad. 'Something bad is about to happen!' it shouts at me. 'React! React!' And so, my body, obeying commands from Captain Neutron in charge, reacts. I feel sick, my heart races, I cry, I run to my bed and decree that I simply cannot leave the house today for I have been told that Something Bad is about to happen over which I have absolutely no control. It's not safe out there. I must retreat. And so, as the obedient servant I am, I do.

As the booming voice of Captain Neutron starts to quieten (he's done his job, he's kept me from the danger zone, so he lets down his guard), I tell him that I think he's maybe overreacted, and that perhaps there was no threat after all. He doesn't like that. He gets hysterical again. 'But remember all the times you were wrong!' he says. Then he shows me a slideshow. A 3D, digital quality slideshow of everything bad that has ever happened to me; of everything bad I could ever imagine having in the future. The soundtrack to this slideshow is the voice of everyone who has ever hurt me; who has ever made me feel unsafe, with a refrain sampling the best bits of my own self-criticism. It's on constant replay. All of this happens in a split second, and despite years spent in a chair opposite the best therapists, all of this can still happen in a split second and take me down before I have a chance to employ the weapons I have been taught, and that I have practiced.

I'm not saying that writing in this blog the last few months have cured my depression. But being able to read over my posts and see documented this carousel of moods - to notice them, write them out, and then let them float away, has been a really powerful thing to me, far apart from anything specific I have expressed about Max or grief. I can call up one post and see for myself a desolate space I was in. I can call up another that I wrote immediately after that and see that this particular feeling passed. It comes up, it goes away. It comes up a million times, in a million different ways, and maybe it will forever, but I always come out the other side. I have some physical evidence of that progress in the 200 entries I've thrown onto these pages. There is always some reprieve, no matter how short, no matter how imperfect.

And so, this blog has become more than a blog about my son, though it will always, always be a place where I find him, and talk to him, and honour him. It's just that it is now also my record. Every one of these posts is my proof that everything is going to be OK. That even when everything is not OK, that I will be OK. Maybe I won't be OK in that particular moment. But I will be OK in the one that comes next, or the one that comes after that. And that's something. Despite everything I'm enduring, that's hope.