A place to start...

This is my first posting and I think most blogs start with now, but in order to understand this blog and its purpose and mission, we have to begin a little more than three months ago.  On April 15, 2011 I was five months pregnant with my second child, Micah.  I went in for a routine 20 week ultrasound.  When the technician asked me to return to see the doctor later that day, I knew something was wrong (actually, I had known something was wrong the whole pregnancy, but that is a different post for a different day).

Later, when the doctor looked at me with a look I would become very familiar with and said the baby had no heartbeat, I thought I would die.  Literally.  How do you even walk out of the ultrasound room knowing the child inside of you has died?  The life you are carrying in your womb is no more.  The hope you had is gone.  Not only has your child been taken from you, but so has your innocence, your faith, your joyful understanding of life itself.  All gone.

This blog is not about that moment.  It is not about what has been taken from me, or millions of other women, men and children out there.  This blog is about connecting with others-trying to understand their grief while I share the story of working through mine.  I hope you will leave a comment after visiting here.  I believe seeing each other's pain AND joy is what connects us all and helps us feel both more deeply.  I believe walking down life's paths is a dangerous journey and to do so alone is more than anyone can handle.

I named this blog after the Emily Dickinson poem, "I Measure Every Grief," because that is what I now find myself doing.  I don't think I am comparing my grief to others' to win a grief prize or hope there are sorrows that will make mine seem not so bad, but rather I compare with the hope that the person I am talking to or reading about will, in some small way, know and understand my grief because they have been there.  The key to healing is connection with others.  I hope we can find there here.