for the times you are holding onto your last thread

During my first marriage, I lost an unborn child a few hours after being thrown into a sliding glass shower door.

I married again, 8 years later, to a wonderful, caring and kind husband. Unfortunately, we have also dealt with our share of grief. My father-in-law passed away just weeks before our wedding. Our son, a preemie, was born in the wake of 9/11. He stopped breathing at 5 days old and was taken by ambulance to a local children's hospital, then placed into the NICU. After he was discharged, he wore an infant apnea monitor for two months until his lungs matured. I quit a career that I loved. A few months later my husband was laid off from his job, part of the fallout that 9/11 had on the corporate world. My mother-in-law learned she had stage IV cancer when our son was 6 months old. For the next seven years our lives revolved around her incredibly brave fight against cancer. I lost my own mother just as the pandemic was unfolding in Washington state. Grieving my mother was compounded by the difficulties that the pandemic brought with it.

Six months after my mom died, I hit a very low low. I hadn't been at that level of hopelessness in 31 years, since my living with DV days. I'm grateful to my family for helping me get through it. We are still working through it.