One Year Closing In

In less than two weeks now it will have been one year since our precious Carson left us. As this time closes in I find that there are some intense emotions surfacing as well as some underlying tension that causes patience to lessen. There has been so much healing, so much evolving, that it is difficult to think there is more - yet, I guess there always is.

During this experience I try to always think of how others in my place are feeling at different stages of their grief. As I edit my journal, which will soon be published, I am reminded of the pain, the anger, and the overwhelming feelings of incompleteness that I felt. It is an intense journey that is difficult to understand if you have not traveled it yourself. The editing process has been a difficult, yet healing, experience for me. It is sometimes overwhelming to be reminded of the intensity of my emotions and yet I also marvel at how I have grown throughout this time. It has been a crazy inward journey and I hope that it will comfort others in knowing that even though it might not feel like it, they will survive. They might even become stronger for it.

That is one of the strongest motivations for me to publish my journal. It is an outpouring of my soul that encompasses all the emotional roller-coasters that one travels during the grief journey of losing a child. It is taking all of my courage to do this, but if it helps one other parent who has lost a child or helps one other support provider gain an understanding of what their loved ones are going through, then it makes publishing my soul worth it.

There have been so many times I felt all alone and in need of someone who truly understood what I was feeling. My hope is that this book will help others to feel not as lost, not as alone. Caron's Gifts will be a memorial to my son that I hope to publish in honor of his 1st birthday, or his 1st angelversary as some call it. So, for now, I will take a deep breath and trust that my intuition in publishing this journal is well founded.