Life Changes

I'm officially on leave from work as we open our home to our future adoptive children. While I can't share online about them at this time, I have been reflecting on the changes life brings us.

Change is an adjustment, whether it is a positive or negative change. With change comes uncertainty. It's hard to live with uncertainty. I'm a planner, and I like to know what will happen next.

The Serenity Prayer has been a constant theme in my heart and mind as I walk through the waters of change.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference.

The "Courage to change the things I can" piece of this comes easily for me. I know how to take action and make stuff happen. What's harder for me is the "Serenity to accept the things I cannot change." Often I get confused and think I need to be changing things, which are really not within my sphere of influence.

So I'm learning how to live in acceptance. It's freeing to accept the things I cannot change. And this makes it a little bit easier to let go.

Due to the life change we're walking through, I may not be blogging as much as usual for a short while. But I'll get online as often as possible to continue to mull over the blessings and challenges of this thing called life. Thanks for reading along with me.

Ready, Set, Go!

So, for a few months now I have been procrastinating. I need to morph this blog into something beyond my grief experience, and that is a hard thing to do. For a while I think some deep part of me felt like if I talk about other things than my daughter and how much I would always love and miss her, I would be acting as if she didn't really matter.

I overheard someone on the train to Philly a few days ago say that perfectionists are among the worst procrastinators. It is the drive to do it perfectly that makes us afraid to actually start, because it is so intimidating. I won't explain this further, because if you are a perfectionist like me, it will already be making some sense to you.

A wise person once told me that as Luke and I continue to grow our family, we will not stop grieving our daughter. We may be caring for more children in the future, but the grief process will not stop once they arrive. And her memory will not go away once they arrive.

So I'm taking the plunge right here, right now. I'm giving myself a big kick in the rear, and I'm shouting "ready, set, go!" Let's do this thing.

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be flexible. Gathering Blessings is about finding reasons for joy, meaning and thankfulness in any season of life. So future blog posts here will chronicle not only grieving our first daughter, but to muse about the process of adopting our future children.

It's a new year, and it's going to be filled with learning and challenges, laughter and tears. I wouldn't have it any other way.



Happy New Year 2013 - hopefully by next year, there will be more Martin family members in the picture!

Making It Meaningful

After losing Liza, one of the things I struggled with was the feeling that all the meaning had drained out of my life. This is a common feeling for parents who have lost a child, or so they tell me. But during the first year or so, I really struggled on many days to think of a good reason to keep going.

My stomach hurts a little bit just writing this, because I remember the intensity of the void that was left when she was gone. I physically felt the grief in my core as I groped blindly for a way to move ahead. Sometimes this feeling comes back even now, almost two years after her death, but it is less painful now. Time and working through the grief process does ease the sharp edges after a while.

Where was I going with this? Ahh yes... the struggle to find meaning. The experience with Liza taught both Luke and me to look very, very hard for meaning, at a time when meaning was less than a faint glimmer on the horizon. It taught us that we can carve meaning out of the darkness. We can create meaning in our lives, and when we do, it builds layers of richness and memories into this journey.

For me, meaning comes from the small things, many intentional acts that begin to weave a beautiful tapestry. Meaning for me comes from baking things from scratch, using recipes and techniques that have stood the test of time. Meaning comes from doing things to make holidays extra special. Every day we have is so fleeting, the time passes too quickly. I believe in living every day, every moment, to the fullest. My experience with Liza taught me this, as we tried to savor every second that she was breathing and alive.

It is my hope going into this holiday season that I will be able to weave more meaning into the path of my life, and that I will be able to savor the special moments that occur every day along the way. Now it's your turn: What adds meaning to your life? 

The Butterfly Circus

The greater the struggle, the more magnificent the triumph...

I love this short film.

It's such a good story of how each of us has value, no matter the circumstances that biology or life have thrown at us. And it's a wonderful look at how we can overcome adversity and create something wonderful out of the ingredients life has given us.

I hope you will watch... I did, and it made me really appreciate the specialness of everyone around me.

Things like this mean so much more to me after having and losing a daughter with Down syndrome.

When people acknowledge and celebrate the unique qualities of every human being, it is a benefit to us all.

Click here to watch.

Living Intentionally, Grieving Intentionally

It's summertime, and the living is... busy. This post is long overdue because we have had lots of summer activities going on - picnics with friends, family gatherings, and warm-weather-inspired fun.

I'm a firm believer in living intentionally, so while the weather is warm and the sun is shining, I've made a conscious choice to get out there and enjoy it. And I've taken my time getting back to the introspective (often indoor) activity of blogging. So here it goes...

Sometimes as grieving parents, I think we need to make a choice to let ourselves remember our children. The other day I did this by taking Liza's scrapbook, the chronicle of her life, and sitting in a room by myself. I looked at the whole book, remembering the good times and the bad times. And I cried.

A page out of Liza's book, and a page out of our lives.

This, to me, is what it means to be intentional about grief. Sometimes memories and emotions come spontaneously. Other times, I think we have to make time to let ourselves process our feelings.

The same is true about life in general. We can be intentional about the way we choose to live, where we focus our energy, where we pour out our love.

