Do you feel like everywhere you look someone is sharing about their perfect family, their pregnancy announcement, or the birth of their child?
It feels like that after the death of your child. You’re not alone.
There’s another layer of this that I noticed recently. I was scrolling Instagram and saw a post from a fellow angel mama that had her rainbow baby. She shared how hard it was for them and how long it took for them to have their rainbow. As I continued reading, I got to the end where she said, “If you trust in God and have faith, then you’ll get your ‘rainbow,’ too. Don’t lose hope.” I realized how hard this would have been for me to read had it been 2 years ago.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets their rainbow. We didn’t get ours.
As hard as it is to see families that haven’t experienced loss get their “perfect” family, it’s even harder to see all the other angel parents get their “rainbow” except you.
If that’s you, you’re not alone. In fact, there are a lot of us that don’t get our rainbow.
It’s hard. Like, really freaking hard!
To be fair, if I were her, I probably would’ve said the same thing. I love hope. Sometimes hope is all we have. But what about all the families whose hope didn’t turn into a rainbow?
If you didn’t get your rainbow, therefore not getting your happily ever after or at least a happier ever after, what do you do now? Where are you supposed to go from here?
The short and simple answer: you have to accept your new reality, your new identity.
Simple does NOT mean easy.
Accepting my new reality was probably the hardest thing for me to go through. I didn’t want to accept that my daughter’s only sibling would be in heaven instead of growing up with her. I didn’t want to accept that my arms would never be full of my own kids. I didn’t want to accept that maybe God had a new plan for me. I didn’t want to accept it. In fact, I fought it as hard as I could!
Even though I didn’t want to accept it, I knew I needed to.
After months and months of fighting my new reality and trying to change it, I knew that I was the one that needed to change. And, because I still didn’t want to accept it but knew I needed to, I needed help.
I found a therapist for myself and another therapist for my family.
Trying to overcome something this difficult alone—that you don’t even want to do in the first place—is not going to get you where you need to go.
Your needs have to outweigh your wants. And when you have that support person or people, you have someone that will fight for what you need even when you don’t want them to. Even when you want to go back. Even when you want to give up. This person will help you get back to why you need to instead of letting you stay stuck in why you don’t want to.
Here we were. I had a therapist, and my family had a different therapist.
I saw my therapist for about 4 months, and it just wasn’t a fit for me. Even though I didn’t seek out a new therapist, I want you to know that it’s okay to get a new therapist. Luckily for me, we were seeing another therapist as a family, and she was and still is perfect for our family. When you find the right support, you just know, and you will do what it takes to work with that person.
This support along with a few key friends was crucial for me accepting my new identity. It wasn’t until a year later that I got to the point of truly embracing my identity and what my family would look like.
I hate to keep you hanging, but there’s more coming in part 2 of this story.
If you want part 2 sent directly to your email, click here and I’ll send it to you!
