Today would have been my darling daughter Sofia’s fifth birthday. She should have been a little girl full of life and full of love for her little brother. Instead my body and soul ache enormously for her.
Grieving for your child is unimagineable. Even when it happens to you, the overwhelming feeling is it’s not true, that something so traumatic couldn’t possibly have happened. I feel this even after five years.
I tried to push a lot of people away during my first period of unbearable grief. If I’m honest, I pushed EVERYONE away. I was very lucky to have an incredible circle of dear friends who didn’t let me push them out of my life, and even luckier to have an amazing husband who, while battling his own grief, understood my need to shut the world out for a while.
I’m not sure how I got through the deepest time of grief and depression. But the unexpected thoughts and messages from others definitely helped. And these random ‘reaching outs’ weren’t always from my friends and family; I was sent support and love from strangers from across the world. Even now, I feel lifted up when someone unexpectedly tells me how much they still think of Sofia or asks how I’m coping. These random acts of love give me strength.
Whether or not you experience trauma in your life, everyone’s life is a rollercoaster, and it’s often the kindness of others which helps us crawl our way back up. I was reminded of this while reading Lou’s post (Random Acts of Kindness) on her new blog Three’s a Family. She used to blog as Homeless Mummy, but thankfully needed to start a new blog.
Lou’s continuing the blog hop started by Clara who wants to remind us of the power of little gestures by paying that kindness forward. So I would like to pay forward a little bit of the love I’ve received.
For the first three people to comment on this post, I’m going to send you a little surprise that will hopefully make your day a little cheerier. I’m not going to do it immediately, but at some point over the next couple of months in order to hopefully catch you off guard (unexpected random acts of kindness are much better than expected ones!). Make sure you leave a way I can contact you in your post (email address, Twitter name or website address, for example).
If you’d like to join the blog hop and send some kindness to others, read Clara’s post here and join up here.
Never underestimate the power of little things
thegingerbreadmum 