#MicroblogMondays: Tear Soup

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One of my clients handed this book to me to borrow a couple of weeks ago.  A family friend had suggested it to her after she recently lost her husband.  She said I would cry when reading it, and she was right, but it was the good kind of cry, the "yes, that's what it's like" kind of cry.  It's written to fit for children and adults both, and it does a really good job of breaking down how grief changes and how it gets shared with others.

The main author has written several other short books and pamphlets, mainly about losing a child.  She has a book for the older sibling of a lost baby and one for the rainbow baby.  She has a pamphlet for parents after a miscarriage.  I don't know if that would help or not at the stage that I'm at right now, but I've been thinking about getting it.

Right now, I feel so alone, like we're the only ones who can't have a rainbow baby.  I know that's not true, I know there are so many people out there who haven't been able to have theirs.  But it feels like it's just us.  I still get a lot of comfort from having my son, and I know that's comfort and joy that I wouldn't have if Otter had come before him.  But it's still lonely, and I'm still making my tear soup.

#MicroblogMondays: 20/20 Hindsight

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I was going through more of my mom's belongings yesterday as I try to clear things out and see what can be used and what should be thrown out.  Because this is my mom, I found a file of clippings/shopping bags/fliers from every year she went to Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney.  Including 2005, the year she married my now-former stepdad.  Among the things I found was the article in the Punxsutawney Spirit about them and the letter that she had written about how she would never leave or forsake him.  Um, yeah, that was 5 years before she had to flee with her mom and 5 cats in the night and put him in prison.  What fun memories to find on Valentine's Day!

#MicroblogMondays: Recurring Dreams

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A lot of my recurring dreams relate to anxiety.  I used to have the naked-in-public dream a lot, though that one hasn't come in a long time.  What I get more frequently is either that it's the end of the semester and I haven't been to class or studied or (FAR more often before pregnancy) that I'm supposed to be taking care of a baby human or animal and I end up forgetting about it and leaving it for days or weeks until it is either almost or completely dead.  I've eventually figured out that these dreams relate to my anxiety about dropping the ball on one thing or another.  I try to do so much, and I have so little confidence in myself that I'm always sure I'm going to be screwing something up.  I was running a tournament this past weekend, and I am waiting for the results of whether I passed my second attempt to become a full presenter for a workshop (after technology issues have forced late starts).  My mind conflated those two, and I had a dream towards the end of last week where the tournament (which was supposed to start at 9 and go all day) wasn't ready to begin round 1 until about 2 in the afternoon.  OK, brain, enough!

So what kind of recurring dreams do you have?

A Different Kind of Self-Hate

I hate my body.

I don't mean that I hate my appearance.  I mean, I do hate it plenty of times, I hate the shape of my body, I hate how fat I've always been.  But what I mean is that I hate my body on the inside.

I hate the way my body fails me.  I hate what my body does to me.  When I work with clients on not hating their bodies, one thing I work on is changing the focus from how their body looks to the ways their body is powerful and what their body can do for them.

But what my body can do for me is pain.  What my body can do for me is fail.  Fail to be a real woman.  Fail to carry my baby.  Fail to even put my baby in the right place in my body.

I found myself this week focusing on trying to "get ahead of the pain" with how I timed taking my medicine, and it felt mentally like trying to get ahead of the pain as I recovered from the surgery.  There's something wrong with that.  I find myself rationing my medicine because of how expensive it is.  And that's a generic, it's just a rare one.  There's something wrong with that.  It's my body, failing me like it does every month.

What's there to love about that?

I was working on several things, and I saw a link pop up in my Facebook feed from the fertility clinic that I had used back in Maryland.  The link was about things no one tells you about having a miscarriage.  I went to click on it...and then I couldn't.  And that was a day when I was "doing well."

#MicroblogMondays: Weather

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Last weekend, I took the toddler sledding on the inch of snow we had.  Last night, I turned the air conditioning on because even with opening the windows it hit 76 in my apartment.  That's just nuts.