Why Tuesday's Hope?

What to name the blog? As if deciding whether to have a blog wasn't hard enough itself.

So many people, mostly other babylost mamas I have "met", kept asking me when I was going to create my own blog, my own space to spill out some of my hurt and anger.

"Neh, not for me," I'd say. I was always a very social and outgoing person in my "former life" (read: before my baby died) but now, well I'm just a bit weird and introverted and prefer only the company of my husband and dog. I just didn't think I was brave enough to share myself, and Hope, with the whole wide world. I'm so fragile right now, I'm afraid of being hurt even more. Heck, is that even possible when we are "babylost"? Can we hurt anymore?

Most people, apart from my immediate family and a few of my nearest and dearest have been shut right out of my life for the time being.

I'm sure some think it has been long enough and that I really should just start picking up the pieces, get on with things and start seeing people again, but to me, it may as well have happened yesterday. Three months is nothing. I carried her for nine months for crying out loud. I just need time. How much? Well I just don't know. This blog may help answer that for me.

So it might have been a week after, maybe two when a dear friend pointed me in the direction of Glow in the Woods. She'd had a rough time getting pregnant, then after one successful vasectomy reversal, a round of IVF she was pregnant with twins. She carried her girls to 37 weeks, and delivered them alive, healthy and screaming. And they lived happily ever after.

But at some stage on her journey, she found GITW. I'm glad she found it as she was able to send me there after my world fell apart when I was barely clinging on to life.

After arriving at Glow, I started to read. And absorb. And I discovered I was far from alone. That there was this whole community of people out there willing to help me and hug me from all corners of the globe. Scary and comforting all at the same time.

But then there was Carly and her eerily titled post from the day my darling Hope was born Tuesday's Hope. Chills went down my spine, tears spilled.

Read the post for yourself, but essentially it was about a dream Carly had about her dear son Christian writing his name in the sand. So from that dream, To Write Their Names In The Sand was born.

Since then, Carly has worked tirelessly for babylost mamas all over the world. Giving them the simple gift of seeing their child's name written in the sand under a glowing sunset on a gorgeous Western Australia beach.

Carly has been a gift to me in these intense early days of my childless motherhood, and I'm not sure I could have got to where I am without her.

So that's where the name of my blog came from. A blog post from Tuesday 19 August, 2008. Just an ordinary day. Pretty insignificant. A cold and rainy day for us here in Australia, maybe a blistering hot summers day for those on the other side of the world. But it was my daughter's birthday. Her only birthday she will ever have here on earth. But that day will be far from ordinary for me, and my family, for the rest of our days.

Thank you Carly, thanks for holding me up.