(insomnia, grief, anxiety, NICU) It’s currently one a.m. and I can’t sleep. This isn’t uncommon, unfortunately. It IS frustrating. I know it’s my own brain working against me, and that’s frustrating too. And listening to hubby’s breathing get deeper and softer is maddening – because I’m not falling asleep too. Today my brain decided I
Category: Grief and Mourning
Why I Dye My Hair
(Topic: Hair-dying, grief) Dear Friends If you could have a super power, what would it be? Let’s restrict it a little: If you could have any super power that is trivial and can’t help fix the world… I always thought it would be the best thing to have a hair super power, able to regrow
Charlie’s Garden and a Pookie Visit
(Topic: Gravesite) Dear Friends, One of the ways I “cultivate” Charlie’s memory (ha ha ha!) is by gardening around his grave stone. We are lucky to have him in an old and beautiful cemetery that is open to people gardening on the gravesites, as long as you stay roughly within their parameters and guidelines. As
The World Grieves with an Orca
(Topic warning: Infant loss and grief) Dear Friends, I don’t know if you have seen it, but there are many articles right now about a mother orca (killer whale) whose baby died. The orca is making the news because of how she is grieving, and it’s pretty amazing. In a nutshell, the calf was born,
Dear Charlie’s Mama, Are You OK?
(Topic: Emotions, Support networks for grief) Hi Friends! This is a FAQ!!! I have enough readers now that I’ve started getting occasional questions, and this post will be structured based on that. Thanks for all your feedback and support! You seem sad. Are you OK? Thank you for your concern! Yes, I’m generally ok. I have
Pookie at Restaurants
(Topic: Explaining Weighted Bears, Infant Loss) Dear Friends, You may have noticed that Pookie (our weighted Molly Bear) comes with us to a lot of places. He’s our avatar for Charlie, but in a way, we have attributed a sort of imaginary personality to Pookie himself, and he’s a member of our family too, in
The Math of Grief
(Topic: Infant loss, grief, math) Image credit: http://aetherforce.com/fibonacci/ Dear Friends, I have friends with all sorts of backgrounds, and all sorts of experience. A friend of mine just went through a grief event, so we have been talking, and both of us try to find analogies to help put grief into perspective, or to make
NILMDTS Walk
(Topic: Grief, Remembrance Walk) Dear Friends, Yesterday we went for a walk in Columbus, as participants in the NILMDTS Remembrance Walk, which I have periodically been telling you about as I asked for donations to sponsor our walk. Well, it finally happened! We drove down to Columbus early in the morning, which takes about 2
Charlie’s Birthday
(Topic: Grief, Birthday, Anniversaries. Picture-heavy post) Dear Friends, Tuesday was my son Charlie’s birthday, and if he hadn’t died, he would now be 2. Sometimes I tell people that it’s the “anniversary of his birthday”, or that it “would be his birthday”, so they don’t expect him to be alive, but for me, it IS
Father’s Day 2018
(Topics: Grief, loss, infant loss, Father’s Day) Dear Friends, The year Charlie was born, Father’s Day fell on June 19th, and it was a Sunday. That morning, after a long and emotional weekend, I gave birth to our beautiful little baby boy, and we spent my husband’s first Father’s Day mourning our first child. I