After we lost Lucy, I naturally withdrew for awhile to process what happened, wade through the deepest depths of grief and physically heal. Besides at Lucy’s memorial, there were good friends of mine that I didn’t see for weeks. I just needed time and luckily they understood.

At first I felt too fragile to venture out very far. I did just have a full-term pregnancy and delivered a baby. Sometimes it felt like people forgot that detail. I got asked a few times just a couple of weeks after we lost her if I had gone back to work. I wanted to scream, “Are you serious? No! Have you forgotten that I did, in fact, have a baby?? Her not being here does not mean that my body miraculously healed in a day!” Yes, I was feeling really sensitive. Yes, I was dealing with postpartum hormones. Yes, I am in grief.

There were a few reasons why it was hard to go out in public soon after losing her.

I still looked pregnant. This is normal, and usually it doesn’t matter because you’re pushing a stroller with your new bundle of joy inside, so people get it. Me on the other hand, walking alone in a store with a big belly, a target for that horrible question from a nosey stranger, “When are you due?”. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that. Imagine the response of the poor stranger if I burst into tears and fled (justifiably so). Can you say awkward and horrible?

I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew. That sounds pretty rude, right? : / The reason was due to the possibility of the same end result, bursting into tears in public and feeling awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassed. On top of that, I was beyond drained; mentally, physically and emotionally. I felt like I was in a fog. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t feel up to conversing with anyone; I just didn’t have the energy or capacity to do so.

I didn’t want to be out alone and have something set me off. I felt so fragile, like I was hanging by a thread. The line between holding it together and full out, wailing tears was so thin at this point. I did not want to be the girl who, seemingly out of no where, loses it in Target or Trader Joe’s. Although I knew it was okay to feel all the feelings I was feeling, I did not want to receive looks of pity from others or feel like I was crazy. I am pretty sure that no one desires to breakdown in public.

I felt like my life had come to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, the world outside my front door was chugging along at it’s normal pace. I felt like I didn’t belong amongst the laughing, happy crowd buying food for their dinner parties and diapers for their babies. Normal vanished for me and hadn’t found its way back yet.

I was in physical pain. I had a full-term pregnancy and delivered Lucy naturally. Unfortunately, your body doesn’t know that you’ve lost your baby. This means that your milk still comes in. This was so incredibly painful. I didn’t want to pump to relieve the intense discomfort because I knew the milk would feel like a cruel reminder that she isn’t with us. I didn’t want to see one drop of the milk that was supposed to sustain my daughter’s life. I didn’t want to take prescription medicine so I used some natural methods for drying it out (there may have been cabbage involved), then grit my teeth and bared the pain, which lasted for about a week.

I needed time to heal and mentally process what happened. One day I was working, pregnant, preparing for the arrival of our baby daughter. The next day she was gone. Nine months of anticipation of a life and instead we experienced death. On top of utter sadness and grief, my brain was trying to work through the shock and figure out what exactly happened.

The over arching theme of all the reasons listed above is self-protection. All I could do in the midst of this horrible tragedy was hold on for dear life. Fragile, is the word I keep using and it is the best way I can try to describe it. I had a lot of people telling me to give myself grace; to accept each feeling that comes. I needed to give myself space to heal and permission to do whatever it was I needed to do for that to happen. There is no timeline for healing, it’s different for all of us.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  Matthew 5:4

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”  Psalm 34:18