Integrating Loss Into Who I Am Now
I starkly remember the feelings of living in someone else's body. Returning home with a body bleeding from giving birth, one that ached from the strong contractions and from pushing so hard to birth my stillborn baby. One that had swollen breasts full of milk.
I remember this body, it was a body that appeared after my first baby but it was an expected body because when I looked down I had a newborn nursing in my arms.
I lived in an out of body experience for weeks after Rainey’s death.
Every day the body looking back at me in the mirror shouldn't have been mine. I shouldn't have had this body because this body only makes sense with an infant in my arms. Replaying over and over again those words, there is no heartbeat, the hours that followed those words, the strength and pain that brought her out of my body and into this world.
Those moments that have me shaking my head telling myself again and again that this is real. That she is real. That she is gone and that she died. It is real you didn't hallucinate a moment of it.
I remind myself, this is my life now- Breathe Momma.
Integrating the loss into who I am now- has no instructions. No one can tell me how to do it or even tell me when it happens or if the ache ever stops. I notice the change slowly as I reflect over the past year. When I read poems and excerpts from my journal written in those early days after Rainey’s death. I see now how I carry my deep pain, the pain that was at one point beyond suffocating. I can see the light more clearly now. I don’t feel like I am drowning under the deep grief waves as often. I am no longer desperately clinging to the words of hope anymore just to feel like I might survive this- words that got me through those early days and helped me pull my feet back under me. I can almost now celebrate the fact that my sweet girl will never know pain and is now channeling who she is through me.
I see now that I have a renewed purpose on this earth to hold others who are walking through painful suffocating days. I am not exactly sure what that will look like. I will start with what I know but I know that the Lord has bigger plans with me. To use this pain to bring hope and love to others out there.
Before Rainey, I didn’t write. I didn’t use words to express myself. I didn’t know how to put words to my feelings. After her death the words just began to pour out of me. Allowing me to poetically express my deep pain and trauma. A gift I am so appreciative of today. I marvel at some of my writings and don’t recognize them sometimes. I imagine that these are Rainey’s words written out through me. Such a beautiful gift the Lord has given me to allow me to connect with my baby girl. He knows how deeply I mourn not being able to build a visual relationship with her here on earth.
Integrating loss and trauma into who I am today will be a long process and one that will never be over. One that calls me to use all of my tools, see a therapist, journal, communicate hard feelings in my relationship, let go of toxic relationships. A journey that will have really hard days that pull me down under the waves but also days where I smile all day long. I know there is not a moment that my sweet girl is not with me.
