Why yes, I do think that two months post-infant loss is an appropriate time to send me a letter about filling out a survey regarding our experiences because look! I could win a 100 dollar gift card for my troubles.

Yeah. That happened today. And it opened the floodgates of the Ellie part of my brain, allowing all sorts of thoughts and anger and ponderings to gush out into my previously peaceful Wednesday. When the anger began to rise..I tried to stop myself by thinking, "It's just a survery. Calm down." But the problem I find is that after losing Ellie, nothing relating to her is simple or easy or relaxing in any form or fashion.

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago about God's promise to use things like this to his glory..because he's faithful like that..and I know he will..but it can become easy after things like this to feel, as my friend put it, like you're becoming "the poster child for infant loss" and that's not the title I want to carry. Years ago, a family member of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was younger and didn't understand it the way I do now, but I remember wondering why she never wanted to dote the pink ribbons or enter the 5k's or speak about it to large groups of people. Her breast cancer is gone now. That IS something to celebrate. But one day she told me that the reason she didn't want a part in all of that was not because she didn't want to support others in this, but that she did not want cancer in any shape or form to become attached to her identity in the eyes of others. She can still aid in loving people well through it. She did not want it written across her forehead.

I feel the same way about Ellie. I write about her not because I'm trying to prove something or because I want to encourage large masses of people and I surely don't think I'm handling infant loss in a manner that is worthy of being paraded across the internet. I write about her because she is my daughter and it's what I'm going through.....just like I wrote about everything else before any of this happened to me. Chris and I don't want to be known as "that couple who lost their baby" just like my family member doesn't want to be known as "that person who survived breast cancer."

The letter I received is only addressed to me. Not to me and my husband. It urges me to participate because "it could help others and could create a better future for mothers and babies." In my normal state of mine I might think that that is a lovely offer. In my post-Ellie state of mind, all I can think about is how no amount of surveys in the world could have changed Ellie's outcome or my future without her.

We're two months out and I am JUST now catching onto the tiniest glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel and that tiny tiny light is JUST now convincing me that I am actually going to survive this. But that belief is still brief and fleeting at best and some days I can't even remember it existed. I'm assuming, just as I have assumed in the past, that progress will be made. But right now......everything is complicated and messy and I don't want to feel guilt for not filling out a survey for future infant loss mothers.

Give me another couple of months, and we'll talk again.

Because I just need to be where I am right now and not feel bad about it.

And where I am is not okay with being surveyed about my sweet girl so that we can be entered into a database where I will be forever labeled solely as a mother who has lost her baby...and not as a wife, a sister, a daughter, and most importantly a child of God who is going to make it somehow.