Monday, May 26, 2008

This World, Now

I have learned a new adjective yesterday, it is beautiful, useful, and perfectly descriptive: babylost. As in, "From one babylost mother to another". I like it. It works. It was used in an e-mail from Kate, (www.sweetsalty.com) and I just was struck by the ring to it: babylost. That is what I am. Babylost.

There is a website that Kate just started with some others, I'm still learning what it's all about, but you should go and look at it if you are babylost (or curious)... it is called www.glowinthewoods.com. It's this amazing little site that these six women have put together and there's just so much there. I love it.

I was so struck, in reading it, with the support and camraderie that exists out in cyberspace between babylost mothers. It is amazing. I can't even imagine what it would have been like for me to have that sense of "community"-- weird and abstract as it may be to have that on your computer screen. I can imagine that a great deal of my grief might have been moved off of the nursery floor (where I lay for many weeks on end, face imprinted with the pattern of the berber carpet, wet spots throughout the room where my face had touched), to the computer screen (where I can imagine myself sitting, fixed, almost stunned, There are more of me out there. I am not the only one who is babylost.)

Still, I have this reaction: when I read other people's blogs, when I read things that resonate so beautifully for me. Just the other day I read a post of Kate's where she described taking her son's little ziploc bag of hair with her outside, she wanted the sun to shine on him, he had never felt it. This post unleashed a torrent of tears, real and sincere, for Kate, and for myself. There was, in fact, another woman out there with a tiny little bag of hair. She, too, held it in her had, looking at the hair and knowing, this IS my child. This is not a picture, or a likeness of him, or something that touched him, but it is, in fact, him. This amazement, when even all you might be looking at is a tiny bag full of hair. She thinks this, and I think this. My other friends do not.

I don't find myself amazed at the comfort it brings me, however sadly, to know that there are others who are struggling through this journey with me. It makes sense. For the most part of my life I do feel that I fare so well, yet I crave, yearn, long for other people who can talk about this with me, who can sit there and suck up the feeling of sadness in my heart because they have been there and they know what is in my heart. Part of this is because it isn't always what I want to be talking about. How much is there to actually say about how this feels? What it was like? What it's still like? It makes me feel full and content, like a good meal, to imagine that there are women in the world, like me, who would have been the type of women that I would have hoped to befriend anyway, and in them I don't have to search for the words, because they just know.

There was a piece I read in glowinthewoods that caused lots of thought for me... it was a woman saying that Deborah Davis' book Empty Cradle Broken Heart didn't do much for her, because it merely validated what she knew she was already feeling. It really made me take a step back and realize where people can be sitting, now in a world where one can instantly, with a few web searches, find onesself literally surrounded with women who are also babylost. For me, that book was the ONLY thing ANYWHERE that confirmed that what I was feeling was normal. I did not have a single other friend, woman, acquaintance, ANYBODY who could tell me that this was what I was supposed to feel. I loved that book. I craved it, I read it again, and again, and again. (And you? Did you like it, if you are babylost?) This woman on glowinthewoods did not, really. Her post was about a salient point that Davis made, which did resonate with her, but overall she found it not so useful. My guess would be that this is because, unlike me, this woman is not islolated, and this is an amazing thing. This woman has endless acquaintances. Look at this: www.babylossdirectory.blogspot.com. There are literally hundreds of blogs there, that you can connect to in an instant. What a different world this is to be babylost in.

This has also made me think and think about how I want to write a book, and basically, I did want to write a book that served the purpose of exactly the purpose that blogs can now fulfill. I kind of think that the book that I wanted to write, doesn't need to be written anymore. I wanted to write a book that could be a friend to a grieving woman, with many stories, and opinions, and emotions, and that doesn't need to be written anymore, I don't think. So now what should I write? I will have to put some thought into this.

Cause I have lots of time to write a book, what with spending all night here typing on MY blog...

5 comments:

Shannon said...

Your blog could be your book. I read "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart" last year after Isabella died. I've been avoiding reading it this year since Sean died. Maybe I'll get it out to refresh my memory and see if I did like it or not. I'll let you know what the verdict is. I also felt very alone and isolated last year. I'm glad I found you in the Share Newsletter and you sent me your blog to give me some comfort this year. Maybe that's why I didn't feel the need to get out "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart", your blog is better.

Pen In Cheek said...

Oh, I think your book still begs to be written.

While I am not babylost, I know the comfort a book, an actual pages-and-binding-in-hand book can bring. When I was mourning the loss of my dad I would find myself reading a passage in a book, curled up in my bed, pillows propped, blankets tousled, then suddenly in the throes of a deep sob. It was that book that could absorb the tears with its pages and I could bury my face, and the grief, in its spine. Books are real and while the blogs and the people who share their stories are very real, too, there is a safe anonymity in stealing some time to oneself with a book.

You are an excellent writer and I think you would write a lovely book for Charlotte.

Janya

p.s. I wonder if I don't belong here, commenting and reading your beautful stories, because I am not babylost. But, from one mother to another, I love your honesty and your strength is magnificent.

Jen said...

Carol, I think there is definitely a place in the world for your book. Please, please write it. Blogs are great but books are just different.

And I am so happy to see Charlotte's picture up again...when you were changing around your design I think she was gone briefly, is that right? I found myself searching for her.

sweetsalty kate said...

I'm so glad you found us over at glow in the woods. You glow too, and we are all comfort to one another. xo

Unknown said...

I agree, Carol there is great need for the book that you would write. Please write your book, the world is waiting!