Loss Journal

I’ve been reading this book   and it’s been pretty mind-opening to me. The first bit is on loss, and how loss affects us in so many ways, years and years later. I’ll admit, I cried pretty hard reading that section, so I advise for you to read it alone, or warn your loved ones that it’s going to make you weepy.

In the book, Lama Surya Das tells us to make a journal of our losses, because by better understanding what we have lost, we are able to move ahead. Sometimes they are big losses, something they are small. All are equal in our mind, and we must work to let go of them all.

Here are the losses that I come up with right off the bat. I am not going to list which are big and which are small in this post, but maybe I will after time for reflection. Big or small, they have stuck in my head, so they are likely still having an impact on me today. They are not in chronological order, just as they come into my mind

- My high school and college diary which was thrown away on accident by my husband

- The two pregnancies that resulted in early miscarriage

- Innocence and pure-joy of being pregnant which was lost both by the former miscarriages, and by a sub-chrionic hematoma that sent me to the ER early in my last (successful!) pregnancy

- Desert Storm. I was only 5, but we lost our home, our friends, and our safety net all in one day. I will write a post on that later.

- Lost faith in my body due to infertility struggles

- First break-up

- Loss of my image of life as a mother 

- the reality of me and my husband becoming parents, vs what I thought it would be like

- Loss of confidence in myself

- First time I owed taxes when I expected a refund

- First time my job was threatened

- Loss of a cookie shit (somewhat joking, but seriously, where did it go? It bugs me at night)

- Lost friends

- Deaths of pets

- Loss of time, or rather, losing the ability to get done what I needed to do 100% of the time

- Loss of memories

- Loss of energy

- Lost ability to cook (where did it go? It just went poof)

- The fear I felt when told I had gestational diabetes (loss of control, loss of confidence, loss of fairness in the world)

- Having to turn in my beloved VW Passat

- Having credit card debt (loss of financial control)

- Loss of identity (I just don’t know who I am anymore)

- Not knowing what I want to do/be

- My husband (accidentally!) wacking the head off my Amarylis plant right before it bloomed

- My gardens falling victim to the weed-wacker every spring

- Loss of control over my body (it just doesn't go back the same after giving birth)

- Losing my car keys when K was only a few weeks old which made me late for dinner at my parent's house

- losing a library book (I swear, there's a black-hole somewhere in my house where this stuff gets sucked into an alternate universe)

- where does that second sock always end up?

- having to replace our fridge when K was little

- losing power when I was 39 weeks pregnant. It was 100F out. It sucked

- losing power when K was around 1 years old. I had a chest freezer filled to the top with a breastmilk stash so that I wouldn't have to continue pumping at work. It was fine, but it was a terrifying 6 hours without power

- being in contract negotiations for a house for 8 months, only to have to walk away and start over again