i'm still here...

i made it, fortunately or unfortunately {depending on my mood}, through my 1st christmas without my Juju. i'm still here, i'm still breathing, i'm still heartbroken. christmas day itself was not as painful as i thought it would be. but then again, it didn't really feel like christmas at our house, so it wasn't necessarily an added layer of pain that we had to get through. D and i stayed in, and it very much felt like just another day. we are so glad that we decided to forego celebrating the holidays this year like we had originally planned. staying home in our safe environment was definitely what we needed to do to get through this time. and thanks to the suggestion of a friend {thank you, andrea}, we lit a candle all day on christmas eve and christmas day for Julius. it helped me to feel as though he was always nearby.

this past week hasn't all been sad and painful. there have been some moments of light mixed in...

last week, ms. linda, the executive director at The CJ Foundation for SIDS,  sent me an email asking if i would like to be a guest blogger for them. she has been so very helpful and supportive to us during this time, and i was incredibly honored that she thought of me. the piece she wanted me to write about was my thoughts on facing the new year without Julius. i, understandably, have a lot {probably too much} to say about this topic, and was a bit stressed out about how i was going to organize all of my thoughts. but after working on it this weekend, i sent it to her this morning, and i'm looking forward to her posting it. i will post it on here after she's posted it {i don't want to spoil anything}. but again, it means so much that i was given this opportunity to honor my son.

i also finished my 1st journal yesterday. some of you may remember the post where i mentioned that i received a journal from some of my friends from my hometown {thank you, shelly and amanda}, and have written Julius a letter every day since the 1 week mark of his passing. well at 2 months and 2 weeks since i said goodbye to my son, i finished Vol. 1 of "Letters to Juju" {thanks for that name, fabby}. i skimmed through some of the earlier letters to him, and i noticed that even though i have made some progress with my feelings, i'm still very heartbroken, and very lost. the overall feelings of "darkness" are still there, but are now mixed in with some moments of hopefulness  - something that wasn't around early on. and today, i started my 2nd journal - Vol. 2 {thank you, michelle}. i think the quote on the front is especially fitting.

and the last thing that happened this morning is that i already reached my first goal mark of $1000 for Juju's memorial fund at CJ. i even increased my goal amount to $1500 {and got to gloat to D some more - again, it felt really good}. i am absolutely speechless at everyone's generosity. i definitely think it's a testiment to how many loving people are surrounding me, and how much my son is loved. he was only in my arms for 4.5 short months, but he completely changed my life forever. i again thank everyone that has donated {and who has even thought about donating}. thank you for contributing to such a worthy cause and organization. thank you for helping ensure that one day no one will have to lose a child this terribly tragic way. and thank you most of all for remembering our son. ♥

**updated to add: i ended up taking angie's advice and changed my goal amount for Juju's memorial fund to $5k! thank you, girl, for suggesting that.**