Walking With You: Clinging in the Pit

So its week two of the Walking With You blog series. Though it makes me so sad to meet so many beautiful mommas who are walking through this same terrible loss, it is a comfort to know that I am not alone. I found so much encouragement from just reading others’ posts last week. This week’s topic is “Clinging in the Pit”…

January 14, 2013 ~ Clinging in the Pit: If you are not new to loss, talk a bit about early grief. What was it like, clinging for hope in the pits of despair? What did you cling to for hope? How did you survive the early days? What helped? What do you wish you could share with someone new to this walk, clinging in the pit? If you’re in the pit, currently, share your struggles. What can others do to encourage you?

Well, I guess I am still fairly new in my loss, though it feels like it has been ages since I last held my baby girl in my arms. I can definitely identify with being in the pit, though. And while these last couple of weeks have brought a bit of lightening from the heavy weight of grief, these past few months have been so hard…hard to breath, hard to see ahead, hard to hope.

I can still so vividly remember the day I walked out of the hospital finally and forever without my baby girl. It was a beautiful June afternoon as we left and walked back to the Ronald MacDonald House one final time. The sun was shinning and the sky was a brilliant blue. The world was alive and moving while I was falling apart. A piece of my heart had died just that morning as my sweet Naomi’s heart had beat its last on this earth. It was all I could do to keep myself upright, to not scream and throw something. I wanted to just come unglued. But I didn’t. Not that there haven’t been many of those days over the past six months that I felt like I was going to just fall apart. There have been so many moments where I didn’t know how I could keep breathing for one more moment let alone for a lifetime, still are. it was tremendously difficult to get out of bed this morning, in fact. But in each one of these deep dark moments I have found that I am never alone. Sometimes a song or a scripture, or the seemingly supernatural strength to pick up the phone and reach out for help, or the strong arms of my husband have found me and I am rescued again from utter despair by my Lord.

It’s hard to say what has been my biggest struggle. The consuming nature of my grief has seemed to suck a lot of joy out of me. I have found more and more that I struggle with talking about my grief with friends. There has been a lot of loneliness as my husband and I have been grieving very differently. Months four and five I found myself deeply depressed, just not caring all that much about life, going through the motions and just so so sad. I started seeing a counselor, which has been a really enormous help. The most significant part of my counseling has been gaining a better understanding of grief and learning to accept myself and where I am on this path and to trust that in time I will heal, I will have hope again. Talking (or blogging!) with other mommas who have been walking this road, to include my counselor, who herself is a bereaved mom, has been one thing that has been a help to me. At first it was hard to hear that the struggle never goes away, that there will always be hard days. But then to know that it does get better, bearable, brings me hope. And as I said before, I feel like I am getting small glimmers of healing, of the lessening of the intense rawness and a bit more of an ability to manage my grief. As long as I allow the time and space for myself to grieve, to talk, to write, to feel what I need to feel, I am becoming much more able to handle more of “normal” life. Yes, sometimes I fake it, but there are also times where I am able to be present now in a way I wasn’t able to two months ago when I was in the deepest part of the pit.

Shortly after Naomi died, some friends of ours that we met during her life gave us a CD of worship music from the Vertical Church Band. This song is one that I listened to over and over again as I drove (and cried) my way through out the days back and forth to work or wherever I was going. The truth of this song…that I have never been nor will I ever be left alone by my God is what I have clung to in the pit, what I cling to still this day.