This article comes to us from Claire at Beyond the Roundabout. Her beautiful daughter, Phoebe, lost her life at age 4 due to a genetic mutation. In this post, Claire writes about a cruise she and her husband took, and how she was able to handle it as a loss parent.

Here’s a part I liked:

The concept of choice isn’t just limited to doing great or transformational things, far from it. For me it equally applies on a much simpler and everyday level, starting with the choice all bereaved parents face every day from the minute they wake each morning, to get up, or roll over…?

 

I could choose to not get up,  but I don’t, or at least not on the vast majority of mornings, nor do the bereaved parents I have met along this journey so far, it might feel like an impossible slog, it might feel like we are accomplishing very little, but we get up, we keep going. Somehow we “just keep swimming”, trying, as I read recently, to “avoid the whirlpools” and this I believe, is an active choice which requires real courage. I worry that this opinion and perhaps everything I’ve written so far, might be viewed by some with scorn or even anger as the loss of a child can be utterly debilitating, frequently accompanied by the paralysing and frightening consequence of PTSD or complicated grief. For those in that situation, getting up, feels insurmountable, even breathing represents a challenge, but with this in mind, surely it demonstrates great strength and bravery as when they succeed. Each task completed, however small can be the equivalent of climbing a mountain and that, to my mind should be applauded.

Read her entire post over on her blog, Beyond the Roundabout.