One of my choices is to remember my daughter, to spend time recalling her life. I think it honors her memory. It is also a way that I can be kind to myself by acknowledging that I need time to grieve her, I need time to love her, I still need time to be her mommy.

I'd love to hear from you... what do you like to do to "be intentional" about living?

We Go On

This weekend we had the privilege of interacting with some members of another family who lost a child recently. Their loss was under much different circumstances, but there are similarities in the way we moms and dads feel.

After conversing for a few minutes about our experiences of sorrow and pain, we both moved on to other activities at the picnic we were attending. Times of grief flow into motion, a choice to continue and to participate in life.

And so we go on.

The alternative to going on is to simply stop. It is tempting sometimes when the heart wrenching reality of the gaping hole is yawning within us. When a child is lost, there is an empty space in our lives that refuses to be filled.

But... stopping living, breathing, experiencing life is not an option. Choosing not to live, not to embrace life despite the pain, is the same as choosing to die.

Our children would not want that for us.

So we continue. We pause, we remember, we reflect and feel. And then we gather our scattered heart strings from the four winds and we put one foot in front of the other and choose to live.

This is how we go on.

The view from our seats at an outdoor concert the other weekend. One of the many ways that we choose to go on without our daughter. It was a gorgeous day.

Choosing a Happy Ending

I have heard it said that "life is what happens when you're trying to get from Point A to Point B." This is so true. A strength of mine is being very goal oriented. I break life down into segments and projects that help me to achieve goals. In the process, though, I often lose the moments. I forget to look around me and appreciate the beauty of this day, this hour.

This is even more challenging sometimes in the realm of grief. A critical part of the grief process is remembering, looking back, thinking about that person and feeling the pain of his or her absence. For me, though, if I get stuck in that place for too long, I can miss hours or days of my life that is happening right here and now.

So it seems like another important part of the grief process is the way in which we move on. It's about striking a balance between reliving precious memories, and being able to enjoy the here and now.

How do we write the narrative of what happens in the "after" state, after the tragedy has passed? I think maybe this narrative happens in the small things, the every day moments that are built brick by brick into the structure that is our life story.

Looking forward, and looking back.

Being intentional about making these moments meaningful, being intentional about finding meaning in the every day. Slowly over time, new and positive memories are built that begin to construct a path into the future. I can feel that walkway growing over time, and it is helping me to look forward.

It is also helping me to appreciate every stepping stone, every moment, as it is selected and laid into the path of life with care and appreciation.

Learning to Survive

We talked with some new friends this past week about their experience losing their son nearly 18 years ago. He was only a day old when he passed into the next world at the hospital. We cried together as we shared our experiences with one another.

As we compared notes, we realized that both of us had a very similar experience when we left the hospital after the day our children died. The first thing we realized was that we were hungry, and we went to a restaurant to eat.

Looking back on it now, I think this was our first act of survival. And that is exactly what parents do after losing a precious son or daughter: they learn to survive. For many years, I've noticed in obituaries how they list the deceased person's family members who are still alive in this way: He/she is survived by.... and a list follows of siblings, children, etc. I had never realized how literally true this is.

The funeral home that made the arrangements for Liza Jane gave us a helpful pamphlet called "Surviving the death of a child: How to live when your child has died." It described the experience of losing a child more eloquently than I can.

"The death of a child is viewed as the greatest of all tragedies. When we lose a child, it is as if a part of us dies, too. We feel our children's every hurt, we instinctively know what they need, and we live to protect them. When they die, the loss of this connection can bring on the most terrible kind of grief. There are ways of managing the pain and grief, however, so that it doesn't overwhelm your life and does allow you to move on."

The Free Dictionary online says that to survive is to remain alive or in existence, to carry on despite hardships or trauma. Surviving is hard work. It takes an effort to make a choice to go on living. There have been many days over the past year where it has taken an act of my will to get out of bed in the morning. It has been a battle to make simple choices to eat nutritious food, to get myself out of the house into the fresh air, to exercise and do simple things to take care of myself. All of these things are part of surviving.

It is hard sometimes not to feel guilty for enjoying life when she is gone and can no longer experience it with us. Over time, the intensity of this feeling does lessen, but her absence still remains.

A working mother in a novel I read described the experience of being separated from her infant son while she was at work. As she left him with his nanny and began her journey to work, it felt like a spool of thread inside of her was unwinding, with the other end being attached to her son. All day long, the further she got away from him in time and space, the more that spool unwound until at the end of the day, she felt as if she would fall apart. She would race to get back to him as quickly as possible so that spool of thread would wind up tightly again, bringing them back together at the moment he came into her arms.

I felt this way each evening that we left Liza at the hospital so we could go home for some nourishment and sleep. Each morning, I felt almost panicky until I got back to the hospital. My spool of thread was unwound, and it wouldn't be right again until I was back with her.

Now that she is gone, though, I can't get that spool of thread back together. She is out there, somewhere, dangling at the end of it, and I am unwound inside, missing her, longing for her. This feeling is more intense some days than others.

And yet, life goes on. The sun continues to rise and set. We have to go on getting up in the morning and participating in life. Sometimes it is tempting to try to make something happen so that spool can be tightly wound again - I won't lie. But it is my choice to honor my daughter's memory by living... not only that, but living as well as I can, and with as much love for those around me as possible. I'm learning to survive.