Telling a Story

Through the years, I have been blogging as a way to capture the daily events of our lives.  As I would read other blogs that I admire, I would often think “All of these women have a  story and I don’t have a story.”

Well now I have a “story” but I desperately wish that I didn’t.

I would trade being stuck in a perpetual writer’s block, if I could be holding my baby girls.  It isn’t even a question.  I would go back to the mundane recounting of days.  I would easily give up that portion of my life in exchange for their heartbeats.  But that is not a deal that can be made.

There are times when I cannot believe that this is now my story.

Without fully realizing it, I have been searching for my “voice”, my story, for a long time. Why did I need to experience loss to find it?  Why did THIS have to become my story?

Why did a “story” have to emerge from something that should have been so normal: pregnancy?

It is a story that began with the death of Nelle. It continued with a plot twist in the death of Iris. And it is not done yet.  I cannot even see the ending, but my character is being dragged toward it.

Our story before was not one that people would want to read. We were average in our simple love story, our successful jobs, our suburban house, our sweet children.  There was no story, because there was no conflict.  No one wants to read that story, no matter how beautifully written.

It is from the ashes of our idyllic world that a story has risen.  It is from struggle that words have formed.

The most memorable stories leave you changed.  You continue to mull over the words in your head, weeks after setting the book down.  If this is the story that I am now going to tell, then I want it to touch someone.  Being so open in grief is maybe a way to comfort, to inspire, to teach, to heal.  It is a way for my girls to have an impact on the world: to share their story.

This is not the story that I wanted to tell, but I am compelled to tell it.