Thursday, July 4, 2013

Reaching out to other bereaved parents.

As a bereaved mother there have been countless times I've reached out to a another mother. Sometimes I've done it of my own free will and other times someone as asked me to reach out to someone. More times than not my extended arms go untouched. But sometimes I have been able to create lasting bonds with other mothers who understand the loss of a child.

I won't lie and say it doesn't hurt my feelings that attempts to connect are not reciprocated. Especially when it's been multiple times. Even when my grief was fresh I responded to every single message sent to me. Even if I just copy & pasted the same response to everyone or I simply thanked them for thinking of me. It was important to me that I do that, I wanted the person to know that their little thought of my & my angel meant something to me. I'm not by any means trying to say the people who've not responded back to me do not care about my message. Maybe they're not in a place where they feel able to chat about their loss or may be too scared to dive into speaking with another child loss mom. I'm sure we can all remember how fresh & raw our grief was in the very beginning. It doesn't take much reflection to be able to feel those emotion's again, no matter how much time has passed. 

While I was writing the paragraph above I thought I would visit the I Am A Mother To An Angel Facebook page my friend created. I wanted to find a graphic I could include in this post. It's funny sometimes how things work out because this is the graphic that awaited me at the top of the page when I arrived ...


How appropriate is that quote for this topic? I won't lie, it kinda blew my mind a little. Princess Diana's words ring true & I believe it's something we should all remember. Don't do things only to expect something in return. Even though many times I get no response to the messages I send doesn't mean it didn't mean something to the mom on the other end. She may not have the strength to muster a response but maybe just for the few minutes she spent reading my message, she got a little comfort in knowing she's not alone on this road. 

Extend the olive branch my friends & do so without expecting to gain something from it. You've gained something my opening your heart to another person who might need to turn to you down the road. 

Monday, July 1, 2013

My little tball player

Early this year, maybe even late last year my husband & I started talking about signing Layne up for an activity. This was much to my husbands dismay because he worries so much about Layne. 

I should explain some ... I rarely get to worry about Layne because my husband does enough of that for the both of us. Could you imagine what a mess our life would be if we both worried about him 100% of the time? I don't even want to think about it. But we have our reasons, having lost a child to a disease he could have picked up from anywhere? That's scary!

Back to tball - we signed Layne up early this past Spring & he was assigned to a team. It's been such a fun activity for us. It makes me so proud to see my little man out there having fun. They started off the season hitting from the tee & slowly transitioned into pitching to the kids. The first few times Layne was not hitting any of the pitched balls. What they do is they pitch 3-4 balls to the kids and if they don't hit it then they put the ball on the tee for the kids to hit. Then Layne started hitting from a pitch atleast one of the two times he was up to bat. Recently he's been hitting the ball from a pitch every time! It's so exciting! The coaches husband told my husband that we'd be surprised how much better the kids get by the end of the season. I still never though Layne would be hitting all the pitched balls!

I'm excited to finish out the season & for Layne to play again next year. We're not uber competitive people. Well I take that back, you don't want to see me playing Call of Duty! But the tball league here is just about the kids learning the game & most importantly, having fun. No strike outs, no tagged outs, all the kids get a chance to bat twice. It's awesome. If it were something really competitive we probably would have pulled Layne out. It would not have been our cup of tea at all. It's tball, it should be all about fun & that's what I want for Layne. I don't think he would be enjoying it at all if it were very competitive at this age. He's a sensitive guy.

It's bittersweet to do these things with Layne. Things we were robbed of enjoying with Landan. But I'm still so very thankful to have the opportunity and I know Landan is cheering on his little brother. A brother I know he would have loved so much.


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