My friends who don't know me

I have not been good at keeping up with my real life friends for the last six months.  I still love them.  I hope that eventually, I will be able to resume my place in the pack. I have felt so much support and love from them and I hope they know how much I support and love them too.  In the meantime, I have been keeping up with my blog friends....you know, the ones who have no idea who I am.  When they have good days, I feel uplifted.  When they have torturous dark days, I can feel that too.  I have been reading the blog of this woman named Molly, whose beautiful daughter, Lucy, asphyxiated on a piece of apple the size of a pea when she was almost two years old.  The story makes absolutely no sense and the tragedy of it just tears me apart.  Molly has the most engaging and exuberant personality.  If I lived in Park City, I would even want to be friends with her on her very worst days.  Anyway, she has a little boy now named Peter and she is pregnant again.  Her post today had me in so many tears.  It is so totally beautiful and I am so happy for her, even though I am every day so sad for her too. http://jacksonparkcity.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-i-never-imagined.html.  (Please read it, I promise it is worth it.)   What a complexity of emotions that only someone living with intense grief on a daily basis and still moving forward to continue building their family can feel.  Amazing.  She struggles daily and makes no excuses but manages to be silly and wonderful at the same time.  I should be so lucky some day.

Sometimes I need to share with you the stuff I read about other people because writing about myself all of the time feels a little self involved (even though this is my blog).  Sometimes I gather some strength and hope from the stories I read about other women a little further along this horrible path.  Anyway, this story, like my story, isn't just a story....it is really our true life and it can feel SO incredibly lonely.  Reading about the hopes and fears, tragedies and miracles that happen to others helps me to get out of my own head and reminds me that I am not alone.  Other people have been here before me and they are still standing, as I hope to be, at some point down this road.