My loneliness and pissiness has eased off today. Partly that’s because I had such loving responses from family and friends I’d told about my blog, and partly because we went to our SHARE support group meeting last night.

I don’t want people to think I was scolding them in yesterday’s posting, because for the most part I get the support I need when I ask for it. But “when I ask for it” is the key concept: sometimes I can’t ask for it, and tell myself people are too busy and I shouldn’t bother them. That’s my youngest-of-seven mindset speaking: Don’t bother anyone, you can handle it yourself, just stay out of sight and read your books.

Lo and behold, when I put it out there the universe responds: I’ve always been afraid to speak the truth about how I’m feeling, and grew up thinking that emotional expression and honesty are unseemly or weak. I’m trying to change that, even when it’s painful. These past few days in particular seem to be telling me I have NO CHOICE but to say what I need to, or I’ll end up one screwed-up, warped sack o’ woe (to borrow a Cannonball Adderley song title).

So on a run yesterday, I stopped to talk with a family friend I see every once in a while. I decided to thank her for the card she and her husband sent us when Elise died, and we had one of those talks that are so uplifting for their sincerity and compassion. She brought up the possibility that people might not mention Elise because they think it’s a private matter for us. That could very well be the case, maybe even with acquaintances here in town who infuriate me when they scurry away before the conversation goes beyond “Hi, how are you.” But one member of our support group definitely spoke for me last night when she said she cherished conversations where people asked about her daughter’s story, what it was like to be pregnant with her and experience her birth and death.

This morning I ran into my doctor, a wonderful woman who instinctively knows how to be encouraging without being clichéd. She recalled my anguish at Elise’s birth, and that reminded me of how all I could do at that moment was scream until the people in the room, the hospital ward, the whole world, could hear my rage and helplessness.

Last night at our meeting we talked a lot about people who forget about our babies in their busy distracted lives, and we talked a bit about how to hold on to the memories of our babies while still moving forward. I said that a friend had asked me whether I believed in an afterlife, and I wasn’t sure there was one but am clinging to the possibility there is. In any case, we carry our children with us in some form. The guest speaker asked if I thought that I can see Elise in the world around us, and again I said I wasn’t sure… “Keep looking,” she urged.

I know that even if I might not “see” Elise in a bird who sings to me or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, she is speaking to me: she is telling me to put myself out there and ask for what I need. She never spoke a word in her life, but she is teaching me how to communicate.