For weeks now, there have been many things I wanted to say here. My head is very loud with all the things. But when I sit down to write a post (if I get that far, even), they all seem so silly and unimportant.
I don’t want to bore people with tales of my feelings. I’ve always tried to keep the tone of this blog positive. I’ve tried to impart something useful. Lately I haven’t felt able do that, so I stayed away.
I’m not exactly sure why I felt this way. I do know that this past year has changed me, and not necessarily in a good way. I have anxiety that I have never experienced before. Maybe it’s post-preemie PTSD.
I came across another article about it here: For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last. A snippet:
“The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness,” Ms. Roscoe said. “You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”
Experts say parents of NICU infants experience multiple traumas, beginning with the early delivery, which is often unexpected.
This is true.
For me, the shock came with a very surprise pregnancy, but the trauma began when I was 8 weeks pregnant. Then there was one trauma after another as I said goodbye to my unborn child over and over again.
I’m left with a severely shaken confidence that has bled into my writing. Everyone else has more interesting things to say (adding insult to injury, they’re cuter, thinner and more stylish too).
I had to remove Instagram from my phone because checking it, something I formerly enjoyed tremendously, gave me terrible (and shameful to admit) feelings of envy. (The ubiquitous pictures of fat new babies don’t help.)
While I was doing an unrelated search on my blog I came across this post from two years ago in which I wrote about giving your voices the silent treatment. It freaks me out a little when I find something I wrote that is so relevant and helpful… to myself. So apparently, I’ve felt this way before and was able to ride it out.
After over 12 years of writing online, I’ve thought seriously of packing it in, of deleting my blog. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, nor mine.
My husband encouraged me to keep going. And in the space of a few days, I got two emails from readers who said how much they appreciated my words.
I decided to do nothing.
And in the meantime, I started to slowly, slowly feel more like myself again.
Talk about what you are feeling. I have a feeling that it might seriously help out moms like me who were having to blaze a trail through completely uncharted territory with our preemies.
And I totally get deleting Instagram. I’ve had to do similar things with Facebook.
Hi Carrie, thank you for being real! your blog always motivates me to keep going with mine. i struggle with the same thoughts and feelings you describe. we both have to keep creating our art. here’s a quote that always helps me.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson
I love that qoute, thank you for the reminder. 🙂
Thanks for saying so Jen