I will never be the same

This blog post is so achingly true, I had to save it forever. It really touched my heart to read. And it is true that it is SO comforting when someone acknowledges that I will never be the same, and that is OK. It's probably only genuinely happened once or twice. I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin sometimes, like the elephant in the room. I want so badly to be "back to normal" so that I won't feel like I'm making others uncomfortable, so I won't feel so awkward in group settings. For someone (even an internet stranger) to tell my that I will never get over this, and that is just fine, is such a calming reminder. I can feel my anxiety lighten a little bit. I often feel like on top of "getting over" the death of my babies, I am also "expected" to "get back to normal" and become my old self again. The truth is, that person is gone. I really appreciate the validation that it's OK to stop looking for her, and the reassurance that someday I will be comfortable with my new self.

Reprinted from Glow in the Woods, a site for babylost parents (bold mine):

Even in the first, fresh few days, I knew that I would feel better some day.

But I didn't want to feel better some day.

The first time I didn't feel absolutely beaten down by the fact of my baby's death, I felt terrible. I was the mother of a dead child, and that was wholly my identity in those first days and months. I wasn't a daughter or sister or a writer. I was a wife—wife to the father of a dead baby.

That dead baby, my son Gabriel, was my whole world. I couldn't believe it. I could not wrap my head around it. I thought it was a dream. I would wake up at night with aching breasts, expecting to hear him cry. I simply could not fathom how this was my life.

I did not want to feel better. But eventually, I did.

I can't tell you if it was six weeks or six months later, but I started freelancing again; I went to a concert or two (which was extremely disorienting); I made love to my husband; we traveled to San Francisco with his family, including my pregnant sister-in-law.

I was still the mother of a dead baby. How could I be more than that? Despite my best efforts to not move forward, I was. It was not easy—it was terrifying. But it was forward.

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The kindest thing someone said to me in the days after Gabriel's loss came from my uncle, my father's brother, who had lost his 22-year-old son in a car accident years and years ago. You will never get over this. It was such a balm. I didn't have to try to get over my loss, put it behind me, pretend to "be okay". It was never going to be okay.

You will never feel as good as you did before you became the parent of a dead child. That woman, that man, is lost to innocence, lost to the pure joy and miracle that is making babies. Even sex will be fraught for some time. I suggest wine. Not too much.

Every pregnancy you hear about—even (I hope) your own—will be shadowed, sometimes so darkly you will wonder what you are doing in a world where people want to have babies. It's madness. Madness you may recognize someday as your own.

Though you may need help to heal from such devastation—therapy, medication, a vacation someplace far from everyone you know—you will never get over it.

But you will feel better.

~ Red Pen Mama