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.

Building bridges.

Angie's recent post on self-compassion gave me a lot of food for thought. It's an incredibly rich piece - deep and meaty as Angie's writing is and I've only really scratched the surface of what she is saying but it has made me think. As has the renaissance of new and fragile faith in me. I have missed it, I'm simply not cut out to be an atheist or even an agnostic but it has been a slow and painful journey to this place. A place where I sit with the doubts and my certainties and it's okay, it works and I find peace there. The two together have left me reflecting on the relationships I destroyed when my baby died.

 I cut myself off after Emma died. I wrote about wanting to be alone, about being an introvert, about simply wanting to wrap myself in my family and never interact with the outside world again. It was me. I think, perhaps, that is unusual in our circle. Too many times, bereaved parents have posted about the stupid/the wrong/the insensitive things others have said to them - some forgivable, others not - others hurtful and cruel beyond imagining. Or, as often, the silence and the failure of words.

It hasn't been that way for me ... well, not much. The odd sentiment has been expressed badly or clumsily. The odd remark has shown me that someone really doesn't understand. But really, the friendships that have fallen by the wayside have done so because I  willed it so. I closed those doors and blew up those bridges. I did it quite consciously in the early days. With a few exceptions, if you hadn't lost a baby then you were too hard to be around. And these were good and compassionate people (my bridesmaids among them) - people who could have helped me carry the burden if I had let them. But I wouldn't. They came to visit and they supported me with love and I closed the door behind them on the way out and never rang again. I hated using the phone - but that was just an excuse. In these newfangled, modern times where I spent hours communicating with dbms on the other side of the world, I could have connected easily enough but I chose not too. I don't know if I feel bad or guilty about it exactly. It was what it was - I can't change it and I think, for me, it was how I needed to grieve. I remember holding Emma in my arms and thinking (in the midst of a maelstrom of incoherent thoughts) that I would feel this however I wanted to feel it and I would not apologise for emotions that made people uncomfortable. But, in making that decision, I ignored the fact that, at some point, they might miss me - miss my support. I suppose I thought that nothing as bad as a baby dying would ever happen to them so they would NEVER be the one needing support again. The friendships would always be unequal with me as the keening mother without a baby and them holding me up. I refused to acknowledge that divorce or ill health or money worries or unemployment could cause heartache in the way that infant death does. But where is the compassion in that? Where is the opportunity to connect to someone with love, to be a friend?

And so, recently, I have been attempting to rebuild some of these friendships. It is a slow process - building takes longer than destroying always. I still hate using the phone. I still find it easier to interact virtually than to deal with real people but I have started to reach out to friends I haven't seen for 3 years, to ask them, "What's been happening in your life?" and to listen - to really listen (without the gentle background hiss of my inner demons who chant "Not as bad as baby death, not as bad as baby death").