The Grief Identity and Breaking Rules

I had an appointment with my psychologist the other evening. An idea surfaced: the complexity of my identity before Charlie, has been replaced by the identity of a grieving mother; a mother who has lost her baby.

It's hard for it not to be, when the loss of your baby seems to cling to every fibre of your being. I think for quite a time I was very content identifying as a loss mama and I always will be, a mum to a baby in heaven.

For a time there, in my darkest moments, I felt very torn. I felt I was only a mum and the complexity was, I had one baby here on earth but one in heaven, or wherever he went, that I felt equally needed me. I think though as time has gone past, I've begun to realise, that's not a choice I get to make. That choice was made for me. I must and want to remain with Gracie. When I think about it now, it was a very irrational thought, that I would be able to go and join Charlie wherever he is. It doesn't fit in with my beliefs but I think with my heart and brain at rock bottom, I clung to the idea and didn't allow myself to accept that he was really, just gone.

So now, with my future dreams firmly rooted on earth, I began to turn to the question of 'who am I now this has happened? Who do I want to be? How do I want to give and receive love?' What I have learnt, through lots of self-searching, is that I am a person that likes labels, likes putting abstract thoughts into nice little pockets of words that help to contain the volatility of them. I like rules and like abiding by them. When I began to let myself feel again, something other than grief, I began to shut it back down, and still do. Joy? That's not how a grieving mother should feel. Desire? That's not what a grieving mother should feel. Motivation? What for? My babies are what motivate me and one half of that was gone, the loss surmounting the blessing of having Gracie.

Every time, I've tried to feel something other than the typical 'grief', I've shut myself down. My psychologist, who I've been working with since a few weeks postpartum, helped me to realise that quite often, I see myself as either black or white. I'm either doing something well or badly and quite often I see it as a deficit. Am I runner? No, I tell myself. I'm only running for Charlie. Am I a photographer? No, I don't know enough about cameras. Am I a teacher? No, I'm lacking confidence in my job. Am I wife? No, I've been pretty shoddy at that too.

If I say, am I a mother? I've always been able to say a resounding, yes! Am I a 'good' mother? That's where it gets complex. I felt complex about this in the first year after having Gracie. I worked hard to see myself not as a 'good' mother but to allow myself to identify as a 'good enough' mother and I finally found that balance, only for the work to be overthrown when I birthed a baby, that had something physiologically problematic about him. That any attempt to care for him in the way we had envisaged ie. feeding, cuddling, bathing, settling, had been robbed from us by the wires and tubes, and the NICU crib and the hand sanitiser that kept him alive.

The one identity I was firm on, had been not just complicated but completely overthrown and now I must rebuild. Perhaps a gift from Charlie, is seeing very clearly, that it's not just 'good' to have an identity other than 'mother' but that it's necessary. I am a mother and I am a woman and I paint, I write, I run, I swim in the ocean, I take photos, I advocate, I give and receive love as a wife, even if it's somewhat built into me to reject it, in moments of vulnerability. Perhaps, I don't do any of those things 'well.' Perhaps, in my brain, not enough to make them my identity but this is the work that is ongoing; not seeing things in black and white, rejecting the rules, allowing a fumble,a mistake, an imperfection.

If I look at the situation through that lense, it is easier to mother a dead child, it is easier to mother a living one, whilst grieving, it is easier to aim for a marathon, or to take up writing a blog because I am not one thing perfectly or another. I am a combination.

It's my endeavour to begin breaking down the rules in my own mind about what a grieving mother looks like. She doesn't have to look sad constantly, she doesn't have to reject intimacy or to light a candle every night. It's ok to live simultaneously with those things. It's not about giving Charlie up to live life. It's about loving him through living life.

It blows my mind every day, how a baby with basic consciousness who only was earth-side for 12 days, can teach me so much about myself, that I was unable to discover in 29 years. I'll always think of him as my little wise man, with eyes the depth of his soul. His potential was not in the 80 odd years he missed out on, perhaps it was in transforming our lives and if I allow it to be, that potential is endless.