Reclaiming New Year’s Without My Babies

New Year’s is one of my favorite holidays. I love the sense of a fresh start, the chance to review the good and the bad of the previous year and consider what I want to create in the next year.

Even though I know it’s an arbitrary date on a calendar, it creates a sense of hope, new possibilities, and a new chance to become more than I am.

I haven’t, however, always felt this way about New Year’s.

In those early years after my babies died, New Year’s felt like a cruel joke.

Another year without my babies here with me.
Another year of grieving them.
A new start I didn’t want.
Another holiday they would never celebrate.

It felt cruel and painful to talk of hope and possibility and new beginnings without them to share in it with me. The only thing I liked about New Year’s in those early years of loss was that it signified the end of a painful two months of holidays and happy family images being shoved in my face.

Over the years, my anger and bitterness around New Year’s has faded. January slowly returned to it’s place as one of my favorite months. I found a that old sense of hope and possibility and newness that I had always loved. (And I still love that it signifies the end of the holiday season!)

And I learned that my babies could still be present in that, even if not in the way I really wanted them to be.

That transition from painful to possibility again started in 2008 when I first came across the concept of picking a word for the year instead of setting resolutions. The idea was to pick a work that you wanted to guide your year, a foundation that you could return to over and over again whatever circumstances the year brought.

That year I picked the word Heal. It was truly the beginning of healing not just my feelings about New Year’s, but a real, deep healing of my heart and my life from the loss of my fiancé and daughter in 2002.

It felt like starting again – but without having to leave them behind.

The truth is, the day we lost our precious babies was a sort of new year. Every day after living without them is a kind of new year. Every day we have to start again, to live and breathe and be without our beloved little ones.

How we do that is up to us.

So 2008 was the year I began to reclaim New Year’s as a beautiful opportunity in my life to honor my children, make peace with the life I was given and open up to the possibilities of what might come next.

I’ll admit, life still hasn’t gone the way I expected in the years since. I do love to make plans on New Year’s and yet rarely does anything happen in the way I plan or expect. I even lost another daughter since this new take on New Year’s. But perhaps New Year’s is less painful now because I’m less attached to how I want it to look. It’s less about me and more about them and me.

I choose a word or a theme to guide me – and then it takes me where it will. Sometimes it’s painful and challenging. Sometimes it’s fun and exciting. Sometimes it’s unexpected and chaotic.

But it always makes me more than I was.

And that is always the point for me. I want to be more for my children. I want to give more to life in their honor. I want to create new possibilities for this world in which their light shone only briefly, but so very brilliantly.

They live through me. And I want life to be so much more for them and because of them.

New Year’s has become that reminder and recommitment to their legacy and their life.

They have been part of all my words – heal, trust, shine, wholehearted, home, commitment, steady, visibility – because they are the guiding heart of all my new beginnings, my new possibilities, and my new years to come.

New Year’s is another chance to step back from the day-to-day busyness and chaos to consider how I can better bring their light to the world. It’s another chance to create more beauty and love in the world in their honor. It’s another chance to be the person and the mother they would be proud to call their own.

New Year’s is hope and possibility and new beginnings.

New Year’s is the best of all that they were and all that they still are.

Hope.
Possibility.
New Beginnings.

Emily Long
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Emily Long is the mother of two much-loved daughters, both gone-too-soon. Several months after the death of her fiancé, their daughter Grace was born still. For many years, Emily lived with this loss in silence and isolation. It wasn’t until she experienced the death of her second daughter, Lily, that she finally sought support and created a community of people who helped her find the beauty and joy in life again. Through her own healing process, Emily became an advocate for all families grieving the loss of their children. Emily is a grief counselor in private practice and the author of the upcoming book, “Invisible Mothers.” Emily works hard to increase education and improve care for bereaved mothers with medical professionals and other counselors. She also works with clients individually to provide support for grieving mothers and fathers. She writes and educates through her website, Emily Long: Archaeologist of the Living.

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