Easter baskets for you!

Beautiful Mess sent a virtual Easter basket for Toren's birthday! For each post in the Hershey's Better Basket Blog Hop, Hershey's will donate $10 to the Children's Miracle Network. The blog post must occur before 12pm on April 4th so hop to it and give baskets to your blogging friends!


The official rules:

HERSHEY’S BETTER BASKET BLOG HOP RULES

• Copy and paste these rules to your blog post.
• Create a blog post giving a virtual Easter Basket to another blogger – you can give as many Virtual Baskets as you want.
• Link back to person who gave you an Easter Basket.
• Let each person you are giving a Virtual Easter Basket know you have given them a Basket.
• Leave your link at BetterBasket.info/BlogHop comment section. You can also find the official rules of this #betterbasket blog hop, and more information about Better Basket with Hershey’s there.
• Hershey’s is donating $10 per each blog participating to the Better Basket Blog Hop to Children’s Miracle Network (up to total of $5,000 by blog posts written by April 4th, 2010).
• Please note that only one blog post by each blog url will count towards the donation.

I'm giving a basket to everyone who reads this but I'll also name a few names:

Bree (this could be something fun to do while on bedrest)
Zil
Reba
Catherine W
angelseashore
myskytimes
bluebirdsinging
Hope
Lisette
Sara
Sophie
Quiet Dreams

Not all of you are currently maintaining public blogs so just know that I was thinking of you and appreciated the birthday wishes for Toren.


Ahh, a light hearted posts feel good :)

Around this time

You would have turned 2

I still miss you.

............

I'm out of town and this is set up to be posted Sunday morning, on the anniversary of Toren's EDD. On this day I'll be helping a friend move, unpacking the moving truck we packed the day before.

..........

Toren, there is nothing I'd rather be doing more than having a birthday party for you.

I guess the terrible two's would be starting ... naively I think that a toddler asserting himself through tantrums and screams would be preferable to this unending silence.

For the second anniversary of a day when nothing changed, words are hard to capture. I tried for a baby but instead got a broken heart, memory box and an ex-husband. But the all consuming anguish is over. Now it's just day after day of coming closer to understanding with all of my being that Toren is not coming back to me. It still is shocking on some level that the little being that I continue to care so much for could truly be gone. In a soap opera it would turn out that he had actually lived and grown in an incubator after scientists administered an experimental drug that prompted organ development. After enough time grieving, so that I properly learned to love and cherish another human being, he would be given back to me.

Sometimes he feels that close. Tonight he feels very far away though.

........

Sunday morning I will wake up in an unknown place, joke around with my friends, unpack a moving truck, continue to lift furniture and carry boxes well past the point of spinal comfort, say goodbye to someone starting a new phase of her life, and get a ride home. Most likely no one will remember that I almost had a baby at this time two years ago. No one outside of here knows that I might as well spend what could have been Toren's birthday being helpful because there is no reason to stay at home.

.......

He feels so very far away. I wish I were preparing a party with family and friends for my little boy instead of honoring my love for Toren alone with his memory box.



Thank you for recognizing how important this very ordinary day actually is for me. I hope wherever our babies are has vanilla cupcakes for their special days. May they always know how loved they are.

The sky looks like dusk but it's only in the noon hour.

Every day glorious and horrific events occur - not to everyone everyday, but I think everyone gets each of them every so often.

This morning my friend's mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In general, this form of cancer does not have a good prognosis. Today the sky over Atlanta weeps with J.


Just like that world views start to change. One moment you are absorbed in the mundane - the beautiful, peaceful mundane! - and ten seconds later life looks very different. Darker, sadder, lonelier. Plans for the future start to unravel as the life you are preparing for flashes by.

goodbye goodbye goodbye

You all have been there. However the information enters, with just a few words or a simple glance, so many important things change. Then your mind argues with the facts; it takes so long for a loss to be fully integrated...

.........................

But somewhere out there many someone's had a glorious day! Was it any of you or someone you know?

......................

My day? Fine, safe, boring - I've taken to my bed with a cold, stubbornly refusing to leave the boundaries of the house until this congestion clears, comfortably sensing that nothing terribly bad will personally touch me tonight. My heart is with J. More on wherever this post was headed soon but for now I wish you all a good night.

Sock it to me!

Kym herself (the brains behind Sock it to Me) got my name in the sock exchange and she completely spoiled me! Look at the beautiful socks she sent me!


Here's what the note Kym included said:
"Butterflies for Toren, a new car for taking the wheel of your new life, and ballet slippers for the hopes that not only will you walk in heels again, but that you'll also be able to gracefully dance when life keeps you on your toes"

I have already found great comfort with these socks (I had to wash the race car ones before the photo shoot!). While my socks will not be worn in stirrups anytime soon (if ever), outside of my annual gyno visit, they ready for visits with lawyers, divorce finalization day (thinking positively here, I don't know when that's actually going to happen), and for those days when I still feel sad (happens more than I like to admit so luckily there are 3 pairs of socks!).

...........

2009 was a really diverse year for me. The year started out with me longing for my husband to realize that he loved me and return home - THAT feels like a long time ago! I rented out rooms in my house so that I could afford to pay the mortgage. I started DATING, and ended up with a BOYFRIEND. And, something that was not written about much here, I began opening up to my family and sharing some honest thoughts with them, which I have not done as an adult before and never would have without having "practiced" on y'all.

You all, my blogging friends, read along and offered encouragement and advice through that emotional year, and never did any one here express frustration that it took so long for me to move on from Toren dying and from my husband leaving. That has been vital. Probably only through the patience of listeners who understand that some losses just hurt for a very long time was I able to start reforming my life.

Starting this anonymous blog and "meeting" so many great people has truly been a beautiful experience.

..............

With so much grief worked through, in 2010 I am able to participate more in life, in blog activities (such as SITM), and offer the view of someone who has survived the initial, crushing heartbreak of losing a baby in supporting others. And of course I'll still be bitching and complaining over here! I still have to get divorced! And this lousy depression lingers on so certainly more pity party posts are predicted (although I hope to actually recover from depression this year).

...........

Anyway thanks everyone for reading along and commenting - it has meant so much. Check out the other SITM posts here. And, the adorable dog in the photo belongs to one of my housemates and her name is Diamond :)