5 Month Angelversary & Other Randomness

if grief were an actual person standing in front of me right now, i'd almost certainly punch him/her in the face. repeatedly. i'm pretty sure i would end up in jail at the end of it all. i'm spending most of my days these days in the "anger" stage of grief. as i look at the pictures of my fellow bereaved parents' angels, i can't help but become enraged. all of these perfect, innocent babies ripped from the arms of those that love them the most. stolen from this world by death. causing a ripple effect of heartache and pain. it just doesn't seem right, just, fair {dare i even use that word?}. i continue to ask the question "why?" daily. why Julius? why my baby boy? why us? i obviously have yet to receive an answer to my questions. but honestly, there is no answer that would be adequate or sufficient for me. there will never be an answer that i will accept.

this past saturday was Juju's 5 month angelversary. it, as expected, was a difficult day. i think i cried on and off the entire day. thankfully, i had scheduled an appointment with my counselor on that day. i don't think i realized it at the time, but it turned out to be a great idea. dennis and i decided to go out to eat, which was nice. we got to talk a bit, and i cried a bit more. i decided as we were heading to our car that i needed to do something to show Juju that i missed him. so we headed across the street from where we were to dollar tree, and i picked up a balloon to send him.

God bless dollar tree and their supply of balloons. if only i had brought my permanent marker with me {which from now on i will keep in my car at all times} i would have been set. but i was glad that i got to send him a little something anyway - my way of "mothering" him from afar, i suppose.

this weekend i also moved on to volume 3 of my journal {"letters to Juju"}. i know i have mentioned before that starting at a week after Julius passed away, i began writing him a letter everyday. it has brought me so much comfort to have that time dedicated to my baby boy, to tell him all the things that he's been missing, to tell him how much i'm missing and loving him. this is one of the reasons i was so moved to help out franchesca with Jenna journal drive. journaling has been such a big part of my grief journey. so i feel compelled to help give another grieving parent this option if they want it. i have put my 2 completed volumes in my time capsule with Juju's special things for safe-keeping.

Vol. 1

Vol. 2

Vol. 3

they all seem to have very fitting messages on the cover too {they have all been given to me by friends as well}. Vol 3 says "this is my wish for you:" and has a bunch of very touching wishes, but i underlined a few that spoke to my heart...

• "comfort on difficult days"
• "rainbows to follow the clouds"
• "faith so that you can believe"
• "patience to accept the truth"
• "love to complete your life"

right now those seem to be my deepest wishes, and i think it was just fitting that i got this journal when i did {and i have felt the same about each of the other journals}.

and lastly i would like you all to lift my dear friend tiffany up in thoughts and prayers. today is her daughter's 4th birthday up in heaven. as may looms nearer every day, and the dread i feel in my chest thinking about Juju's 1st birthday builds, i can not imagine the pain of having to celebrate 4 whole years without him. it never gets any easier to say goodbye to your baby, to your firstborn {as Genesis is for tiffany}. tiffany, i'm constantly thinking of your baby girl. but i'm holding you, the one left behind, extra close to my heart today. she will always be remembered, she will always be loved. ♥ Genesis ♥

so much good happening...

well, i might as well mention what my special project is now. it's already been promoted by my lovely friends and a couple of other worthy site. yay!

a few weeks ago, i received the email that put all of this in motion. a lovely woman, stephanie, and the founder of the organization Tiny Handprints contacted me. she started TH after she lost her precious 10 mo old baby boy, Jacob, in 2007; and i found her site shortly after i lost Juju. we communicated on several occasions via email, and since she was located not too far from where i live, i offered her my help any time she needed it. i was so inspired by her and her work, that i was even considering maybe persuing something similar in my area in the future {she even sent me, free of charge, 5 kits to help me get started}. well, when i received her email, i got chills thinking that Juju might have had a hand in it. she told me that she had been following my blog, and had been thinking of me {i was immediately humbled and honored}. she also went on to say that unfortunately she was going to have to close TH, and wanted to know if i wanted to, essentially, carry on the work that they started.

to say that i was even more humbled and honored would be an understatement. it left me speechless that she thought highly enough of me to ask me if i wanted to do this and carry on the legacy that Jacob started. i was also completely overwhelmed thinking of all the things that i would need to do in order to pull this off, but decided that i would do it anyway. i figured that if it had been placed in my path, it must be because Julius wants me to do it. my heart is wide open because of my son, and it's for him that i live the life that i have left on this earth. and so, In His Name was created {because well, i'm doing everything these days in Julius' name}...

we will continue to send out the "SIDS Survival Kits" that stephanie and the TH team developed to families in our immediate area (alabama and tennesse) that have been affected by SIDS. and will also be providing information, assistance, and comfort to any family that should contact us. we know first-hand how deep this pain runs, and want to be there for those who are unfortunate enough to find themselves on this dark road as well. if you would like to help, please go to In His Name and donate. all donations will be used to purchase the books that will be sent in the kits.

i also want to take some time to promote the great work and new project that franchesca from Small Bird Studios is doing. o, and did i mention that she is the sponsor of my monthly giveaway for febuary? so stop back by tomorrow to see what the giveaway is. anyway, as i mentioned before, she is a fellow BLM and lost her precious Jenna Belle in 2009. since then she has also been doing all she can to help bereaved parents, and make the world a better place in her baby girl's name. she has started the "Jenna Journal Drive" to provide new journals to NICU parents so that they have a way to record/document their memories with their precious babies while in the NICU and beyond.

journaling has always been an outlet for me, but it means even more now as it is my way to continue to stay connected with my baby boy. so when i saw her post, i knew that i also wanted to help with this. i will be collecting journals locally for this drive. if you are local to me {or even if you are not} and would like to donate a journal for the drive, please let me know. my goal is to collect at least 20 journals for franchesca and Jenna. all the journals that we send to franchesca will have a sticker inside saying that the journal was provided in memory of Julius. ♥ if you would like to send a journal or donate on your own, no problem, just click the button above and it will direct you to the post with the information.

thank you all for your support and your help. you all are amazing, and i don't know where i would be without you...♥

**updated to add that i will be sending the journals off to franchesca at the end of feb/beginning of march. so if you want to send a journal through us, let me know**

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.**