wave of light.

Posted by Randi

Tomorrow is the big day – My little sisters wedding. It’s been a long time in the making, and we’ve busted our asses getting it all set up. I love how it has turned out, and I cannot wait to be there tomorrow to celebrate with her! She set up a table in memorial for her fiancés brother who passed away, and Kenley. It is beautiful, and it made me cry. I’m so thankful that she included our sweet girl.

Tomorrow is also another big day – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.

At 7 pm around the world in all time zones you are asked to light a candle in memory of all the babies and children gone too soon. I’m asking you to light a candle for my sweet girl, Kenley, tomorrow evening. If you do this, I also would love to see a picture of it. If you know me, and know my phone number, text me. If you follow me on IG, upload it and tag me, or DM it to me. If you don’t know any of those things and you still want to show me the candle you lit for my sweet girl, send it through my contact page here.

I hope that many of you will participate in this tomorrow not only for our sweet girl, but for all her little friends that were taken too soon.

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photo prompt.

Posted by Randi

As many of you know, I am doing the capture your grief challenge on my IG. Each day’s prompt gives you an outlet to speak about the real emotions related to losing your child. Today’s prompt was Beautiful Mysteries.

Um. Ouch. Mega mega ouch.

This prompt urged you to speak about the mysteries of your child. I chose to speak of where I would see Kenley now. What would she be? Who would she be? I found todays prompt extremely hard. I have a rough time with envisioning my dead baby as a real baby. I don’t know if it’s strictly because I don’t want to think about it because I know it can never happen. I don’t know if I don’t want to hurt my heart like that? When I opened my heart for this challenge today, I just found myself crying while writing it. I chose to use a photo of Kenley’s hair for todays photo. Her beautiful, auburn, strawberry hair makes my heart melt; it was the most beautiful color. The lock of hair we have from her is dark brown, though. I don’t remember it looking that way in real life, and I HATE that. I hate that I can’t clearly recall what her hair looked like. Sure, photos help, but she’s my daughter…why does my brain block it out?

Grief brain?

Is it my heart and soul protecting itself?

I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure one one thing…I would give anything to be able to see her one more time.

random.

Posted by Randi

I think today is going to be a post of a bunch of random things because I can’t really think of a way to put them into an organized post…so here goes nothing.

• I’m participating in the capture your grief social media photo prompt challenge. I really enjoy writing all of my feelings out, even when they don’t make sense or come off super bitchy. I don’t mean them to come off that way, but it seems like they do. It doesn’t make me worried that they’re offending people because that’s not the point of the photo challenge, it’s to express your feelings. I think it’s very helpful for me. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, honestly. I thought that I would just cry every single day when I went to post, but I’m handling it pretty well. I’m proud of myself.

• Yesterday was my birthday. I knew it was going to suck (emotionally) strictly because it was supposed to be so different than it actually was. I was supposed to have my beautiful almost 10 month old daughter with me. I don’t really know how I expected the day to go had she been here, but she wasn’t here and it sucked- bottom line. Shane and Landon bought me flowers, and cards so that was super nice. Shane spent the day hanging our new bathroom light fixture, and installed two new dimmer switches in the house. We had a nice dinner with Landon and watched Harry Potter. It was a nice day, just a sad one.

• Landon LOVES Harry Potter. I mean, he asks to watch it every night. We are already on the Goblet of Fire. I don’t see his interest slowing down any time soon. He even asked to be Harry for halloween. My heart is so full! (We are mega HP nerds here…) After Shane and I found out we were pregnant, we took a trip to Orlando and went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was the first place that Kenley went when she existed. I was so happy to know that she was with me then.

• I’ve spent way too much time in front of the TV the past day or so watching news about the Hurricane. I mean…like WAY too much time. I find it very interesting, honestly. I’ve been watching clips from Haiti and there are children standing next to rushing water. Uh…maybe don’t stand so close???? It gives me serious anxiety!

• This morning we got Landon up and ready for school. We watched him get on the bus, and then came back inside. When I walked in, Shane yelled “hey wanna watch tv in bed for a little bit?”. UM. YES. So we laid in bed, watched the weather channel, had breakfast in bed, and ended up falling asleep. It was such a nice relaxing morning. I do not remember the last time I felt that relaxed. I didn’t roll my ass out of bed until 12:40! It was amazing.

• Next weekend my little sister is getting married. I’m hoping to be able to head to my hometown in the middle of the week next week. We’ll see what happens with Shane’s work schedule, but it would be nice for all of us to “get away” for a little bit, even if it is going to be hectic.

• I can feel myself maybe falling back into a slump? I’m not sure exactly what it is that I’m feeling, but I have been putting off house work again, and just feeling like I want to sleep all the time. I know it very well could be the fact that I’m pregnant, but it doesn’t feel that way. I dunno. I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it. What does that even mean? I guess i’ll just wait and see how much more laundry builds up and I will equate that to how I’m feeling emotionally? Ugh.

• and last but not least…we went to Lowe’s on Wednesday while Landon was in school. We walked through the paint, and picked out a few colors for this baby’s room. We had talked about what colors we wanted to look at, so…I decided that since I have officially hit my 2nd trimester (already…) that I would look. So, there’s that.