2012 Reflections

I read back over my New Years Eve blogs from 2010 and 2011 and I'm grateful that I documented those dates in my grieving process so that I am able to see how drastically I have changed and healed since Max's death on 8/6/10.  As I reflect on the past year, I can certainly see many watershed moments ...

• Closing my business for good, not just for a period of time.  Allowing myself to let go of a piece of my life I built for 10 years and admitting that I am forever changed now and need to build a different future.
• Allen living in our home, allowing us to start doing all the old traditions again so he can experience them.
• Serving on the team for "Walk to Emmaus".   I not only re-entered serving others, but found a way to release my need to ask "why" in Max's death. 
• Attending "Spark of Life" retreat.  I was able to identify and release a big piece of anger that I had been carrying since the day Max died.
• Cleaning out Max's room and sorting through all his things to prepare the room for Allen's arrival.
• Pappaw's death in May.  This was the event that brought to light some issues I hadn't dealt with in not only Max's death, but Kim & Jeanie's death from 2011.  (It's so strange how deaths stack together the trauma and if you don't deal with each one individually it all runs together to make a bigger mess!)
• I stopped attending the bi-weekly moms group that had been my lifeline for the first two years because I was strong enough not to need it.
• Todd & I took over the leadership role of the local Compassionate Friends group.

This is the first year I haven't been *consumed* with grief since Max died.  Of course I still grieve and I have moments where I cannot breathe.  I still cry many tears.  But Max's death is not the first thought I have in the morning, nor the last thought I have at night.  I can usually focus on other things during the day.  It's not that I "forget", but rather, I have started mastering the skill of living with sorrow - highlight more on the living than the sorrow.   I'm so grateful healing is possible and living forward is possible.

I still have a very long way to go as I grow in grief, but on this last day of 2012, I'm thankful for how far I've come.