ALI...

...Or Adoption/Loss/Infertility, to those unfamiliar with blogosphere slang.

This is the niche on the web in which I have made myself comfortable over the past year. I find so much healing in reading posts from people who understand what I'm going through. Generally they are able to better state it than I am, so I tend to comment more than I post. But the therapy in any case has been immense.

At the same time, I feel like a misfit. I arrived here during my struggle for breath after Aiden died. I found Carly first. And she just seemed to understand. She honors angel babies everywhere, she knows what it means to remember them. I was better prepared to face the "outside" world because I read about what happened to babyloss mamas in the ALI world, what they thought and felt, how words and actions affected them.

But I wasn't a babyloss mama.

I'm Aiden's auntie.

Mama > auntie

So I tread lightly, knowing that I don't truly know what they feel. I know what I have felt, and it seems to echo so closely what they speak of. But I respect the difference.

And it makes me think, maybe there's a reason I came here. Because everywhere that there is a babyloss mama and papa, there are almost definitely babyloss grandparents, and probably babyloss aunties and uncles, and friends and other loved ones. All hurting for the loss of hope.

We suffer at the same time that we search for belonging. Respecting differences, sometimes maybe holding back a little too much. Feeling deeply every hurt that babyloss mamas speak of. Grieving quietly behind them. Wanting so much to comfort them, to let them know that at least in some way some of us understand too.

It was Aiden who brought me here.

He is our angel. And I can't help but wonder if there are reasons why he's done this.

Christmas

Merry Christmas, Aiden. We love you!

Trying not to think of what today would be like if things had only gone differently.

Missing you and sending you hugs up in heaven.

Love always,
Your Family

Teamwork

A blogger friend described what grief does to a mind: it makes the edges fuzzy, it blurs and distorts. I am was a very organized person. Friends would lovingly say that I had OCD. :-P But for the last eleven months that organized person has been on hiatus. Basic things like washing my clothes BEFORE I have to get dressed for work has become a serious challenge. I can't even count how many mornings I've stared into the empty fridge as the realization dawned on me that I'd forgotten to make food for my next meal. I'm lucky if I make it home at the end of the day in one piece. Gone are the days of lists and planning and productivity in general.

The point of this is to explain that I have a new-found appreciation for productivity, as it now has a tendency to escape me.

This past weekend was the first exception in a long time. Drumroll please...

...Our long-standing bathroom remodel has progressed! We have gone from tiny, disgusting, leaking, claustrophobic 1950s bathroom to the skeleton of a new and vastly improved space.

Maybe it's just side effects from breathing in too much mold and asbestos for the last two days, but looking at what we accomplished this weekend I get this strange tingling in my belly. Sort of like, could it be, happiness??

Nah.

But at least a sense of satisfaction that productivity has happened. Perhaps the elusive is not so out of reach as I had thought?

And I'd just like to say how much satisfaction I get from working on these kinds of projects with hubby. Remodeling is our hobby, and I remember having a lot of fun doing this kind of stuff, but with all of the insanity it had been a while. We make such a good team. This work is almost therapeutic to me. We can be standing in the midst of an open pit where a bathroom once stood, covered in dust and splinters, staring at rotten framing boards and cabitzing like old farts over how best to fix it, and I'll just look him in the eyes and start giggling.

I love this man.

I love that we're a team.

Last night after picking the last of the construction debris out of my hair we went to our church Christmas cantata. And in the darkness, as the bellchoir played and one of the young "sheep" wandered off the stage, he wrapped his arm around me, and that belly tingle progressed into a smile.

Happiness. :)