Dec 5 - Let go

Let Go - What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
(Author: Alice Bradley)

The obvious answer is - Olivia. I let go of the fact that Kurt and I would be bringing her home from the hospital on the day that we left by ourselves, with a white box and a see-through hospital bag full of her belongings.

But what took MUCH longer to let go of? Our future with her. Or the life that we were supposed to have. From the moment we found out we were expecting her, our plans for our future changed. Gone was the idea of financial freedom, the idea of being able to work for a few years to save money before we had kids, plans to travel, etc. We quickly moved into a two bedroom apartment and busied ourselves with getting ready for her. We literally changed our entire idea of what our future was going to be like, because we thought we were going to have a sweet little girl at home with us. Even though we were caught by surprise by my pregnancy, we were more than excited and didn't even mind that we were going to have to switch gears a little bit.

After she died, it took a little while for us to realize things like, we were still living in a two bedroom apartment that we didn't need. Kurt was still working full time, over night five, sometimes six days out of the week to make money for our family - something that he didn't really need to do because of the amazing financial support provided by the military since he was in school full time. By instinct, I was still looking at baby clothes when I would go to Target, going to the "third tri" message board that I used to read every day to get advice, still immediately laying my hands on my stomach whenever i'd lay down. Or sit in a chair. Or walk. - THAT habit was especially hard to let go of. I think I was still catching myself doing it well into March.

So anyway - we had to let go of the life that we had been expecting, and try to talk ourselves into going back to the way of life that we had previously let go of.

This year, I let go of the idea of being a mom. Or at least a mom in the traditional sense of the word.