My Happily Ever After: Pausing to Appreciate it

The pain is sudden - in an instant I was no longer laughing at my Netflix sitcom while balancing the checkbook.  The pain is deep - I'm overwhelmed at the heaviness of it.  The pain is physical - my heart has sunk into my stomach like a rock, my mind is racing, I am nauseous. It is raw and real and feels brand new - even though I said good-bye to my daughter almost 4 years ago.

What's crazy is it feels like I JUST wrote a "Happy Birthday in Heaven" letter to her like a week ago. How has it been almost a YEAR already?! I hate this hurt, this pain, the memories of THAT DAY and the ones that followed. I hide from it, turn and run from the pain that consumes me, yet here it is.

God has the most gentle way of reminding me to appreciate my life - just the way it is. I joined a couple of online support groups after my daughter was stillborn but I had been struggling with some depression for awhile and unsubscribed so that photos and posts would not end up in my Facebook news feed all the time. Today one got through. Somehow I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and there it was - a post with photos of a sweet little baby girl, cradled in her mother's arms before being placed in a casket.

Superhero Themed Teacher Appreciation Party!!

In my Organize-All-Things project (brought on by moving to a new home after 11 years) I came across these photos on my computer and realized I never blogged about this awesome event! It was waaayy back in March that my girlfriend and I (she's cochaired this event with me for SEVEN years!!) put on the Teacher & Staff Appreciation Lunch for ECFE - Early Childhood/Preschool/Special Ed. 

Parent Advisory Council plans and puts on this Luncheon Event every year to thank the teachers and staff for all they do.  We've had different themes over the years - this was our last year on Advisory (I was moving school districts and her youngest was off to Kinder) and last time we would do this event so we went big - Super Hero Big! We also added another awesome cochair this year to pass along the torch and take over the event next year. 

The cityscape was way more work than you'd think - but having a couple of them on the walls brightened up the gym a bit! Black paper (from those long rolls they have in the staff room) with yellow Post-Its cut to look like windows.