I’ve been slowly going through the old posts on Caring Bridge and transferring them here, but it’s taking me longer than I thought. I sure did write a lot! I think I’ve only done 9 pages of posts out of 39… lots more to go!

Occasionally, I’ve been choosing a post to reflect on and write down some of my thoughts looking back on that time. Those posts are here. But even just reading the entries as a whole, it’s incredible to me how far we (all) have come on this crazy journey.

Not only do we now have a baby who is one-third of a year old already (what???), but we’ve made it through more than I ever would have thought when I first got that phone call at work. I had no idea what the journey would look like at that point, and honestly, there was no journey in my head at that moment. All I saw was a dead end.

Looking back at all of those entries, they are helping me in a way I never could have imagined at the time. Reading them, I can remember what it felt like to be SURE that there was no future, and now that I am living in that future, it helps to calm me when I get anxious or panicked again about what the future holds for us now.

Rereading them also reminds me in a very deep way of the profound love and devotion Peter showed to me, during what must have been an incredibly frightening and anxious time for him. Now that we are back to our new normal and I am healthy (and no longer pregnant), I realize how very, very much I needed him (and my mom, his mom, Grandma Emmi, etc.), and how MUCH he did for me.

Being sick (briefly) yesterday brought that home to me again. I now can do so much more than I could for those many months, and he had to shoulder the vast majority of that burden. Taking care of the house, food, laundry, tending my substantial wounds several times a day, making sure I had enough rest, all of those physical needs, in addition to keeping me grounded and as sane as possible during the scariest times of our lives… he had a lot to do and did it all without complaining and more competently than the most skilled nurse or psychologist could have.

I don’t think we ever know what we are going through until we’ve been through it and can look back from the other side. And even then, we wonder how the hell we did it.