My Denial

Yesterday I went with a friend to try out a yoga class at her gym. I was having a rough day, and feeling weepy and unstable. The class was fine, but at the end, like in most yoga classes I have done, they give you a few minutes to lay on your back. You're supposed to breathe into your body, relax, and focus your mind on your breath and being in the present. I guess it caught me off guard. Normally I really like that part. It's the dessert. But normally I like "being in the present". Not right now. I'm really uncomfortable with the present. In the present I am empty, lost and broken. The huge, ugly, awful sobs were coming, and while I need to let those out sometimes, it wasn't in that room packed with strangers. So my mind dropped "the present" like a hot potato, and ran to hide back in it's happy place, the past.

Yep, the past is my comfort right now, and I'm spending a lot of time there. Maybe it is because babies grow so fast, that you're always saying goodbye to a phase almost as soon as it appears, but it isn't painful to look at pictures and videos, even from just a few months ago. I can reflect on those memories and just feel the pure joy of holding her, or watching her. In the past, I am full of purpose and happiness. I have worries, things I'm working on, and things I don't have figured out, but I know that I'm doing the most important things, especially being Brooke's mom.

So it occurred to me that that is my form of denial. The social worker at the hospital gave us some information about grieving, and I read through most of it. But in the hospital, we were in a very protected, sacred cocoon of grace. Heavenly Father knew we needed it then, but He also knows that He needed to set us back on our own legs to grieve. I still don't feel that He has left me alone. It's more like He is giving me some space to work on this so that I can grow the way I need to. But it is also comforting to know that denial is normal. I didn't understand how someone could really be in denial. I know that Brooke is dead. Believe me, I've thought through all that quite a lot. But I'm kind of enjoying this stage of denial. I could stay here a long time with my memories of Brooke.