Nine Months

    Exactly nine months ago today Lilly Elizabeth was born.  I've thought about this day and anticipated it would be much harder than it actually was.  Nine months, almost the exact amount of time I carried her in my tummy has passed since her birth.  I imagined I would be feeling loads of despair today, that with it also being the one year anniversary since Uncle Joel's passing and the week of celebrating our first Thanksgiving without Lilly physically here with us.

    I did have a moment this morning where I just cried allowing myself to feel the pain.  There was of course also moments where I felt torn between feeling joy and being happy and then feeling like that was wrong, that I should be more sad today.  Just a plethora of emotions as always, but mostly today I felt joy and happiness, and I felt that was the right way to feel today.

    It is not always going to be easy and I find that my anticipation is sometimes more emotional than the actual reason for the anticipation.  There are moments where I feel the despair of grief quite strongly, but there are more moments in between where I do not.  I've learned this does not mean that I love her any less, and it does not mean that I have forgotten her or "moved on".  I will never do any of that.  It just means that I am doing just what I need to be doing in order to live a life as a parent surviving one of her children.  My love for Lilly has not subsided in the least and I will always go back and forth through the same emotions I have written about here for the rest of my life.  I love her so much and miss her so much!  No matter what emotion I am going through at the time, that will never change.