10-09-2015, Capture Your Grief - Day 9, Family

Today we were asked who is our family, what do they mean to us, what does our family look like. Unlike many, maybe most of the women I've talked to, no one has come to me and told me I should be over it, and to stop talking about Abigail. There have been some poorly thought out comments, but then again I don't even know what to say about what has happened. I've not needed to cut people out of my life, I've not seen some friends just drift away. Y'all have all been wonderful.

So family means to me what it has always meant. There is my actual family, my Church family (which sometimes is both, and often the most important family), and occasionally there are those rare friends that reach the status of family. They are the people who love you no matter what. The people you think about when you aren't with them. The people who you can't wait to see. I have a big family when I think about all these people - Mallards, Hurns, Varnums, and Cunninghams, Little Union Church, Old Carroll Church, Primitive Baptist this nation over some of whom are so close and wise they feel like extra parents and grandparents, Kristi and Melissa and Ashley and Kathy. So much love, and to think I've probably missed some.

As for our little family, it is Gary, Me, Britt, Ruth, Rebecca, and now Abigail. She will always be the unseen part of our family, the one we carry in our heart, the one unseen in family photos, but she will always be there, and she is loved by our family, our very large, loving family.

9-16-2015, Our little family at Niagara Falls, 3 weeks after Abigail was stillborn.