like a girl

the wolves and the ravens

right where I am: 2014

Ailis Evelyn - 7 years, 1 month, 8 days
Noah Griffin - 4 years, 10 months, 21 days

Last time I wrote for this linkup I had no idea that a brand new baby boy had only days before begun making his determined way into my life. Throughout those long months, even as my belly grew and despite his constant movement, I did not really think it was possible until the night I finally held him in my arms, all grey and slimy and completely, utterly calm. Fingers curling and uncurling, as theirs never did, eyes open and alert, as theirs never were.

I marked Lissie's day in my heart only this year, my head and my hands being mostly full of her new brother. I expect Noah's will be the same. A little extra kindness for myself, a little extra softness for those around me. A grateful heart.

I love you, my babies. Always have, always will.

I am homesick for their faces. It would be the greatest gift imaginable to know their voices, to hear them speak just once. To feel their hands in mine. To have patted their backs and smoothed their hair and kissed their cheeks, as I do for their brother. The one who stayed. The one who lived. There are moments when the distinction crushes me, but I am ever resilient.

I am asked all the time if Hunter is my first. Sometimes I hesitate, but I always say yes. I call him Biggest, because he is. They never got to be so big. But it's ok. He is not his brother or his sister, and I don't need him to be. He is himself and he is perfect. He is just exactly right. In my mind's eye, the ghosts of his siblings trail him wherever he goes. And they are just exactly right, too. I know and I believe they know: right now, we are each where we need to be.





Previous years' posts: 2011: part 1, 2011: part 2, 2012, 2013
Join in here: still life with circles

thoughts and questions and shit to say

I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story — I will. I will speak and share and fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it.

Amy Schumer

Full transcript of Amy's speech from the Gloria Awards and Gala can be found here.

perspective

It keeps going! Depending on the depth of your despair - or power of your optimism - I can see how it might make some people feel worse instead of better. But it's still interesting at least. Here is the link (via Cup of Jo).

Right Where I Am: 2013

Ailis - almost 6 years / Noah - almost 4 years

I don't track days anymore. I have to stop and count on my fingers, now, to be sure of the years that have passed. Ah, they would be so big! Kindergarten, for Lissie, can you imagine...?!

Alas, I cannot.

They have made me a mother but I am deprived of the experiences that make up the stories that make you friends on the outside. Prison terminology seems appropriate to me; babyloss is too much like a life-long sentence for the wrongfully accused, or maybe involuntary committal to a psych ward. Except there is no release for good behavior, no cure, and even if you escape, finally, on a rainbow, there's still a part of your life that almost no one will ever be truly comfortable hearing about unless they've been there too.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.*

My heart is changed. It contains more than I ever thought possible. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and through its transformation I became half time-lord, half human, all whole. I have gained a perspective that is dizzying and grounding at once. The universe fits inside of me. Profound and simple and holy and profane. There is room for you too, and in you too.

Mama, mama, be calm. We know how to wait. We are not afraid.
Be calm, mama. We'll wait.

My children are extraordinarily zen. They cannot teach, but I can learn. I suppose that's rather zen in itself.

Into the air, into the earth, into the fire. I am with you.**

Peace. Love. Light.

I am not broken, and neither are you.



*You do not have to be good, Mary Oliver
**Xenocide, Orson Scott Card

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You can read my previous years' posts here: Right Where I Am 2011 (Part I)(Part II) & Right Where I Am 2012, and link up with us on still life with circles.

notable quotables

Inspired by BRIGHT RED HOODIE. All images via We Heart It.

keep calm and press play

Just wanted to let you know that Josh Garrels and The Oh Hellos both make a lot of music that is very well suited to running outdoors / thinking deep thoughts / pretending you're in a movie montage. I find it uniquely helpful in circumstances such as these.



By the way, if you go to noisetrade.com you can get albums like this for free or by donation, and also explore and access lots of other interesting music as well. This isn't a sponsored post... I just think NoiseTrade is cool.

the love club

Really enjoying The Love Club EP by Lorde. Playing on repeat!

Discovered via Miss Moss, via A Cup of Jo.

destiny

when it matters because of two gardens

I followed a rabbit trail this morning and found something unexpected and resonant and lovely, and almost cried, near the end, but in a good way.

If you have a minute, you might tell me what you think.

ink inspiration: text

surprisingly content

The last couple of weeks leading up have been a bit rough, but now that it's actually here I am doing all right. Tomorrow morning will be spent at home, and then I am driving north to spend the rest of the day with P and his family.

I can feel the love already, and I am grateful.

business note

There are still a few baby items left in my etsy shop, if you'd like to check it out... I would love to empty it before Christmas :)

I will also be taking custom orders in the new year for quilts, fleece blankets, and other such things.

Happy Holidays!

this terror and this beauty

The choice to love, to really love, is incredibly, ridiculously brave.

It is not a surrendering of self but rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then you stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I choose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshiped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.


Rachelle Mee-Chapman, Magpie Girl

capture, release

I went over the list, saved it on my computer. Read it again, closed it again. I am an avid photographer, like it or not; I could have completed the project easily enough. But in the end I didn't feel compelled to. It might have helped, early on. But grief is not something I want to capture, anymore. Those particular relics are not what I want to keep.

I am still the face. I have been captured by grief -- and then, without quite knowing the exact moment that it happened -- released. And I find I am able to return that favor, finally. And I am pleased, and pensive, and content.

John Lennon

When I'm dreaming it feels like the most real thing. Until I wake up, and awake feels like the most real thing instead. And if there is another state, after or outside of awake, maybe it's the realest thing yet. Like the first time I ever fainted, and I seemed to see events playing out from a long way off, speeding up and speeding up until I rushed into the present again, into my body and what was happening to it, into pain in my arms where my friends were gripping them to keep me from slipping further away, to keep my body from slipping as far as my mind had gone. I laughed, because they were gripping my arms so tight, as if that could keep me here. As if I were tangible.

I'd only gone for a minute. But I'd gone to where no one could reach me, and it was huge and narrow and pitch black and bright and full of colors and unutterably, ineffably real.

It was more real than my fingertips on a clacking keyboard and skinny dark letters appearing on a flat white screen in an attempt to make you see. It was more real than tick tick tick and imaginary measurements of time, more real than faith or science, more real than pain. And it made me laugh, that they wanted me back. I didn't particularly want to come back, although there was something, something important to do, and I was forgetting. I was already forgetting.


Afternoon ramblings sparked by this John Lennon quote.

Love you, miss you, wish that I could kiss you.
Happy Birthday, Noah.