Starbucks & Kate

This morning, I had a coffee date with my old friend Katie {Katie has a super cute Etsy shop which you should totally check out. And a cute blog, check that out too}. She is a newlywed also, and lives in Iowa with her husband. This week, she's in town to visit her mama who just happens to live up the street from us. She picked me up in her little red bug and we spent two hours at Starbucks. It was so nice to catch up. We've been friends since the early days of high school, but have lived in different states ever since.

Katies Dad passed away very recently, and at one point I asked her how her mom was doing with that. We talked about it for a few minutes, and then she said, "how are you doing?" Without thinking twice, I responded by saying something about how I'd been good, just feeling so ready to graduate and start working.

Tonight as I was folding laundry and listening to the new Adele album, I was thinking about our conversation and it occured to me that she was asking me about how I was doing with losing Olivia. That should have been obvious to me because of the context of the conversation... but for whatever reason, it wasn't. {Kate, if you're reading this and that's not even what you meant at all... let me know :) }

This is the first time - or at least the first time that I've noticed - that my first instinct wasn't to answer the question with something grief/loss related. Once I realized this, It was a very, VERY good feeling. I think it's definitely another milestone that tells me I'm healing. I have used this comparison before, but I used to say that even if good things were going on, I still felt like no matter what, I was being followed around everywhere by a big gray cloud that seemed to be saying to me, "You can try to be as happy as you want, but you won't ever actually be happy because your daughter is dead". I'm sure my fellow baby loss mamas can identify with that. Don't get me wrong - I am still sad, a lot, and I think about Olivia or something related to her in some capacity every day, and I probably always will. Sometimes every hour of the day. But I'm definitely healing, and that's a good thing.

On another note, one of the starbucks employees brought in cupcakes for everyone to try while we were there. Supposedly, she made them by using a white cake mix and adding in Starbucks VIA Mocha mix. They were okay... they looked much cuter then they tasted. I found a recipe for VIA cupcakes here... and I might just be trying it out this weekend. I'll let you know if it's a giant fail or not...