And the Winner is...

Briana!! Thank you to all of you for entering. Briana please email me at jeremiahsboxes@gmail.com with your address so I can get the book on it's way to you. Hugs to all of you.

25 Days of Giveaways!!

Today is my turn to host a giveaway!!! Hooray!!Let me first thank Tina over at Living without Sofia and Ellie for allowing me to participate in this years giveaways. 

 I am sorry that I posted this late in the day...but here it is- I have given this book away before but think it is so worthy of giving it away again. The book is written in such a great way that it helps the reader know that you are not alone on this terrible journey.

To enter just comment on how you remember your precious baby.

I feel like every experience we face as people can only make us better. After the loss of Jeremiah I have started Jeremiah's boxes to keep his memory alive and help other families that have faced loss. I also make memory butterflies for other families. As a mom to my living kids, it makes me realize how lucky I am that they are here and healthy and that I must practice patience (which is sometimes hard).

I will close the giveaway on  Friday at 8pm. Good Luck!!!

Bad Place

Let me start with the happy part of this post. I will be hosting a giveaway on Dec 21st as part of the 25 days of give aways. Hooray!!

Now for the not so good- I'm in a really bad place right now. I am not talking physically but emotionally. I seem to have forgotten who I am. I look in the mirror and I wonder where that person I use to know so well has gone. I am taking some time in the next few months to re-evaluate where I am going as a person and what parts of me I need to find and which I need to purge. Part of my "brokeness" does stem from Jeremiah's loss but the rest of it goes deeper. I hope and pray I can find happiness again. Hugs to all.......

A Turkey for my Turkey

***This post is older. My computer has been broken and I was just able to finish it.

 I am thinking that retailers here in my area have forgotten that there is a holiday in between Halloween and Christmas. It's called Thanksgiving. I have been trying unsuccessfully, for the last 3 weeks to find a turkey for my little turkey's special space. This was frustrating me quite a bit. I decided that since Thanksgiving is around the corner and I may not find a turkey in time I would pull out my November teacher tub and see if I had one in there that I could take to him. (I keep all of my school decorations, worksheets, projects, books for each month or theme in a tub-It was an obsession at one point to have it all together and organized). I pulled out the tub that I had not opened since Dec. 2007, with hopes of finding a turkey well I found more than I ever thought I would. In Nov of 2007 I made turkey shirts with my kindergartners for our friendship feast. As I opened the tub, I noticed that one of my little ones did not take their shirt with them after the feast. I opened up the shirt and saw the cute little hand print in the front. I looked to see whose shirt it belonged to and to my surprise it said

"Jeremiah". My heart dropped with a sense of both sadness and happiness. About ten minutes later I went to the mailbox and found these.

Needless to say I felt some happiness in my heart. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving with some peace in their heart.

Poem Help

Hi ladies! I need some help...I want to make the memory butterflies better. One way I was thinking about was to give mommies an option on which poem they would like to go with their butterflies. I know I could have just googled butterfly poems but I wanted to know which poems have really touched you on this journey, especially ones that mention butterflies. Please email me at jeremiahsboxes@gmail.com or comment with the poem below. Thank you so much for your help.

I also want to have a giveaway soon but I'm waiting for the 60th follower to host that so if your interested...keep an eye out!

Hugs!

Perspective

So I belong to my local AMEND group here in Tampa. Now this group has a facebook page where BLM post questions or articles and such. One of the mommies who lost their sweet little girl last September asked a question- Here it is:

My daughter passed away over a year ago, and I have pictures of her on the walls, My stepson is 3 and his pictures are all over the house I think its only fair to also my daughter on the wall, and put her box from the hospital out by my desk in the living room. Am I wrong?

Mostly people responded telling her that she needs to do what is best for her, but this response made me read it more than twice.

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a different perspective on this issue. I'm sharing all of this with you because I hope to spare you the pain of losing more friends in this process. Just as we don't want them to judge us for how we handle our pain & memories. we must also not judge THEM because they can't deal. I love your quote Raquel but unfortunately it's very true. Most can NOT deal with the heaviness of grief that have and are walking through. We have to. We weren't given a choice. Life happened. But they don't have to, they can choose to distance themselves. After almost 6 years we are grieved by all the friends who "fell away" because they couldn't deal. I wish looking back that I would have saved the majority of my grieving process for AMEND & the friends I made there. Unfortunately I was ignorant & shared openly with all of our "normal" friends & family & when we weren't "better" after the first 2-3 mo that people allow for grieving, they began to drift away. I miss all of them so much because they have memories of our baby & my pregnancy in their hearts that I won't ever have access to because I was ignorant in my grief process. That is why I share. You might not want to lose your babies & your friends too. Our baby ___  picture is hanging in our stairway so that people who come to visit now only see her if they go upstairs & if they want to. Just weigh the cost & hopefully learn from our grief process how NOT to lose your friends too. ♥

So it's okay to spare your feelings to save your friends?? This advice bothered me some....I know everyone grieves differently but what's wrong with grieving openly??

Decision Made and Some Thank you's!

Hi!! I am happy to say I made my decision on whether or not to go private or not. This month marks a year of when I first decided to start blogging about my experience. I was inspired by all the other strong women before me, I never thought I would have followers. Reading all of your comments and as well as seeing a new follower helped me decide to stay public. It fills my heart to know that someone is reading about Jeremiah's short life. Hooray!! The only thing I am going to change is that I will take down the Jellybean Chronicles and the pictures of my living kids. I do plan on mentioning Jeremiah's siblings but will not add any more pictures of them for their safety. I do have pictures of them on facebook and I do have a couple of you as friends, if you would like to be added just send me a friend request and let me know your a fellow BLM.

Before I let out all of the feelings that have bottled up inside I want to let some wonderful women know how thankful I am to them....first Sarita Meredith's mom sent me some very cute stickers out of the blue. It was great to get them in the mail. Thank you Sarita. Caroline from the Croley Gang sent me Jeremiah's name stitched but she went above and beyond and sent me a stitch of V's name with rainbow hearts. Absolutely beautiful! Thank you Caroline.

Alessa's grandmother from Treasures from the Heart made Jeremiah's names in beads....Thank you so much!

Tonight I went to visit Jeremiah's spot after going to the air show with the little ones and my husband. It is always sad to see that a new baby has joined babyland. I miss him dearly, even 15 months later my heart hurts to know he is gone. I struggle daily trying to figure out why this happened. Most of the time I can turn it off because I get busy with the babies but today even though I had a great time with my husband and kids it hurt. It hurt because I know at this point he's suppose to be walking, saying some words, laughing, waving etc. but he's not here! The guilt also sucks! All the things I could have done differently...I play them over and over again in my head. People don't realize the pain, I sometimes feel like I have to wear a mask to make them feel comfortable and it stinks. I miss you Jeremiah!