Friday Blog Roundup - Now What?

Aside from all the obvious horrors of miscarriage, infant loss and the sometimes resulting struggle to conceive, there's the quiet little sneaking nastiness of uncertainty. It's the feeling of having no control - of being unable to move forward and unwilling to move backwards. Of being caught in limbo.

Plans are what you used to make. After a loss, you realize that plans are what people who don't know any better make. Well, people who don't know loss, anyway.

For us there's no such thing as planning to have a summer baby or waiting until after a wedding for fear of being a hugely pregnant bridesmaid. There are no guarantees anymore. There never were, I suppose, but we just didn't realize it back when the world made sense.

We know all too well what happens to the best laid plans, and because of that we can never look at pregnancy the same way again. Shattered innocence and the inability to plan with any certainly. That's what our reality is. It's just one more way your world has changed. One more thing to make sense of. One more sorrow to get used to.

Chris at Love, Hope and Faith Talks about this very thing.

"From as far back as I can remember I have always had a plan of some type. Everything I ever did was based on something else that would follow down the line."

She says it's unnerving to be out of ideas. Unnerving indeed. We are used to working hard to achieve the ends we desire, and suddenly no amount of work seems to make a difference. Life, Mother Nature, the gods, fate, the universe - something had plans of its own for us.

So, I suppose, the trick is to adjust. To use that determination to figure out the best way for you to survive and, eventually, to really and truly live again. And for everyone it's different - whatever works for you is exactly what you should do. Reading blogs of other mothers and fathers can sometimes give you incredible help and insight as you start your healing journey.

For instance there's a very beautiful post at Just A Cloud Away that urges us to watch for signs from our angels.

"The message could be a butterfly sitting on your nose for 45 seconds, an unusual, long, quiet stare from one of your other children which traveled to the depths of your soul, hearing the same song played at your child’s memorial service, seeing the first letter of their name formed by 2 airplane smoke trails, or a painting of a butterfly in the labor and delivery wall of a subsequent pregnancy."

It reminds us that we have no choice but to adjust our thinking and actively search for meaning and peace in our new, sorrow touched worlds. And yes, hunt for angel signs while we're at it.

Yes, maybe the ability to plan and to be fully in control is a thing of the past, but sorrow can't take everything away from us. There is still so much we can do. So much we can choose to do.

So many of the blog authors I read are actively engaged in charity work. For them it's a way to make something good from something so unthinkably bad. After all, loss doesn't take away that natural instinct we all have to mother - to nurture, care and help. In fact, in many ways it strengthens that desire. Which is why people like Inca work so hard to make a difference in a world she knows is so aching with sorrow.

This week she writes about the fact that her non-profit foundation in memory of her daughter Emma Grace is starting to pick up steam. Word is getting out, and you can hear the excitement in her words as she speaks about the start of the 2nd annual donation drive (Go check it out. Poke. Poke. Poke).

And you know, sometimes you just need a good laugh. Sometimes not thinking about the plans you can't make or the ones you thought you had is the very best thing you can do. A lot of the time it's the very best thing you can do lest your head implode from the sheer force of the suppressed anger, anxiety and confusions swirling around within its confines.

So after you check out Inca's sewing blog, you absolutely must read all about Karla's cats and their herpes.

So yes, planning is out the window. But there's still so much we can do, including searching for angels, helping others and laughing at the herpes cats.

There is life after loss. Even if we can't plan a damn thing anymore.