Am I Back?

Hello to all -

After almost a month without writing, I think I might be back. Why haven't I written? I'm not sure - I think maybe I was just out of words for a while (hard to imagine isn't it?!). I thought it was because I was emotionally drained, and working a ton of hours. But I realized tonight that there is something else different now. I go to a grief support group every Sunday. It runs for eight weeks at a time. I started in October, and it finished just before the holidays. I missed it terribly - I felt I had lost an outlet I really needed. A new 8 week session started January 14, and I am relieved to be back, relieved to be letting stuff out again. Tonight was the third week, and when I got home afterward, I felt like maybe my voice was back, and I was ready to write again. It makes me wonder whether letting stuff out there makes me more ready or able to let it out here. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I'm happy to be writing. We'll see if it lasts.

When I went to the first night of this group a few weeks ago, I had a really tough night. The group is completely different than the last group of people, so the stories of loss were all new, and much harder to hear than the stories in the last group. The last group was smaller. This time, it is a much bigger group, so there are many more painful stories. I left that first night not sure I could come back again - it felt like too much to bear. How could I hear so much grief every week on top of my own? But I went back the next week and it was easier, and it helped me. So I went back again tonight, and now I feel I will be able to stick with it, and that this group may be even better for me than the last one.

The third week of the support group is the week where everyone brings a picture of the person they lost. I like the picture night - I like seeing the people who are gone, being able to put a face to the stories that are told about them. I like seeing them happy in the photos. I like that in the pictures you can see something about their lives - a sport they played, a trip they took, a family moment captured forever. I brought two pictures of Kirk, both of which are in the revolving pictures in the blog. One was the picture of Kirk when I first met him, and the other is the one labeled "My Very Favorite Picture" on the right side of the blog. I also brought a booklet of the blog that my friend Mimi made, because she printed all the pictures in the blog in the booklet.

So it was a good night, relatively speaking. It's too late tonight to write much more, but hopefully I'll be back soon. In the meantime - look at the next post down - I wrote it a few weeks ago but never posted it until now.

It's nice to be back.