Letting go, starting again, and catching snowflakes

It started snowing last night in our little corner of the island. It continues falling softly outside even now. Fat, fluffy snowflakes, the kind that rest on your eyelashes before melting away. Snow has always had a profound effect on me; it brings out a child-like glee, making me want to throw snowballs and hunker down in its drifts to create snow angles. And its so calming. There’s just something about the pristine, white blanket, the way it covers over all imperfections of the landscape and muffles every harsh sound that instils peace and takes me to a happy place. H said that for two transnational transplants hailing from frosty, northern climes, it was a good omen. It felt to me like a good start to 2013.

Why start a blog now? After all, I’ve been long, heart-heavy and knee-deep in babyloss, grief, infertility and uncertainty for more than two years now.  And I think that’s it really. I've been in too deep for too long. I'd like to think that the simple act of putting my thoughts to paper (or screen, as the case may be) can help me in the long climb up. I realised shortly before the end of last year that I’d reached a low, caught in what felt like a never ending cycle of fear and doubt and hopelessness. In many ways, it’s felt like my world stopped short the day in August 2010 when we lost our little S, and in some ways, not a lot has changed since. Still no rainbow to parent and love, and no real answers as to why. I’ve been retracing my steps for far too long now, and I think I got lost in the process. It's been lonely and isolating. Something’s gotta give.

And I feel that slightest something stirring in me now. Maybe it’s the start of a new year, or the feeling that the only way to go is up, or maybe the magic snow helped, but I feel ready to let go and move forward. I've had to sort through and make sense of all the emotions that this journey has involved, it's an ongoing process, and maybe that explains why it's taken me this long to articulate it all. What I want to let go of is all the anger and disappointment and hurt that’s accompanied me on this journey, and just hold onto the love I have for S; after all, it’s him who made me a mother, and it’s because of him that I have this fierce desire to parent a living child. So after many months of fatigue, an almost constant sinking feeling, and a period of going-by-rote,  not-very-hopeful, half-hearted months of attempted baby making, I hope things are beginning to shift, and I’m ready to seriously contemplate - and commit to – renewed efforts to grown our family. First up, get my health in order, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

I want this blog to be a space of hope for me, to help me organise my thoughts on the next stage in this journey, and a record that allows me to chart how far I’ve come. Only time will tell. I really really hope 2013 will be a biggy. There’s a lot for us to sort through in the coming year, both with respect to our hopes to grow a family, and our efforts to put down roots and finally have the stable home we’ve been dreaming of for what feels like forever now. Mostly though, come what may, I want to reconnect with that part of myself which has felt so distant throughout all this. The hopeful, creative, adventurous and spirited me, who seems to have been replaced recently by a pessimistic, apathetic, guarded version of myself I'm not particularly fond of. We have little control over what life throws at us (even before babyloss and IF, I was no stranger to that fact), and there are many aspects of this experience which have fundamentally altered who I am as a person. But after so many months and years of perhaps inescapable sadness, I want to realise in my daily life the better version of myself that was promised with my fledgling experiences of parenthood. I want to be a mother that S would be proud to have. There’s a part of my heart that will always be weeping for his absence, but there’s a much bigger space which is and always will be filled only with love for him and gratitude that I got to be his mother at all. I want to honour his tiny life. I intend to reclaim my invincible spring. Call it a New Year’s resolution.

So as H and I strolled through the whiteness last night, hoping for good portents of what may be in this coming year, the sparkling, crystalline flakes drifting ethereally around us, it did almost feel momentous for us, like the turning of a page. A good omen? I don’t know that we’ll get our heart’s desire this year, but I know we’ll be together in seeking it, and that we’re going to try and embrace every little moment of magic en route. I can’t really ask for better than that.
 

 



                                   Like magic