Friends in deed

In the initial weeks and months after Rochelle's passing life was quite a roller coaster emotionally. During this time I had several major eye-opening realizations. First and foremost was the immense and overwhelming sense of loss and confusion when trying to make it through the day. Every day was a challenge going from one task to another and realizing she was no longer here, it was just me and the girls. But the silver lining in the early days was the warm embrace of the friends in the local community. Friends and acquaintances that Rochelle had made during the 3 years we had lived in Camino.

Friends that brought meals, friends that hosted the girls for play dates, friends that helped clean the house, friends that helped sort through belongings for donation, friends that helped gather pictures and stories for the memorial service and the girls memory boxes. One friend in particular had her hand in all of the above and gave above and beyond. Annette, I will never be able to repay the debt for all that you did for my family, but I will try. Thank you for being a friend.

Friends made this time bearable when all I wanted to do was dig a hole and hide. It was Annette that also got me in contact with Snowline Hospice. They have what I found out first hand is an outstanding children's grief counseling program. During the school year the girls were able to attend the group counseling sessions every two weeks. They enjoyed the peer/group counseling meetings and the play therapy.

The girls were making progress while I was struggling through various anti-depressant medications. Some worked, some didn't. Overall they worked once the prescription and dosage was adjusted several times. However, the end result was that I didn't feel like myself anymore and too separated from my emotions. So much so that I didn't feel I was progressing in my grieving process, I felt stuck. I finally decided to stop taking the medications after about a year. I then had to deal with mood swings, but at least I didn't feel like I as living in a fog or walking around half awake.

Blogging 2.0, or Time to reboot this thing

It's been over a year since my last post but I never forgot how to find my way back to this place. I think it was little too early in my journey to try to pour out everything into my blog. What I did post before was helpful and meaningful, but was also painful. Not only at the time it was written but when re-reading it after posting and every time I logged back in to post again.

As the saying goes time heals all wounds. Not that I'm healed yet but after more than a year later enough healing has occurred that makes me willing to give this another go. I look forward to being able to use this as a way to put my feelings into words. Not only as a method to heal but to document thoughts, feelings, experiences that I will be able to share with my girls. Sometimes I fear the thought of having to have tough conversations with them about what happened and how I feel about it, but by thinking and writing about it I think I'm better prepared for those conversations. By taking time to write I force myself to think of the words I want to use to describe events, thoughts, feelings, etc. It's almost like a dress rehearsal for future conversations so I don't end up feeling so dumb struck and tongue tied.

I'm hoping to post at least once a month and for special events. I'll start by adding some previous facebook posts from the past year to help fill in some of the missing time.