Four Months Since Tepley

Hello everyone -

Tomorrow, July 28 is Tepley's angel day - four months since she passed away.

I wasn't going to write a note this month, since I just wrote one for Tepley's birthday. But I got some feedback that these are helpful - both that they help you interact with us and, for some of you, that they share something that resonates about grieving. If it helps you connect more deeply to anyone during a time of grief, then I'm glad.

At four months after that day that I woke up thinking she had a cold and went to bed having lost the most precious thing in my life, I am still not able to compartmentalize very well - but I am fortunate that my husband is more steady in his process. The truth is that every stroller on the street - or every two year old now big enough to walk on her own - turns my head. I look at his or her little legs and compare them to Tepley's - are they chubbier or slimmer? Would I have picked that outfit - the little dress or the little shorts? Not in comparison, as much as just looking for tiny little glimpses of her essence - her swagger, her curiosity at the world, her joy. So given that I live in a neighborhood full of two year olds, picture that I look at children to see her twice a block, every block. And of course, that's not the only time every hour that I think of her. I am working to build more times of insulation, but it's not easy for me.

Around Tepley's birthday, I wrote to you that we went to a grief retreat in Taos, New Mexico, and one of the reasons I went was to find ways to be more spiritually connected to Tepley - to build and grow a relationship with her. So a warning here that this email will be a little more woo-woo than the previous ones.

You only have to be told the analogy so many times that this trauma is like having major surgery that you start making the connection to needing to heal. At first, I thought there was just a hole in my heart from which I would eventually just bleed to death - or that I would live in darkness for the rest of my life. I never really thought about grieving as something to learn more about, but it really is the way that we show our love for each other, the depth and meaning of the relationship that we shared. And so I'm starting to see the beauty at the edges of the pain. One of the things that our retreat counselor Jim said was that tears are 'the honey of the heart' and that it means so much for him to see them because they are evidence of great love.

For me, I'm experiencing what feels like a spiritual awakening. I have always felt deeply connected to my higher power (God, in a Judeo-Christian sense), but my practice was infrequent. Now I have no choice. To survive, I need that bigger connection, that energy coming down through me to all of you and vice versa. And so I am working to strengthen that muscle and a practice daily. There are so many ways - from all parts of the world - to build that connection to a bigger, universal love, so if you have any favorites, send them along!

As one of you said to me, the pain, the longing, and the love have to go somewhere. These experiences of the spirit can be buried in anger and depression or released into something more positive, and we are looking for ways to do that.

With her love,
Us

P.S. This picture might be my favorite picture of her. I didn't realize we were supposed to bring her Halloween costume to school last year so they put her in this "mermaid" outfit for a little impromptu parade down the hall. To me, her face shows both her good taste that she knows this is not a legit costume and also her good nature that she'll take one for the team in wearing it without protest. The hair obviously takes it to the next level.

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1) How we're doing now

• Getting more help - The grief retreat was very helpful for us to take a time out together to connect to each other and to Tepley. The best part of the sessions were that they address the whole person - frameworks for the intellectual, yoga and massage for the physical, therapy for the emotional, and healing, natural beauty, and reiki for the spiritual.

• Spiritual seeking - As you can imagine, losing our baby has both changed me to the core and made me more of myself. We come from different faith traditions, but we are both deeply connected to our communities and core values in a way that brings us together. Finding more rituals has been a helpful way to balance out the constant reminders of loss.

  • Following advice, I set up a 'shrine' in Tepley's room so that it is now my place to be close to her. All the angels and candles you sent, all the stones and incense (thank you, Heather!) are now in a sacred space, and we use them to get into the mindset of connecting to her.

  • Daily, I am working on a spiritual practice for 30 minutes to connect to her and to my higher power to try to nourish a really depleted spirit:

    • My good friend Y sent me mala prayer beads with which I sit daily and send blessings and love to all of you. You never know who's getting sent the good stuff. (!)

    • I do a short yoga sequence to connect my body to the spirit.

    • I read a section from a spiritual book.

    • Meditation has been difficult, with my mind swirling, but I'm sure that means that I should be practicing more often.

  • Burning candles and incense is having a calming effect. I now have them burning throughout the apartment, so her spirit is with us all over (just like she was all over the place once she got walking and exploring).

  • Weekly, I started going to a candle-lit, chanting prayer service on Sunday nights, where there is no talking but almost a trance-like experience to connect to God and to Tepley.

• Finding ways to celebrate her life and find meaning from her death

  • Celebrating her life has been centered around posting little moments of her life every day, so thank you to those of you who have been interacting with me there.

  • I have realized that I want to have her on me and with me all the time, so learning from my friend Rachel, I am building out a connection of clothing and jewelry that fits my style and has meaning to me. Basically, I want my choices, our home, and how I express myself to be tinged with Tepley.

    • I ask people often, when I am in an overwhelming spell of tears, if they think Tepley knows how much I love her. How much her parents love her every day and that our love for her grows, even though she isn't with us. I'm always looking for ways to show her.

  • In thinking about her loss, my hope is that I will be able to release some old beliefs and pain - shedding that skin to live more intentionally and further in contribution.

    • This opportunity was definitely helped by me finding a snake skin on a walk with my husband in New Mexico. We had different views on whether that snake skin was a sign (it was), whether I should bring it back to the retreat center for inspection (I did), and whether it should come and be framed in our our apartment (it will).

2) How you can help right now

• Light a candle for her - Our house is now covered in candles, and they just remind us so much of her little light. I keep mentioning this to you, but it really does feel to me like a little expression of a moving, glowing spirit.

  • Also if you are looking for a cozy candle company, please check out Big Dipper Wax Works who have the most amazing candles and also give money back to protect bees and pollinators. As a bee fan, Tepley would definitely approve.

• I'll probably say this every time, but keep thinking of Tepley and when you do, keep texting us / post about it - We love so much all the pictures of owls, bees, blueberries, and definitely ice cream that you send.

• Keep us in your prayers (still working on wins) - As we work to share joy and gratitude every day, we are working on rebuilding our future, and we appreciate all the good intentions and prayers for strength and for hope. We might just need to be on your list indefinitely.

• Please keep us on text and email chains - We can definitely handle talk about kids and all the regular things of life and don't want to lose a connection to the real world.

  • One of the hardest parts of this process is the exhaustion that I'm tired of being so sad. The waves have actually gotten much worse since we got back from vacation, but it now feels like sinking into a depression. I'm telling you this now only to say, for those who have not experienced catastrophic loss - sometimes it's hard to talk about it. I don't really want to say to you, "Yes, I think about her all day every day. There is no rest right now." But I do want to talk to you!

• Share what you see - One of the main 'homework' assignments from our grief retreat was to really define our purpose and decide how to connect it to a higher purpose. So if there are things you see that I have contributed to you or specific aspects of my purpose you have seen but haven't mentioned, shoot me a little text.

3) What not to say or to do

Although we love, love hearing from everyone (please keep texting), my depression means that I haven't been as energized to meet up. For those of you who reach out, I am so grateful - and sometimes I am up for it and sometimes I just would rather be in bed. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to feel like this, and I know one day it will break. So keep inviting us out or to stop by, but know that there may be a delay. (He is usually a better bet.)