Freedom to Grieve

I still have a lot of grief around the labor experience of having Junia. It isn't so much about grieving what wasn't- like natural or at home- it is more about grieving what was. The experience of not being treated like a person in the operating room or being threatened that they would take Junia away if she didn't gain enough weight still holds a dark cloud in my psyche.

Par usual for me I am discovering a lack of community in the emotional depth that I ask. I need to talk about and process this experience for myself. I need to grieve by sharing, retelling, re-framing, and ultimately letting the dark cloud rain out it's darkness. But so many people refuse the depth of this grief. Instead they treat me like a fool for laboring so long, overlook my own desires within the experience, and shake off the emotion of it.

Though my dearest friends embrace the depth and richness of my emotion, and many budding friendships do as well it is in the more common interaction of moving away from emotion that I become frustrated. Because, I believe in my emotion and in my process God resides; it is there that I become prophetic and tap into the holy. To take that away from me, to not listen to it, to deny the depth is to deny that. But then on the other hand, to be truly listened to, as I am by many, is gift in the utter richness of all that word can mean.