Anniversary

"The depth of your grief is a measure of the love you have for your child. If there was no love, there would be nothing to grieve." 
~Louis Gamino on miscarriage

No one noticed what yesterday was. An anniversary for which there are no cards. A day that isn't for celebrating.

Four years ago, I lost my first baby. Suffered (and I mean suffered in the true sense of the word) a miscarriage.

And I survived. I survived that one and then two more before Colin was born.

I didn't know what kind of mama I would be back then. If you had asked me, I probably would have assumed that I would always keep working, my baby would sleep in his crib where he belonged, and cloth diapers would only be good for burp cloths. I would never have guessed that tonight, just a few weeks shy of his first birthday, would be Colin's very first night of sleeping in his own crib.

I didn't know I would be so attached.

Tonight, I sit thinking about that emptiness from four years ago. And I know that I'm blessed with two beautiful sons to whom I am very attached indeed.

Tonight, my heart aches not for the loss, but in the memory of how broken I felt. How devastating the loss was. How no one knew what to say to me or what to do for me. How I didn't know what to do for myself, except to pour my sorrow out here, on this blog.

In the ache though, I finally feel gratitude. Gratitude to my first baby who made me stronger. Taught me how to love blindly and completely. Helped my mama wings to sprout.

"The depth of your grief is a measure of the love you have for your child. If there was no love, there would be nothing to grieve."

One in four. That's an awful lot of us, you know. It's time it became alright to talk freely about it.