I'm still here...

So I think this is the longest I have ever gone without a post. I have so much to write, so much to say. The babies are doing great. I am feeling good just tired - and while I would love to blame it all on pregnancy fatigue, I know the looming date of Peyton's birthday on the calendar has it's hand in my mental exhaustion as well.

I remember being so touched last year at this time by a post by Cara at Building Heavenly Bridges where she wrote:

"I can feel the hollowness reattaching itself to me.
I can sense sadness nearby readying its attack..
I can smell memory beginning its annual journey to possess me."

Her post talked about how Grief Season comes for us, even when we don't go searching for it, and how year after year, though we wish it would, it doesn't get any easier. It was an amazing post that has always stuck with me.

Grief season hit me last week, as Peyton's due date approached, and a rush of emotions came with such force out of the blue that I felt thrown back to those early days. It was an ugly scene. Me, wrestling desperately with a guilt that I thought I had put to bed, and the time of year taunting each memory that I wish I could forget, back into my mind.

I think there is no avoiding Grief Season. Even if I banished every calendar from my home- my mind, body, and heart would feel the days coming to be: her due date, her birth date, the day she started chemo, the day the infection was discovered, the day we said goodbye, the day of her funeral. Each of these hits me with the unrelenting reality: Peyton is gone. She was destined to it before she was born. She is never coming back. Even though we wish it weren't the case, there are no guarantees in this life, and sometimes it is just so cruel.

I am trying to find balance over these next weeks and months. Next Saturday we will attempt to honor what should have been Peyton's 2nd birthday, knowing all the while that anything we try will just somehow fall short.

I am hoping to find a way to breathe through this season. I have so much to feel grateful for this year, so much love and beauty in my life right now - two amazing, miraculous blessings.

But at the end of the day it is not I who chooses how that day will feel. It is my heart, and the memories of all that she was and should have been, and try as I might, wearing a smile through the reminders of such a huge loss is hard.

She is my daughter. Always will be my daughter. And I miss her.

"Blissfully" pregnant or not, there is just no way to sugarcoat that.