Right Where I am: Three Years, Seven Months and Thirteen Days.

I was so excited to see that Angie had set this up again and excited to participate. And yet, now I come to write, I'm not sure where I am or how I'm feeling right now.

Busy - I have been an at-home mum for ten years now. I am not oblivious to the privilege of having the choice to be out of paid employment for so many years. One of the things I do to facilitate this is to grade exam papers every May/June. So, right now, I'm a stay at home mother surrounded by institutional grey sacks filled with the work of some of England's 11 years old. I mark them during Toby's (increasingly fleeting) nap times and at night - leaving very little time to crack open the laptop and read blogs. So, it may take me a while to read all the other contributions; I managed to read every single one last year. I don't know if I will get that opportunity this year - I will try.

And, perhaps, that's as good a place to start as any. I still love this part of the internet and I still wish I didn't know about it but my decision to read and write is less compulsive now. I choose to be here. I choose to take a break and being away doesn't leave me bereft in quite the same way it used to.

I think that this past year - this fourth year - has been a year of integration and renewal. We talk about "new normal" enough for it almost to be a cliche. This year has felt a lot more like "old" normal. I will never be the 2007 version of myself again but some of the better parts of her have resurfaced again and I have enjoyed rediscovering them. I don't feel crippled by my grief anymore. My love for Emma has soaked into my bones and my organs - it infuses me. The missing and the longing are simply there - I don't need to summon them up, they twist and twirl around all the other joys and sadnesses and irritations and richnesses of this life.

I am enjoying watching my family grow. This is the year when I truly knew that my family is complete ... and I can use that word, although it means something different to me now than it would have done at the start of my reproductive years. I have been astonished to find there is relief in that - as well as the grief of no more babies. I recognise that I have been very fortunate in the midst of misfortune. Ben, Lucy and Toby make my world sing and I am relishing each age and stage. In September, my eldest child will be in double figures and I am looking forward (with suitable trepidation!) to navigating his journey into young adulthood with him. That sounds presumptuous - even typing it, I had to resist the urge to add an "if" or something conditional in there. I am far enough along in my grief to think that he will be okay. I'm still close enough to it, to wish to avoid any mention of the future that sounds as though I have expectations. I still want to appease fate, in case it decides to kick me hard just to teach me not to plan or hope or expect. But, assuming no disaster or tragedy, then I confess to feeling excitement about what my family is becoming. And I am hopeful that our marriage has withstood the worst ravages of our (mostly) shared grieving and intensive (over)parenting after loss. No complacency but contentment at where we are right now, together.

This past year has seen a transformation in some of the hardest, most calloused corners of my grief. I sometimes feel as though I go on and on and on about my religious beliefs on this blog but, actually looking back over it, I think the opposite is true. I think my struggles with my faith have been monumental since Emma died and I think I have avoided writing about them because I don't know what to say, because I'm concerned about looking foolish, because I don't want people who read here to be offended - all silly reasons to avoid confronting it, really. I can't pinpoint what has changed but something has these past months. My anger, which was incandescent in the early stages of my grief, has burned itself out and in the ashes I have found peace. I still don't claim to understand why Emma died or to pretend that I can completely reconcile so much suffering in the world with what I believe to be true of God but today I am okay with balancing the doubt and the certainty.

I have begun to renew friendships. It's slow work but, this past week, I have met up with two friends I have barely seen since October 2008 - and it was fun and it was fine.

And pregnant people and new babies don't cause breathlessness and a twist of the guts as once they did. I mainly feel joy at each safe birth. There will forever be a part of me that wonders why my births turned out the way they did, why my "best", most straight-forward labour should have been a death sentence on one of my children but I don't dwell there. I can't - there lies madness and I've been close enough to that edge to want to take a big step back.

Having re-read this, I'm a bit worried that I sound like the Mary Poppins of the babylost world. A spoonful sugar making the bitter medicine of infant death go down. Ah well. I can't help that - my life is mostly good now. There is much joy in it and so much to be thankful for. It's where I am right now. It's not where I am every second of every day - it's not where I would have been had I written this last week when I had one child off school with an ear infection and the other off with a sickness bug. When I had a trip to the hospital with one child for a review of a broken arm and a trip to the hospital with another for an x-ray on injured fingers (not broken, thankfully). All the while, womanfully wrestling with a toddler who is completely delightful and completely imperious and thinks that repeatedly hitting anyone who stands in his egocentric way is an acceptable form of self-expression! But, these are the stresses and strains of normal family life and, even as I want to shout with frustration, I am aware of how lucky I am to experience them.