Trauma Mamas

a blog for child loss and mothering after trauma

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  • What not to do

    Don’t say “I get it,” unless your child died too.

    Don’t talk to me at work about my child’s death, or memorial, or funeral, or anything related her death. Compliment, say hello, remember her, short and sweet. Work is where we go for a distraction, a break from the constant grief and pain. And do you really think I want to go into details or have a lengthy conversation about my child’s memorial? Next time you’re at work I’ll come by and ask how your dad treated you when you were a child, if you ever felt abandoned by those you love or some other deep rooted fear or emotional trauma and I’ll see how well you function at work after that conversation.

    Don’t tell me you know how I feel because you lost your dog and he was like a son to you.

    You have a daughter, of close age of my daughter. All I have to say to this is…bruh.

    Don’t tell me, “of all people you should understand.”

    No I don’t. Just because I have dealt with loss and trauma does not mean that I get it either. Or that I’m empathetic to everyone. Or that I have the patience for someone grieving for their loss, be it a grandmother or a goldfish. The world didn’t stop when I lost my daughter, so it may not stop for you either. I might be understanding, I might not. And both are okay.

    Don’t tell me what to do or not to do.

    “There are no shoulds, [in grief,]” -My husband. In “Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare wrote “Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

    How masterfully written. Those who are not in grief or even those who are, should not tell the grieving how to do their grief.

  • Goodbye April

    April is finally coming to a close. We held her memorial at church this past Sunday, the 27, today is the 28 and only 2 days left of this cruel month. So fitting that the calendar’s featured picture is daffodils, one of the last flowers she picked for me.

    This month is always a marathon; I have to prepare and pace myself. This time, this third year, I went at April like the running of the bulls. I loaded my schedule, work and personal, made and crossed off the to-do lists, all in an effort to keep myself so busy that I hadn’t had time to think and so busy that I hadn’t had time to reminisce and cry too much before falling asleep. I hoped that the pure mental and physical exhaustion would be so much that I would simply go unconscious soon after going horizontal. April didn’t always submit though and there were several nights spent crying myself to sleep or waking up in the dark hours and crying, or puzzling, or shaking.

    I burned myself out. Not as quickly as I would expect myself to burn out, but after working 46 hours one week, doing farm things on top of it and trying to keep up with my workouts, the next week logging another 36 hours, the bull in me stopped running. I was out of breath after one task, sore anytime i had to squat or bend and then stand up. My brain was wrapped in grief and I was forgetting so much, so unfocused.

    I succumbed to the pain of April, went home sick a couple hours early two days in a row and slept. I slept away the exhaustion, the pain, the sorrow, the reality of April.

    Two days left and I can feel the lightness of May coming up.

    -B

  • Pieces of the Puzzle

    Backpacking upon a mention of my puzzling in the wee hours of the night when I couldn’t sleep on THE day, today, the day after THE day, I couldn’t sleep again. Last night I chose the couch and TV to clear my head and try to fall back to sleep. But other nights, or racing heart mornings, or after work decompression sessions I choose to sit down at a puzzle.
    In the very beginning, when we were still in shock and disbelief, something took me over one day and I grabbed a puzzle from the upstairs game room closet and dumped it out on the living room floor. Bent over, hunchbacked, on all fours searching through the pieces. Each pieces was a struggle to find the matching emptiness. Each piece I found and put into the void was like picking up a tiny piece of my life before and putting it back together. Like the Japanese Art of breaking a vase and glueing it back together, not always perfectly, but together. Enough to hold water, enough to see the bigger picture of the puzzle, enough to function and pass as a human being again.
    I didn’t function as a person until months after the accident. But during my puzzling I could think about the puzzle and my daughter. I could think about what happened and try to put the moments together to make sense as I looked for a piece with two knobs and one socket that would fit.

    When I was done with the puzzle there was an accomplishment, but not a feeling of being finished. In grief it’s an accomplishment to go back to work, or go for a walk or smile and laugh again, but your grieving isn’t done. You puzzle isn’t finished. You have to start a new puzzle and work on another aspect of yourself. Or finesse that aspect so it works better, closer to the before you.
    I love my puzzles. The quietness or the podcasts playing in background. My heart racing when I near the end of the picture. All to admire it for a day or two, sweep back into the box, give it away and start a new one. Always, always starting over and over every day in grief, always missing one piece of my own puzzle, my daughter.

    -B

  • Today’s the day

    Today’s the day I start a blog. To share anonymously more true feelings, to not hide behind the grief, to not pretend to be someone else or something else. Only thing I’m hiding here are names.

    Today’s THE day. It’s the three year anniversary of when my child died in front of me. Today is the date, April 23. But it’s more than just today. I relive this date every Saturday and every Easter and in the spirit of being honest and not hiding, let’s face it, I relive this date every day.

    Yesterday I was fine. I was calm, collected, motivated for a day off the next day to honor my daughter in the routine of staying so busy that it’s hard for me to relive it until the end of the day when my body and my mind can take no more. Instead of waking up motivated to start the busy body checklist, my body knew the day, knew that other people would know the day too and I barely slept. I worked on my puzzle for hours in the middle of the night, ensuring no one would choose this house to break into with the all the lights on so late in the dark. My rooster started to crow his usual crow at 2am but it instinctively sounded and alarm in me and I began to grow nervous. Nervous something is wrong, there’s a fox near the chickens perhaps, or perhaps just my body knowing my child isn’t here with me and that itself is so very, very wrong.

    So this morning, on the three year anniversary, my heart is racing, my mind is cluttered and unfocused, my eyes are weeping. I am so full of fear, the trauma stuck in my body, my hands attempting to shake it out. But it’s not just today. I want those who have not experienced child loss, and hopefully never ever will, to know that this reaction happens on multiple days for us bereaved. It happens on THE date, like today, April 23. It happens on both Saturdays before and after April 23, because when IT happened IT happened on a Satuday. It happens on Easter, the first holiday I missed with my daughter, and happens on the day before Easter too. Because when IT happened, it was a Saturday, April 23, the day before Easter. So this trauma comes back in almost full force on Saturday, on April 23, on the day before Easter, and on Easter. To quote a friend, “April is the cruelest month.”

    -B