Your RX isn't for me

THAT'S IT! I'm SO FED UP! I've been really patient for the past 3-4 weeks, maybe taking some of the "shine" I've put on this time will help so that I can FINALLY get some respect, maybe an iota for my feelings and anxiety of having this little boy on the 27th-30th. I feel like I'm right back at 3 years ago with people telling me all this stupid stuff about how I should feel and what I *should* do and be and they're making this time WORSE for me.  **IF YOU HAVE NEVER HELD YOUR CHILD WHILE THEY DIED THEN CARRIED THEIR BODY TO THE MORGUE DON'T TELL ME HOW I SHOULD FEEL. DON'T MAKE A PRESCRIPTION FOR WHAT WOULD MAKE IT 'EASIER'.** I *AM* trying to be fair to this boy...he shouldn't have to contend with that...and Avery has the right to his time too. They are BOTH my sons. I don't want ONE overshadowing the other, NOR competing. So PLEASE STOP TELLING ME IT WOULD MAKE THINGS BETTER TO HAVE JR IN THAT TIME. If you hold your kid everyday, then leave ME alone. I do enough to make one of the hardest things for my family to endure a Grace for others. Please just respect what you don't want to understand. I AM trying to be happy about this baby coming, but it's not helpful when I turn to people for some validation and support and all I get is "you should...." look...if I didn't ask "hey, how should I feel??" then it's none of YOUR business to tell me. Sorry for the rant...and I have some beautiful friends who get it and I love everyone for being well intended. The point isn't to "forget" Avery, nor is it to invalidate anyone's feelings over this time...it's to allow both boys to have their separate times, one for grief and one for celebration without forcing one into the other and vice versa.

Grief cycles are easily identified by everyone else. I get that. I know people want to just say "snap out of it" and want us all to just quit remembering or validating something bleak in our pasts. It doesn't help to invalidate grief in that way. It invalidates the breath of the relationship lost, it denies the investment and thus the reason to miss. Grief doesn't necessarily have to be all consuming. I completely think around anniversaries that an individual has a full right to mourn and miss without people saying they need to go to therapy. Granted if you stop living and get sucked into it where nothing else your world is able to function, perhaps some different coping mechanisms are needed. However, if you're simply caught up in the memories of the time, and pained by the loss and separation, you're mourning the miss. Personally, I want my time to reflect on the life of my son, it's totality. Denying any part of it is denying part of him. His death is a tiny part of his life. Most of it was healthy and full of hope. And I relish those memories! But I am also granted time to weep and mourn that I can't feel the warmth of his hug, watch him grow and the memories I would have with him. And allowing myself to feel through those emotions during the bleak time of his life I don't see a problem with that. If it was all I ever considered then yeah, get me to counseling. But I can fondly remember being pregnant with him, laboring him and having him, so I can bleakly grieve him too. Let's face it. Although I'm very proud of all that Avery has done and continues to do, I have the right to miss him too. We did offer him to the world and allow his life to continue where we could have gone home and shut the door, and frankly sometimes Jared wishes we had. But we allowed his life to continue in the way that it had been offered to us by our Lord and Avery...in hope. We decided to not just let him be a memory marked by grief and a bronze and marble slab. So if we need time to be honest in our miss, people should understand and respect that. If we had gone home and shut down then tell me I need therapy, or a "baby would help"....but we didn't do that. Jared and I plunged right into our grief, we held on to each other where 90% of marriages and relationships fail after child loss, I started blogging and we agreed to do something great with our son and continue the hope and not the sorrow. But when it does come up...the only way *we* have been able to survive is that we grant each other our hurt. I don't try to push him when he gets upset about piles of AAGF stuff around the house "making him constantly remind him that Avery isn't here...and other people get to have their babies." I don't tell him that we're able to be part of that...the way we wished someone could have been for us. That's not fair, his hurt is in his loss. I know his intentions aren't for me to stop, it's to respect his place in his grief and he will respect mine. I don't pressure anyone to *feel* what I do, I just expect them to respect my feelings.

And I'm done. I think if I get one more response or post about what I should feel and do, a comment a text I will just turn everything off until we get through and do what we need to....