Brave

 I did some brave things today.

A friend I hadn't talked to in years messaged me on facebook last week, saying she lives in my city and we should get together.  Another friend was urging me to call her too, but I was putting it off.  Does she know?  Does she not know?  Should I just pretend like I'm ok?

  I realized I have been hiding my loss from other people, and I don't want to do that anymore.  Even though I don't want to share it with everyone I meet, it is OK for me to acknowledge my loss to people I know, at the risk of making them uncomfortable.  I don't have to be the only one uncomfortable in every situation.  That was a breakthrough in my grief I think, and freed me to message her back, tell her briefly what had happened, and get on with my life.  After I did it, I felt a little bit lighter.  What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that this is something that happened to me, and I deserve to be able to share it whenever I want to (or not), no matter how it might make someone else feel. 

The other brave thing I did today was go to the pool with three of my Brazilian friends.  Two of them have baby girls, 15 months and 9 months old.  This was the same group of friends that had a dinner party about 3 weeks ago that I wanted to attend but ended up having a panic attack and going back home before we got there.  Today, I called THEM and invited them to the pool.  I'm sick of sitting around at home while my friends are right down the street waiting for me to re-join them.  It felt like I was taking back some of my power from the grief.  And it was actually fun. I hugged my friends, got just a little teary-eyed, and then spent a couple of hours just being at the pool and playing with the babies, who are incredibly cute and don't *really* remind me of Kayla and therefore didn't make me that sad. 

When I first saw Luciana, she hugged me tight and whispered, "We cried a lot for you, and we're so glad you're here with us."  It was just the right thing to say to me at the time. 

Take that, grief!