A year ago today...

...something was taken away and something was given back to me - my life.

I won't be overly maudlin. It's almost 2am and I'm about to go to bed, but when I rise tomorrow I'll light a candle in honour of our dead baby.

I live to fight another day, to try again.

For that I must be thankful.

It won't be a sad day, just a slightly pensive one.

Picture This: Anaemia & Grief

What is it about us in the Western world that makes us hide our grief away?

When something bad happens in so called 'Third World' nations, they are shown on the TV weeping and wailing openly. I used to think they were mad. Now I think they're onto something. You've gotta get that shit out before it kills you. 

Hence here's a picture of my snotty face after a good cry. 

It's not pretty but it's not the worst thing in the world either. 

I'm still anaemic after a blood transfusion and weeks on iron tablets. 

I've never been pale and interesting, I've always been ruddy faced and harassed looking!

At least I bothered to finish my eyebrows in this one:)

 Compare that to another bare-faced photo where I had a bit of colour

See, pink cheeks!

If I still resemble Casper in a few weeks I'll go to the docs and they might have to inject me.

Yesterday was a good day. I went all day without crying. I can't say every day will be like that but I'll embrace the ones that are :)

WHAT is it to grieve?

To me, grieving is a process I shall describe thus:

It's like slicing open your abdomen to bring out the things we want to keep hidden really, but we know deep down have to be aired and faced or they'll fester inside and kill us. So -almost despite ourselves - we pull out our intestines and put them on a table. We poke through the stinking mess with a pencil, unravelling yards of slippery intestines. We stare at them. We want to talk about them all the time, as if enough talking about it will make it seem real, because really we're still in shock that this thing has happened to us. After enough* time, we start to see the order of things, the way they should be pieced back together. So we shove everything back in, hoping it's going to be all right, and we patch ourselves back together as best we can, although it might be messy rather than pretty. Afterwards, we shouldn't hide the scars of it, because although we might like to forget it all happened, it did, and like it or not it shaped us in some way.



*enough? It might be weeks, years, a lifetime. No one can tell you the length of your grieving is wrong. Whatever time you need is enough.

Talking about grieving is easier than doing it though.