Review

Here's James in his late-period mohawk stage. Very punk. It took months for his hair to get long enough that it laid down on its own.

So I'm going to try something new.

As I've mentioned before, writing in this blog has been cathartic for me. For a lot of different reasons, I'm not big on "sharing." As the quotes indicate, the whole idea is more of a concept than a practice for me. I'm the sort of person who would prefer to give a speech to a room full of hundreds of people than engage in a one on one conversation with another person about my feelings. Presented with the opportunity to talk about my feelings, my natural inclination is not to say a word or better yet to change the subject. I will do almost anything to avoid these kinds of conversation. This is not a strategy I recommend. It is simply my default strategy. I'm in recovery.

If Kara had not started this blog, it is entirely possible that outside of a few clipped and evasive conversations, I never would have said anything to anyone about this. I would have taken it all and kept it to myself, hoped to drown in it some activity or just to wait patiently until people stopped offering to talk about it. I am extremely glad that I didn't do that. Trying to contain something like this cannot work. The substance of the trauma is too corrosive, bottled up it inevitable seeps out of the container and contaminates everything. While I've had my share of setbacks in life, nothing I have experienced before even begins to rise to this level. Losing James permanently altered the fabric of my life in ways I'm still coming to terms with. Changes necessitate new strategies and in my case the shift in strategy has been for the best.

Throughout it all though, this blog has been an important forum. Despite my natural inclination, it's been very helpful to have somewhere to talk about everything, even if talking takes the form of venting, complaining, or rambling.

One thing I've often regretted is that I have not thanked you all for your patience and your support individually. So I'm going to try something new. I'm going to go back to the back to the beginning of this blog and try to respond to your comments. Over the course of the last few months they've meant a lot to me, and it seems appropriate that I respond to some of them. So we're going to give that a shot. This will also give me the opportunity to review what happened. I have not gone over those posts. Often I didn't even read them myself before Kara or I published them. Sometimes I just can't go back there. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.