It doesn't matter that it's not frigid outside, or that the sky isn't grey. It isn't a Chicago winter and it isn't 36 years ago. It's 90 degrees today in Gilbert, Arizona and I'm not here. I'm back in 1989, in a hospital bed staring out the window watching a blizzard dump white and wet all over the city as my newborn baby boy sleeps peacefully in the bassinet next to me. He's my firstborn and the joy is palpable and a little overwhelming.
Here now, today, it's 2025, not so joyful, and more than a little overwhelming. At this precise moment, it doesn't seem to help much that the years after that blizzard were full of the life and love that came with being the mother of two little boys. There were birthday parties and holidays and hockey and school and family prayer and music lessons and the marching band booster club and all the things. All the things I thought were so hard then - that I would give everything to have back now. To do over, and better.
Sometimes the nostalgia simply overtakes me. Sometimes I feel like it's going to kill me.
What concerns me at this moment is that it's his birthday and he's gone and never coming back and the family has changed and there's complications of another sort there - the kind that maybe only grieving mothers might understand. And sometimes, like today, it's just all too much. Too very much.
There's a saying these days that you may have heard: "It's a lot".
Today, what I'm saying is: "It's too much".
So I guess I'll hold on to hope. Because there's another (more dependable) phrase that states: "hope does not disappoint".
I sure hope that's true.
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Sacred Sorrows keeps growing, women keep coming, doors keep opening and your donations matter and are needed. If you can donate $36 in honor of my son Chad and all of the children and grandchildren of the women of Sacred Sorrows, it would help us greatly. And please keep us in your thoughts and prayers too, because we didn't lose only our children. We lost hopes, dreams, plans, foundations, assumptions, safety, security and much, much more.
If you're looking for an online event for yourself, or you know a mom that could use a little bit of "safe and sound", please forward this information about our upcoming online mini-retreat Winter Leads to Spring.
Dear Rita,
Thank you for sharing your pain, I feel it so very deeply. Every word.