Today we are lucky enough to have Lucy with us Guest Blogging from Upon Butterfly Wings - she is an amazing person who was willing to share with us all her story. Please take a moment to read her post, visit her site, and feel free to leave comments in response on our Facebook page.
Hi there. My name is Lucy. I’m 31. I live in London, UK. I work full time for a rail company where I am the only female out of sixty four men. I live with my partner of 14 years, Steve who is ten and a half years older and who over the years is slowly starting to act his age. I love old school house music and a few too many Jack Daniels and Coke on a Friday night. I can’t swim. I can’t drive. I have size three feet. My hair is curly. I have no thyroid meaning medication is the difference between life and death.
I’m a normal female. I have weight to lose. I love to flirt. I have a favourite pair of jeans. My wages only last me two weeks out of four. I have a very loving family and the most supportive if not completely mad in the head friends.
This is where many would run out of things to say but when you have given birth to a sleeping baby, keeping your baby’s memory alive by talking and writing about them becomes the norm.
Their memory and raising awareness become a part of your life and there are many ways to do either/both of the above.
Personally I took the ‘set up your own charity’ direction. It’s been a long hard road to get to where we are now but it allows me to discuss my Son freely, to mention his name so often that my friends and family will talk about him off their own backs, that it sometimes surprises me how open they have become with his name and his memory.
I won’t lie; it’s taken a long time to get to this point. The first year of his death I spent it alone. I had many people around me physically but I would not allow any of them into my emotions or into my head which lead to deep depression and a lot of confusion. I spent a long time feeling lost. Not having any direction in life. Stuck in the then, not being able to live the now or see the future.
I found it hard to talk about Bobby in terms of emotion rather than ‘fact’. The fact that he died, how he died, why he died were easy subjects to discuss because they soon became a part of a well rehearsed script. It became impossible for me to talk about the ‘emotions’ of how that made me feel, how it affected my every day, the pressure it put onto our relationship.
About how it is possible to miss and physically hurt so much for a little person that I had only got to meet and hold for a whole 45 minutes.
Talking about my Son is the way I keep his memory alive and having a baby loss charity gives me an outlet to be able to do that.
At the end of the day if you say something enough times, over and over, people will start to listen and it will become part of their every day norm. And this is how awareness is indirectly raised.
Lucy - Angel Mum to Baby Bobby Franks 03.07.09
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