Life After

This might be an obvious statement, but I'm going to say it anyways: adjusting to life after Charlotte has been hard.

For most of my pregnancy, all my thoughts and prayers went into hoping Charlotte would be miraculously cured and we'd get the chance to watch her grow up. 

When the day finally came that we met out baby girl, the only thing I could pray for is that Charlotte knew how much we loved her, always & forever.  

And then when she left us, my prayers quickly turned towards surviving another minute/hour/day without her. 

While we’re still experiencing a heart ache that neither of us ever knew possible, we continue to encourage each other to get out of bed every morning (even if only to sit on the couch all day) and navigate this new path we’ve been directed to walk down.

As someone who enjoys reading about others experiences, Google has become my go-to especially when I find myself wondering how others have survived a particularly difficult situation.  Thankfully, I have found quite a few resources that have helped with some of my unanswered questions, but there have also been times where I come up empty when looking for other people's accounts regarding certain topics we've come across.  Which brings me to this post.

As a result of attending my first Influence Network class earlier this month, I left feeling encouraged to share about our loss and, more specifically, what life has looked like for us since December.  So over the next month, my plan is to spend some time each week addressing my thoughts around the following experiences:

• How we have got through happy occasions like holidays & family gatherings;
• How we've navigated through new mom “things” like pumping & putting away all the gifts we received without a baby around to show for it;
• How we have dealt with questions about Charlotte & the future that have inevitably been asked.

Not only do I hope this will be therapeutic for myself after what we've been through, but I pray that this will also benefit others who, unfortunately, might be going through a similar experience and wondering the same thing.