Sometimes I feel like I am going to break apart. Pieces of me flying in different directions. It doesn't take much to shatter me. It's a horrible feeling, because I think, look at everything I have. This beautiful life I've been given. My beautiful rainbow girl who spins light into everything she does. But I still think, this is wrong. Raising Sophia alone is wrong. Without her sister, without the best friend she never got to meet. I think, since she's all we have left, we will give her everything. We will spoil her and keep her surrounded with love and support. But it's still not enough. We can't buy her the life she was supposed to have.

Day 28- Memory

I have been working on the Carly Marie Project Heal Capture Your Grief photo project. Slowly. It went through October but I haven't finished it. I have all of my pictures, but I haven't gotten them all up yet on FB. This is the hardest one for me. The memory. The Memory.

When I was 16 weeks pregnant, Mike and I went to Fetal Photos. We have a long DVD of our baby dancing in my belly. She was actually pushing off of my bladder and bouncing from my ribs and back again. She was opening and closing her hand. The tech said she was saying hello. That is the day we found out we were having a daughter. I was speechless. I was ecstatic. I refused to tell anyone because I thought it was a mistake. We waited until our 20 week appointment to tell anyone because I thought the news would change. But after we left Fetal Photos, we went to Target to buy our daughter her first presents. Shoes, of course. I knew from the moment I saw them, that if I had a daughter, I would buy her these tiny ballet slippers. Mike insisted on the sherpa boots, which are identical to a pair I own. We took the shoes home, never thinking that our daughter would not wear them. Not imagining for a second that the shoes would sit unused in a box, on a shelf in a closet.

Seeing these tiny shoes causes me actual physical pain. Remembering the awe of that day. The hope. The blind joy. This is my day 28.

Gasping For Air

There are days that I really do feel like I will drown. After almost 6 years, that hasn't gone away. The times when the loss of our daughter is so real that time stands still.
All Sophia wants to do is play with other kids. And when it's time to go home, she doesn't want to go. And tonight she said, "All I want to do is play with my sister." Because in her eyes, everyone else has a brother or a sister. All of her friends have someone to play with. How do I explain to my 4 year old that the one thing she really wants, we can't give her?

Walk

I'm sitting outside of the Share Walk. I'm in the parking lot of a funeral home, and I feel like I just ran away from a funeral. All week I've been unsure if I would attend the program this year. It looks like I won't. I've been weak and unstable this week. Its starting, the Holidays Without Her. October starts it and it doesn't end until mid-march. I am unable to stay here with all of these families who are also missing their babies. I feel like an outsider, an imposter, and I don't know why. Why can't I belong to this amazing group? Maybe it would help. But I'm sitting in the parking lot instead.

I wish I could still write. I wish I could draw or paint. I wish I had some way of getting this stuff out of my head so I could think clearly. I wish I had a way of expressing and remembering.

I feel like I spend a lot of time tip toeing around myself and my feelings. Because I know how crazy I can be and I know how delicate my everyday sanity is. An article about taking pictures of a stillborn baby makes me shake. We didn't take enough pictures. I wanted more, I just wasn't strong enough to say please.

Birth Plan

I was just thinking about how much time I spent writing up a birth plan when I was pregnant with Charlotte. How we paid for and went to classes on pregnancy and birth. And how we didn't bother when I was pregnant with Sophia because we knew it was out of our hands. I think about that sometimes, about how sad it is.