The Many Faces of Grief

  

I’d like my old body back. This body is a reminder, nobody knows I’ve had a baby because they can’t see him, so they just think my body is like this normally. When I look at it I know what journey it’s been on, all the work it’s had to do and what it’s accommodated, stretched, supported, nourished and grown. I get why it’s like this but it makes me sad, it wouldn’t bother me as much if I was running round after a baby.

I noted this week that for the first time in 5 months, I thought about other things- just things like what I was doing that day or the next, or about books or photography, just stuff and not all grief. Robyn is always in my thoughts, sometimes at the forefront and sometimes milling around behind the “stuff” thoughts. The experience and trauma of his loss is sometimes further back in my thoughts, like at the back of the theatre not on the main stage. I think I’ve felt like myself again some days. 

Some days I’m in that place of what’s the point/ what does it mean now/ is this it, some days there are triggers that propel me straight back to those raw early days when we lost him. And some days I look into his nursery with less sadness and more blessing that I have him as my little boy. 

That’s the many faces of grief because you don’t get over it, you just get through it. You don’t get by it because you can’t get around it, it doesn’t get better, it just gets different. Everyday grief puts on a new face.