Day 9- A photo taken since my loss

Day 9 - a photo you took since your loss.


I haven't taken very many photos since Stella died. I haven't felt the inspiration and joy I used to get from taking photos.  I haven't wanted to be in photos. I don't feel like smiling and I don't want photos of the extreme sadness I feel. I have to keep telling myself to take more belly photos. Someday I will want those and I will want to share them with this baby, should everything turn out well. But it's so hard to focus on that time.
 
We went on a 2-week cross country trip after Stella died. We left one week after we got home from the hospital without her. We had seen friends and family and sat in the house being sad and miserable and we knew that we weren't ready to get back to "life" but we couldn't sit there staring at the TV and making small talk anymore. We packed up the car and drove west. Our destination was the Grand Canyon. I wanted to see something bigger than myself. I wanted to see something that validated my feelings of being small and alone. I wanted to sit and think but be moving and keeping busy too.
 
The Grand Canyon was cool but I got much more from Canyonlands National Park in Utah. I liked being able to get right up to nature and be surrounded by it. The Grand Canyon is so commercial and "packaged".
 
Anyway, we hiked in Canyonlands a little and I took this photo there.

I was standing right on the edge of a cliff looking out over the canyons. I felt small. There was something comforting to me about seeing my all consuming experience in the context of something larger than myself. I'm not a religious person but I guess in a way this was my spiritual side checking in.

The trip was not fun by any stretch of the imagination but it was therapeutic. When we got back we were ready to be back. R was able to start back at work a little bit and I spent the rest of my maternity leave trying to feel better physically and emotionally. I have over 200 photos from that trip but I haven't put them in an album. I want to but part of me thinks that this trip is not one to go back to and reminisce over.