Ummmmmmmmmm...

I've literally been locked out of my blog for..well, since the date of the lats post. A LONG TIME.

Yes, I legitimately forgot my password and had NO way to break in, because my recovery account was attached to my clemson student email account which was deactivated like a year after I graduated.

Multiple times a week I would try to remember what the heck my password to this account was (it's the email address associated with my life pre-marriage..so I only use it for blogger) and somehow, I typed the magical combination just now and broke in and then changed it. You guys. What in the world. My brain is too loaded with stuff to handle remembering the password I've typed into this blog for like YEARS!?

Yes. The answer is yes.

Rest assured, I wrote all of the passwords for all of my different accounts in a safe place and now I can continue using my brain for all other non-password-remembering activities.

So, welcome back to the blog, self!

I still feel so weird writing here, and I don't love that feeling. Nothing in my life is currently in crisis, and it seems that I always used to sit down and write in order to process during the crises that were Ellie and Elsie. And now life is just pretty easy. I read (and shared) an article I read recently about various things infant loss parents experience that the general public might not. But one that really struck me was the one that said that infant loss parents can clearly see their life divided into two: life before infant loss and life after.

That's where I am now in regards to my writing. I'm not in the "midst" of the loss anymore, so my voice and my perspective and my heart is in a different place. But I used to write before Ellie and Elsie ever existed. And THAT voice is also gone. I can't even pretend to remember what life felt like back before any of this happened, but I remember so clearly that it was all so different. The vividness of the "pre-loss" side of life is at the forefront of my mind, yet I can't force my brain to put myself back in that place.

I won't let this divide end this little space, as frustrating as it is right now as I find my voice again. Because right now my voice isn't one that always wants to be shouting about loss. Life is so much more than loss and grief, yet I couldn't have honestly said that statement six months ago. It's also about hope and redemption. But the grief and the loss are always there in the background, sometimes softer and less obvious, and sometimes right in front of my face, begging to be processed and dealt with with a box of tissues and a sore fist from punching.

So I'm not sure yet what this season of writing is going to look like. I'll continue to resort to instagram as my mini-social media outlet, in which I am restricted from writing a massive amount of information..thus granting some sort of permission to myself to not have all of the words for the current state of my heart.

Because my heart is full these days. It's full of baby snuggles and gratitude and the taste of a longing fulfilled. And it's also full of new beginnings in a new town with no sign or trace of the memories of loss. And that is so incredibly refreshing. And then it's still full of aching and confusion and the realization that the absence of my girls is not temporary on this side of life.

What I do know, is that I will be writing. (And I will be writing on this giant 27" iMac that my sweet husband surprised me with.) And when I write, it will be during the infrequent naps of my six month old, who I can hear snoring through the baby monitor. And my writing will be broken up by my incessant need to check on him every ten minutes, sometimes just because I like to stare at him while he sleeps.

And I will always write with a heart that so clearly remembers how I longed to sit down in this space with a baby under the same roof as me, alive and thriving. Because not a moment goes by that I don't remember the pain of that longing, even as my girls were snuggled up in my womb.

And in case you missed it, we are still taking videos! Because we are dedicated to recording Shepherd's (+ future Tateys) childhood, even with all of the random, mismatched, uneventful video footage we get.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sincerely,

The lady with a bajillion passwords.