Bravery & strength

People talk about and comment on my bravery and strength a lot lately. I guess that's because her first birthday is coming up, and all of a sudden she's on peoples' minds again. People are stopping and remembering, almost 12 months on. They say "gosh, has it been that long already". Hard for them to believe I guess, but not so hard for me. I have lived every painful second of this past 12 months missing her so much I could explode.

But I don't always feel particularly strong or brave.

People said I was strong to have found out my daughter died in utero, then come home carrying her dead body inside me, before being induced to give birth the following morning.

That I was brave and strong to give birth to her the way I did, naturally, without asking to go under the needle.

That I was brave to have her funeral open for all to attend, and to face 200 distraught and shocked mourners who all wanted to kiss and hug us and seemingly never let us go.

That I am brave to continue to share her story the way I do. Today, we had a break through. I had her story, a double-page spread with photos, printed in the major Sunday paper here in Melbourne. Lots of people have obviously seen it, and I've had a few messages today and a few phone calls from surprised relatives who had no idea it was going in. I never really told anyone, as I never wanted to make a fuss. It does feel like a small victory though, even though the paper would not use a photo of Hope's face or of me pregnant with her - too "confronting" I was told, even though the point of the article was to "break the taboo" on the tragic topic. Whatever. Babysteps, I guess. I wont give up here.

But none of it makes me feel brave or strong. I just feel I'm doing what I have to do here. I like writing, I have written thousands of words already, and I have contacts in the field. This was one small thing I could do. Hopefully it helps others. Even knowing it helped one person would be a good result.

I am reasonably happy with how the article turned out. But despite the length of the piece, which finishes when we leave hospital without our Hope, it does not really convey I think just how bad this type of loss really is. That the hurt goes on, that the pain goes with you every day. That you don't move on. That you don't get over it. That new babies wont fix, cure or heal me. And that as others have said before me, "closure is bullshit". I think most still think, through no fault of their own as this sort of thing just isn't widely discussed, that this was just something bad that happened to us last August. But really, what most don't know is that her death will colour our lives and change the way we look at the world each and every one of our remaining days on this earth. Death lasts a long time.

For me, the thing that does and will continue to take the most bravery and strength is not giving birth to her dead body, burying her or coming home to an empty nursery, it is trying to figure out a way to live the rest of my life without her. That's going to take all the bravery and strength I can muster. I hope I have it in me.