Healing

Strangers sometimes turn out to be the best friends. I have had so much support from wonderful strangers in the past three years. People who I have never met who I may likely never meet often say just the things you need to hear at the exact moment you need to hear them.


As anyone who reads here knows, I had a lot of people fall out of my life when Hope died. Very close friends, run of the mill acquaintances, ex-colleagues, distant family members and a great many on the periphery of my life. Many departed my life because I suspect the intensity of my grief in the early days was just too much for them. And because they didn't like the way in which I was coping, or perhaps not coping, with my loss. My great, great loss. It is a shame, really. Because those intense, early days were so short lived. It was just six months later that I fell pregnant with Angus. And when I did, the intensity abated, my grief changed. And when he arrived, more so again. Then when I fell pregnant with Juliet, of course my grief shifted again, and now that she's here, everything is completely different. As I keep saying, I'm still dreadfully sad, but the overwhelming happiness in my life balances things out and smooths over many of the bumps. In the great scheme of my life, the time where I was most un-loveable and so incredibly hard to handle was such a tiny blip. Yet people couldn't wait. They couldn't just wait.


It has been more than three years since Hope left us, and all the while, I have been healing. Slowly but surely, whether I wanted to or not, I have been healing. I will never be fully healed, for that is not possible, but I am working towards a place where I feel more at ease. More at peace. I am getting there and I am doing so at my own pace.


I am sharing a poem today sent to me by a lovely stranger-friend. A social worker for parents of lost babies who lives in another state. She's followed my blog silently for a while now (as well as many of your blogs) and she sends the odd email here and there. She has even called me a few times to check in on how I'm doing. She doesn't know me, yet she cares about me, and she remembers Hope. People like these make up for all the people who once mattered to me who walked away. Thank you, Deb.


The Intention 
for Miriam
 Healing is both an exercise
and an understanding
and yet not of the will
nor of the intention.
 
It is a wisdom 
and a deeper knowledge
of the daily swing
of life and death
in all creation.
 
There is defeat
to overcome
and acceptance of living
to be established
and always
there must be hope.
 
Not hope of healing
but the hope which informs
the coming moment
and gives it reason,
The hope which is
each man’s breath,
the certainty of love
and of loving.
 
Death may live
in the living
and healing rise
in the dying
for whom the natural end
is part of the gathering
and of the harvest
to be expected.
 
To know healing
is to know that
all life is one
and there is no beginning
and no end
and the intention is loving

~ Margaret Torrie ~