I’m not sure when it happened.
I spent so many years living with the terrible ache and grief accompanied by the thought, “How can I still be here, alive and breathing, while my baby is dead?”
It was a question that rippled through my life causing waves of grief and anger and fear. My mind could never wrap itself around the thought. It just didn’t make sense.
How could there be a world in which I was still here and my baby is not?
For so long this question haunted me. I struggled to find reason and certainty in a world that did not make sense.
I don’t know when the shift happened. I’m not really sure how the shift happened.
Suddenly, it seemed, I found myself thinking simply one day, “I’m still here.”
I’m still here.
I’m still alive and breathing.
I’m still here. Living. Breathing. Existing. Being.
In the darkest hours of my grief and in those unbearable moments of emptiness, I desperately wished that I wasn’t still here. I couldn’t imagine a day when it would feel okay to still be here.
I would have given my life so that both of my daughters might have lived to experience this thing called life on Earth, but I couldn’t.
They can’t live here with me in this life. This isn’t the life I wanted or expected to have. That knowledge breaks my heart. It’s not at all fair or just or right that my children died before they got to really live.
Eventually, though I once thought it impossible, the intensity of my grief began to ebb. In the space behind the grief, a different question arose, “I’m still here. What do I want to do with this life I still have?”
My children are gone and I will never be their mother in the way I want. I will grieve for that and for them for all my days.
However, my life still has meaning. Their lives still have meaning. There is still life after even this unspeakable loss.
I am still here.
What do I want to do with this life I still have?
Emily works hard to increase education and improve care for bereaved mothers with medical professionals and other counselors. She also works with clients individually to provide support for grieving mothers and fathers. She writes and educates through her website, Emily Long: Archaeologist of the Living.
- I Should Know Them Now - May 29, 2017
- Stolen Memories - March 8, 2017
- Receiving Support - October 14, 2016
Yes!! Yes!! I thought I was the only one who literally woke up one day and it all changed!
I still to this day can’t figure out how I have come to Peace! I’ve changed so much!
Honestly before my husband and I began trying to have a baby,I was .. Let’s just say,I had an attitude.. II am bipolar and suffered from depression. I never woke up in a good mood, my husband and I always fought… We have been through two miscarriages, one stillborn, one daughter who passed away two days after birth and a blighted ovum. I became even more depressed. The xanax and other depression medicine helped some,but what really helped was God. I began to pray more than I’ve ever prayed before and one day woke up and thought to my self… IM OKAY. IM HERE. IM HAPPY. my life has been beautiful ever since. I no long take medication for being bipolar and depressed. My husband and I haven’t fought in … Idk how long! We seem to be more in love than ever. I’ve become more understanding, more passionate, more sincere.. Something I still don’t understand how.. Like I said .. I was not the nicest person before all this happened.. But only God can answer the question. I leave it in his hands! This may sound crazy and I may say it a completely different way than I’m thinking but my losses have not become a burden on me, I have not lost. Somehow I have gained!