Day 20: Hope

Day 20: Hope
Oct 20, 2013

After I lost Nolan I had hope that he wasn't my only chance to be a mother. I held out hope that I would be granted another opportunity to be the mother I always wanted to be and not just a mother with empty arms. 49 weeks and 1 day after Nolan's death I was granted that wish. 49 weeks and 1 day. Normal gestation for a baby is 40 weeks. Ronan grew inside me for 38 weeks.That means only 11 weeks after Nolan's death we conceived Ronan. Not quite 3 months. We were told to wait until I had one cycle before we tried again and longer if we needed to heal more emotionally first. But I felt like my emotional healing wouldn't begin until I had hope that I would be a mother again. That hope came in the form of a blue line on a pregnancy test. I would take 3 more tests before the week was over, each one showing an even darker blue line. Ronan became my hope for a brighter future. As he grew bigger and stronger, so did my hope. Ronan gave me hope that one day I would be able to be the mother that I thought I was about to become with Nolan. Ronan and Marshall, who after all gave me my two most precious gifts of all - my sons.

What hope do I have for others that might experience this? I would hope that no one would ever join this "club" I'm in, but I know that is unrealistic. So for those that do, I hope that they too can find something to live for, some hope for a brighter future. For some I know this doesn't include having another child. For me that was the only hope I clung to because I felt it was obtainable. But now in retrospect I realize there were other things I could have gravitated to as well to give me hope that I would smile and laugh and be happy again. There was and is my marriage, my friends, my family, and my art - my writing. Now my hope is that my writing can help someone else. I want to know that my writing isn't just helping to heal me but maybe somewhere else someone else is reading it at just the right time and it is impacting them. Maybe that's my higher purpose in having gone through this experience. I feel like it was paid forward to me and now I should pay it forward in the only way I really know how - by writing it down.