Sixteen days later...

Sixteen days since we received The News.

It's been sixteen days since we received the news that we would not yet, as we had hoped and planned for, become adoptive parents. That we would not be getting on a plane to head to AZ. That we would not be meeting our daughter for the first time. That we would not be bringing home that little girl. That we would instead have to continue waiting and waiting and waiting as we have done for the last two years.

Two weeks and two days since we received The News.

I don't feel quite so raw two weeks and two days later.

Yesterday is the first day I make it through a full day of work without feeling the need to go to my car for a private place to sob or to run away from my office to someplace where I can read my book and eat fattening food. I actually feel some modicum of focus and normalcy as I do my job.

But then last night I walk by the baby's room all kitted out with crib, changing table, glider, kids' books, stroller, car seat and new lavender paint and...the grief hits me again. Not a wave, but a sharp stabbing pain deep in my gut. Brief and intense. I want to go with it - be present with this feeling of pain and grief - but I just can't.  

I just can't.

It would be so very easy to fall into this grief. Into allowing myself to wallow in this grief. Into crawling downstairs everyday to numb myself with television and Cecil's soothing presence in my lap. Allowing the grief to swallow me up. It would be just too easy.

I just can't let that happen.

My life has to go on. My life as a wife, a daughter, a friend, a professional, a writer, an artist - all of it. It has to go on. I have to go on. I will go on.

So, I set aside that stabbing painful feeling. I don't give into it, but instead head downstairs to snuggle up on the sofa with my husband to watch two amusing episodes of "Chuck" and to adore Cecil.

And today I head to work for an all-day training.

Life is going on.