Who is this girl and what did you do with my April?

I journal write. The unfortunate thing about my style is that I tend to write during times of crisis and rarely when life is good. It's not a great way to journal because if anyone were to ever read them after I die (like my kids), it would seem that my life was completely dark and painful without any laughter and fun. And that's simply not true.

Anyway, in back-reading some of my earlier journals, it's interesting for me to see how strong and optimistic I was. Even through some really difficult times, I would see positives. Again and again during the first few rounds of In-Vitro that we did, I would write about the challenges of the treatments, but I always ended with how lucky we were to have this option. The year that Hannah, Ryan and Abby died, the darkest year of my life, I took a lot of time to write about my pain, but I also found myself writing many thankful passages for the people in my life who helped carry me through this period, the outpouring of love that I received and the amount of strength I found within myself to move forward.

Imagine, then, my surprise as I continued to browse through the next few years to the present, only to discover that much of my "thankfulness" has gone along the wayside and my strength and upbeat attitude has begun to wane, rather significantly.

I know the past 6 years have thrown me blow after blow. What I didn't realize was how much my strength has slowly burned down; faded away. I know that I am strong. The problem is that I no longer feel strong. And, perhaps more upsetting for me is that while I am grateful for so many things in my life, I've just realized that I'm not living very graciously right now.

So, the question I need to ask myself is not "How did I let this happen?" but rather, "How do I change this?" I know I can't go back. I don't think we can ever go back, but I do know that I can look deep within myself again and find that strength to move forward into a better light.