A holiday about giving thanks is sometimes about as welcome as the drunk uncle who siphons all the rum off the rum cake.
Here you are, and what has happened this year? You’ve gotten pregnant, told everyone, bought seven layettes, and then, the worst happened. You lost the baby.
Now, your dad is saying grace, your mom is smiling over the table at your pregnant sister-in-law, and you want to shove thanks up somebody’s nose.
And that is just fine.
You don’t have to be thankful. You don’t have to cram your anger and disappointment and overwhelming grief inside you like the overstuffed turkey.
You definitely don’t have to oooh and aaah over the new baby in the family, or admire a fat belly, if one is sitting mockingly across the room.
Find your inner peace, take deep breaths, talk to the kinder gentler members of your family, even it it’s just the cat, and realize that this time next year, the entire situation could be reversed, and you will be the pregnant one. Get through this one day, this one dinner, however you can, and remember that you have a long future ahead with bundled babies and doting family–really, you DO!
So go arm wrestle your uncle for the last rum-soaked cherry.
We’re all here too. We’re enduring, we’re NOT thankful, not this year. And that is okay.
___________________________________
Empty
Cradle, Broken Heart
