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Dear Orla……

Learning to live wholeheartedly without our daughter, one letter at a time

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Tommy’s Mum’s Voice Award Winner 2016/2017

Tommy's Mum's Voice Award Winner 2016/2017

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This has been some week; virus after virus, a midnight trip to A&E in an ambulance, tag team sleeping on the nursery floor every night and now catching the mother of all head colds. We had to cancel all of our festivities and have pretty much hibernated for the majority of the week. But yesterday, determined to find some Christmas cheer, me and E headed out to a local festive market, which I can only describe as hell on earth for parents with children in tow. In an attempt not to become 100% scrooge, I purchased this terrifyingly happy chappy who then proceeded to scare the life out of me when I came downstairs in the dark at 5.30 for a cup of tea ⛄️😱 After her initial terror, little E has now befriended him, so I think that we can count this as a festive win in our germ ridden household 🤧 #ReclaimingAdventJoy #JoyToTheWorld #BalloonRegret

This month, Jess @thelegacyofleo and I are featured in @womenshealthuk magazine in a feature about stillbirth (which also includes some wide words from Alex Heazell from @tommys_thebabycharity) and Jennie @jenniemonologues had a brilliant piece published in @redmagazine about her experience of miscarriage. To have mainstream publications dedicate such a huge amount of space to discussing stillbirth and miscarriage is incredible. Sitting alongside other health, fashion and lifestyle features helps to break down barriers and accept that loss is something that can, and does, happen to many people. We just want to be able to talk about this important part of the story of our lives and for people to feel comfortable enough to listen. #Stillbirth #Miscarriage #BabyLoss #BabyLossAwareness #RememberMyBaby #TogetherForChange

Recently I have been feeding my thirst for knowledge. For the first time in what feels like forever, I have felt ready to nurture my curiosity and to take on board new things. That’s the thing with trauma and grief - it can limit your capacity to think and process things. On Tuesday night I went to see @estherperelofficial speak (if you know, you know - and if you don’t, check out her podcast Where Shall We Begin?). She spoke about relationships in the modern world and how we might go about developing and maintaining ones that are healthy and meet our needs. One thing that really stood out to me is that there are love stories and there are life stories. They can co-exist, but it is the life stories that you build together that make relationships sustainable and satisfying. It got me thinking about my own relationships and the stories that have formed, developed or changed over recent years; how they require effort, understanding and compromise - even under the most tragic and difficult of circumstances. Probably more so. Expecting someone to be everything and to meet all of our needs in the way we want them to will likely leave us disappointed. Anyhow, it was nice to have that curious part of my brain sparked a bit more, to feel the cogs starting to churn 🧠 That too sparked a little bit of advent joy ❤️ . #ReclaimingAdventJoy #JoyToTheWorld #AdventForOrla

My amazing sister is running the London Marathon next year for @tommys_thebabycharity and she is throwing herself into fundraising with gusto alongside her training. Her wonderful and talented sister in law @rockpapersazzle is raffling some beautiful personalised gifts to help her including a personalised illustrated collage inspired by the things closest to you, silhouetted by a letter of your choice. This is a one-off 30x30cm, piece of artwork worth £320 called ‘30 Things’, framed and signed by the artist. This is mine and it is even more stunning in real life - the more you look at it, the more you find that you didn’t see at first. It’s an incredible piece of art. Please head over to @rockpapersazzle for more information on how to enter to win this and some other beautiful prizes ❤️ . Please enter and share if you can - it would be amazing to raise even more for Tommy’s 🙏🏻🙌🏻

I’ve been reflecting today (not ruminating as I maybe once would have after a night of drinking) on some of the posts I’ve seen here and just generally how I’m finding the lead up to Christmas this year. I wasn’t sure whether to throw myself into @thelegacyofleo #AdventToRemember this year as I didn’t feel I had the capacity to do it in the way that I wanted. But something Jess said earlier in response to my post got me thinking - maybe I can use this advent to discover how I can reclaim joy at Christmas? I used to adore this time of year. The year Orla died, I struggled to engage with it at all. Last year I pretended everything was fine when really I was caught in the fog of trauma and post natal anxiety and depression. But this year, with a fair bit of therapy under my belt, I feel ready to find the joy again. That’s not to say that I’m going to be a singing, skipping ball of positivity for the next three weeks; I’m just going to take the time to find the things that matter to me. The things that switch on my soothing system. The moments that I feel connected to myself and the world around me and engaging with my own values. Today we got our tree and I realised that this year, we don’t really have space for an additional one just for Orla. And whilst there is a part of me that feels horribly guilty, I realised that the lack of space was because the house is now full of E’s things, and how lucky that makes us. So this year, I have decided that I will incorporate a few of Orla’s decorations into our main tree instead - and I actually enjoyed taking the time to choose which ones ❤️🌟 . #AdventToRemember #ReclaimingAdventJoy #AdventForOrla

This Christmas, I am inviting joy back into my life. Sometimes it takes a conscious effort, but at others it is just effortlessly wonderful. This was the latter ❤️ . #AdventToRemember #LearningToBellyLaughAgain #JoyToTheWorld #FamilyOfFriends #ReclaimingAdventJoy #AdventForOrla

Dear Orla

Dear Orla

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