Help for the soul

Since Ethan's unexpected death, and the crushing of our future dreams of loving pregnancy and experiencing a growing family I have tried many things to help me cope.  It stems from my social work and psychology education - the desire to give help only now it is to myself.  I have read scores of books ranging from heavy topics to mindless novels.  I have tried the occasional glass of wine or cocktail (which only gave me headaches).  I tried hiding everything that reminded me - only to realize that it is extremely difficult to hide my own mind and constant broken heart.  I have tried organizing and reorganizing every nook and cranny of my house - and anyone who knows me can tell you finding something in need of organizing is difficult in my home.  I set up a strict pattern of chores and things to be done every day and tried to focus on and live from one task to the other.  We took an infant loss grief class.  I tried listening to inspirational music.  We tried spending more time in church, only to realize that being in the building where we introduced so many to Ethan and said good-bye at the same time was not helping.  All of a sudden a few weeks ago, I realized something - none of those things were helping me.  I was existing yes, but I was not healing.  I was pretending that all was fine within myself and I was trying to live without dealing with my hurt and pain.  Numbing the pain or finding ways to live with the pain was not healing with the pain.  So I did something about it.  I closed the basement door, put my Bon Jovi mix CD on and selected repeat on the song "You Give Love a Bad Name.", I cranked it up a high as it could go and then proceeded to empty out  and sort through all of the baby items I had shoved into storage along with my dreams and cried my eyes out.   But, I did more than that I let go at God.  Bon Jovi's song yelled out what my heart and mouth couldn't put together...my extreme disappointment towards the God of love who I asked to be there for us; whom I have begged for the lives of two of my children from and I let my anger out.  By the end I had accomplished a lot of organizing and a lot of soul care.  Letting go and letting it out...important and yet this was just a start... I sense a lot of Bon Jovi therapy to come. 

Failure

It happened again this week... someone else I know just told me that she is pregnant; and later on that same day my heart stopped for a split second was ripped out and stomped on when a child innocently proclaimed to my youngest son, "That is my baby, you don't have a baby!"  It isn't that I am not happy for people who are pregnant or having children, my two sons are the greatest blessing of my life and I can't stand how quiet our house gets when they are visiting Grandpa and Grandma.  But every time I see another pregnant woman or see a family with three children in tow or have the daily conversation with my boys that they want to have about when mommy will have another baby in her tummy, I feel like a complete and utter failure.  Like all of the neon lights with big blinking arrows have just turned on and are pointing at me in all of their illuminating glory screaming out "She isn't capable!", "Her body kills her babies!", "She failed to give her boys a sibling!", "She failed to have a daughter for her husband to adore!", "She failed, she failed she failed!"  Why?, why do I allow myself it get sucked into this huge hole of icy muck that just pulls me under.  I was having a good weekend, feeling positive and slightly hopeful for the future - something I haven't felt for a long time, and then someone else tells me they can get pregnant and don't possess with every indrawn breath the fear of their baby dieing.  Being a mother had become how I defined myself, it was the role I was in at this point in life and I was happy and content in it, and now that God has told me that I can't just add to my family as we desire too - I feel like I am a boat out on the vast ocean with out its rudder.  I suddenly don't know who I am supposed to be or what I am supposed to do, and I long for an answer.  But, that is the hardest part, finding a new definition for me, when everything around me is screaming failure at what I was.  It is hard to pull myself out from under the weight of that.  God made me strong enough to live past the death of my child, and I just pray that I am strong enough to get out from under the chest crushing mound of failure that has poured itself down over me.