The new me

My life from the outside looks the same as it did 1 year ago. And I love that life, I am so happy with that life. I love my husband, I love my dog, I love my job. I am so blessed with wonderful friends and family. There are so many things I love about life, and I am happy with who the me was a year ago.


But on the inside, I am not the same me as I was a year ago. This is normal- we are all always changing and growing. But the past 3 weeks have changed me so drastically and completely on the inside, while everything still looks relatively the same on the outside.

It feels deceiving, when I look objectively at my life and see these similarities to my old self. It feels deceiving when I momentarily feel the same as I used to feel. Because I know I am not the same, so how can it look or feel the same?

Because these differences are not observable, and that is what makes this so hard. To someone who passes me on the street, Josh and I are just another young married couple with a dog...But they don't know that we are so much more than that now! While I know I am different and we are different, I don't even have a concrete understanding of what all of these differences are, or who the new me is. I was expecting to change this year, but this is not the difference I was expecting or prepared for. I was so ready to be different and feel different and take on new responsibilities and challenges, but not like this. Never like this.

I have to figure out how to be the old me, how to enjoy the things I enjoy, how to be confident in myself again, and how to laugh and be silly again, while still incorporating this new element of my daughter being gone.

When most babies are born, I think a woman gives a piece of herself to her new child. But I feel like I was ripped open and a piece of me was taken out and not given back to me. So of course I don't know who I am anymore, because I don't feel whole, part of me is missing. And I have to figure out how to fill that hole and make a new me, even though nothing will fill it the way Sloane would have.

Josh helps me with this. He knows the old me and the new me, and he is helping me to merge the two by listening and talking and processing all of this. He reminds me of who I am because part of who I am is also with him.


We got to spend the last few days at a cabin in West Virginia. It was absolutely beautiful, healing, and restorative to be in nature and be surrounded by God's creations. It gave us time to think and talk and start the process of figuring out our lives again.


After being gone, I thought it would be difficult to come back home and be surrounded by reminders of Sloane and her absence, but the opposite was true. There was so much peace and love waiting for us when we came back to our home. Having Sloane helped make our house a home, and I felt that so much after being away for a few days. I love to be reminded of her and think of her.

While decorating the nursery, we put a picture up of Jesus holding a baby on the wall to remind Sloane as she was growing up that He is always watching out for her. After she died and we came home and went into her room for the first time, my eyes went to that picture. It immediately held so much more meaning than I had ever anticipated. The name of the print is "In His Constant Care" by Simon Dewey. We ordered a larger one and have it on the mantle now. I love to look at it, think of her, and know that she is being taken care of better than Josh and I could have ever taken care of her here on Earth.