Post by sunflowersmom on Jan 3, 2015 17:50:57 GMT -5
Hey all!
I don't know if any of you remember me. I've been off and on this site for a few years now. I lost my daughter, Sunflower at full term in October of 2005.
I wanted to share some things with you about my journey. I won't lie. It's been a difficult one. I spent a great majority of the time between now and that fateful day on October 27, 2005 trying to escape and fight with reality. I was too determined and too stubborn at the time to see that it was ultimately me self destructing. But now after enormous amounts of therapy, emotional reactions, and EMDR, I'm learning how to help myself and to heal myself rather than self-destruct.
I'm sure this is a path that we each need to find in our own ways. I won't tell you how to do it because I know that you need to figure it out in your own way and your own time but I will tell you a little bit about how I did it so that maybe if you can take anything from this you can know that you're not the only one who has struggled severely with losing your baby.
I've spent the last 7-8 months learning about trauma. I've spent the past year in therapy. And only after going through a severe psychological breakdown have I finally come to some new understandings about this loss, what it means, and what it's meant for my life over the past 9+ years.
I can't go back and change anything. I can't change that I lost her, I can't change how the severity of losing her caused reactions that lead to my self-destructing. I can't change any of that. But I can look at it all and try to pick out what I can take from it.
I've been trying to heal my wounds for years now but only recently have I begun to understand what that means. Sometimes you have to let go. I know I've never been good at letting go. I felt guilty. I felt like it meant all of this was okay and that I was okay with losing her if I let go.
But I'm understanding "letting go" in a new way now. I'm understanding that to let go means to free myself from the destruction I think that I deserve because of something that happened to me that there is no tangible reason for.
It means that I give myself permission to look at how I allowed the years to go by, all the while subconsciously continuing to look for new and sneaky ways to punish myself for things that were beyond my control.
I don't know if there is a place where one can be completely healed from anything but as I think about my healing in losing Sunflower, I realize that as humans that is our one basic job; We are amazing creatures capable of healing on so many different levels.
I was made for this.
But sometimes the path to healing is difficult to find among all of the confusing emotions caused by my grief. It was easy to deceive myself in previous years that I was on the path. Maybe I was on the path and it just took me longer than I would have liked. But when I get to that place where healing happens, it doesn't take the pain away. It doesn't negate everything that has happened to me.
But it does give me some peace.
I don't know if any of you remember me. I've been off and on this site for a few years now. I lost my daughter, Sunflower at full term in October of 2005.
I wanted to share some things with you about my journey. I won't lie. It's been a difficult one. I spent a great majority of the time between now and that fateful day on October 27, 2005 trying to escape and fight with reality. I was too determined and too stubborn at the time to see that it was ultimately me self destructing. But now after enormous amounts of therapy, emotional reactions, and EMDR, I'm learning how to help myself and to heal myself rather than self-destruct.
I'm sure this is a path that we each need to find in our own ways. I won't tell you how to do it because I know that you need to figure it out in your own way and your own time but I will tell you a little bit about how I did it so that maybe if you can take anything from this you can know that you're not the only one who has struggled severely with losing your baby.
I've spent the last 7-8 months learning about trauma. I've spent the past year in therapy. And only after going through a severe psychological breakdown have I finally come to some new understandings about this loss, what it means, and what it's meant for my life over the past 9+ years.
I can't go back and change anything. I can't change that I lost her, I can't change how the severity of losing her caused reactions that lead to my self-destructing. I can't change any of that. But I can look at it all and try to pick out what I can take from it.
I've been trying to heal my wounds for years now but only recently have I begun to understand what that means. Sometimes you have to let go. I know I've never been good at letting go. I felt guilty. I felt like it meant all of this was okay and that I was okay with losing her if I let go.
But I'm understanding "letting go" in a new way now. I'm understanding that to let go means to free myself from the destruction I think that I deserve because of something that happened to me that there is no tangible reason for.
It means that I give myself permission to look at how I allowed the years to go by, all the while subconsciously continuing to look for new and sneaky ways to punish myself for things that were beyond my control.
I don't know if there is a place where one can be completely healed from anything but as I think about my healing in losing Sunflower, I realize that as humans that is our one basic job; We are amazing creatures capable of healing on so many different levels.
I was made for this.
But sometimes the path to healing is difficult to find among all of the confusing emotions caused by my grief. It was easy to deceive myself in previous years that I was on the path. Maybe I was on the path and it just took me longer than I would have liked. But when I get to that place where healing happens, it doesn't take the pain away. It doesn't negate everything that has happened to me.
But it does give me some peace.