Inside Out

I was fine today...

until I was not.

Some days this completely defines what grief feels like. What I am realizing the most is that I can't quite wrap my head around the grief. In some ways I think I will grow stronger, but my heart will always remember Ethan and Nathan fondly. A part of me will always mourn them or hope for them to return to my arms so I can cradle them again. If I don't think about it, I can pretend it never happened. The truth is that it DID happen and that it is very much a part of my life journey now, and accepting that while moving forward gets mucky and sticky at times. 

I want to be able to smile at some things that still make me cry. I want to be able to hear the names Ethan and Nathan apart from posting about them and not feel the longing anymore. 

Some days I feel very vividly the emptiness that is my womb. They were there for a substantial time, more time than they were outside of me in fact. I guess that's why I have become so sensitive to pregnancies around me. I want so very much to be joyful and celebratory for others, but there is an aching within me that the last time I had that has now vanished. It is no more. 

I wonder often about what Ethan and Nathan would be like by now. They would be just a few days shy of 4 months old. I wonder how chunky they may have gotten. I also wonder how Elyana and Ezra would interact with them. Sometimes these wonderings make me happy and other times they make me so deeply sorrowful. I am happy to think that the memory that is Ethan and Nathan brings my children delight, but sorrowful that we cannot actually realize that in the physical no matter how much we would like to. 

Having children during the grief or loss of a baby has had its difficult moments. Elyana somehow seems to think that one day she can hold them on the outside. She draws pictures often of the pair with smiling faces inside my womb. Ezra somehow things there is a doorway or stairway that allows Ethan and Nathan access to and from Heaven. He speaks about passing down his baby toys to them with eager intent. 

I speak of grief candidly because it brings me healing to speak. I feel that breaking the silence will not only bring awareness to others, but it helps me accept that this has happened and that I will be okay. It does not mean I won't hurt over the loss anymore. It doesn't mean that I will forget about it. It means I will push forward for myself, my children, and my family to continue living even though my boys cannot. 

I think about ways in which I can keep them close to heart. I don't want to move forward and have them be forgotten in my home. We include their name when we speak of family. Elyana even draws them in our family portrait flying high up in the sky with smiling faces. This brings me joy that they can know they did have twin brothers, and they were wholeheartedly loved. We also speak of Heaven often as we are comforted in knowing that we will reunite with them when we get there. There still is the question, now what? For me, that is a bigger question to address because Ethan and Nathan spent so much time nearest to me. I guess the now what for me is to move forward with these memories and use them to glorify God. 

I have plans moving forward to bring this story to light in hopes that it will encourage or help other families. I hope that I can serve families that have a need when they are welcoming a baby. I also have a hope to help women who have experienced a loss such as mine. I even want to bring more awareness to conjoined twins. Many people hear conjoined and they may take it as a joke or think of a circus freak show, but when I hear the word, I think of my boys. I think of how they never let each other go when they were within me, when they were in my arms and when they were laid to rest. Maybe it is something others will never quite understand unless they have undergone the experience themselves. 

Today is a plethora of feelings and emotions that I have laid out on this virtual sheet of paper. As I approach nearly a year of when I found out I was pregnant with the boys, I am feeling all the feelings. All I can conclude from all of this is, as cliche as it may sound, it's okay not to be okay. It is okay to feel all of the feelings and today this is where I am. 

xoxo

DC