Late Night Rambling.

I'm stuck in the front office tonight at work. Eight hours sitting at a computer and a phone gets boring really quick, so I'm taking full advantage of this time to work out some more details with this non-profit.

I haven't talked about it much because I wanted to wait til everything is official and up and running. But that's taking some time, and tonight I just need to talk about it. Even if I'm only talking to a keyboard while the rest of the world sleeps. (That's what it feels like tonight, anyway.)

I'm both super excited and super scared at the same time. This is a HUGE leap of faith for me. It's also a lot to juggle with my crazy schedule and an upcoming deployment. I know I'm supposed to do this though, so it will be worth all of the hard work and sleepless nights and ridiculous stress.

I'm hoping to have everything up and running before October 15th. (National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.) In reality I don't think it's gonna happen, but that's what I'm pushing for. I'd like to put together a community event for the day, but that's really where the fear starts coming into play. I can put together care packages like it's nothing. But when it comes to a big public event, I'm terrified of putting everything in me into pulling it together, just to fall on my face when everything goes wrong or no one shows up.

Specifically, I'd like to do a balloon release that day. I want to attach the names of our babies to balloons and let them go. I wanted to do it from the top of Mt. Erie, but Bryan says it's too small. If families wanted to see the balloon release, there wouldn't be much room for many people. If I opened it up to more people, I have to find a place to do it. But if I have a bigger place and more people, they're probably gonna want more than just some balloons flying off. So I have to find something else to include for the afternoon. And I have to find a place to do it. But if I don't know how many people would be interested, I don't know how big of a place to do it. And since no one has ever heard of this organization before, no one is really gonna have any idea what it is or what's going on. I have no idea how receptive the community is going to be.

And now I'm rambling, aren't I?

Sigh.

Maybe I just think too much. Or just over analyze too much. Or maybe I just need to be doing something more productive than sitting in this damn office.


The fun part is coming up with ideas for care packages. I want to put one together, like a model package of sorts, to take to the hospitals here. I want to sit down with someone that I can talk to about donating them. Ideally, I'd like to get an idea of how often a family loses a baby in this area, so that I can gauge how many packages to have on hand each month. I'd like to have a package for any kind of loss. Miscarriages, stillbirths, infants, everything. (I hated hearing that my miscarriage wasn't like losing a real baby. In my eyes, losing a baby is hell, regardless of how or why or when, and none of that shit matters. It's all a loss, and it all hurts.) If I have a model package for them to see, they can potentially offer some ideas of other things that might be helpful to add.

I've been looking at blankets tonight. My mom made Brake a rag quilt, and I would give anything to have a picture of him wrapped up in it. Sometimes I pull it out and hold it, even though I'd much rather be holding him. It's been fun to look at blankets and think that some of them will be able to bring another family some comfort.

Even though it's gonna cost a little more and take a little more work, I'm thinking I might keep these care packages mostly handmade. Maybe handmade isn't the best word. Stuff from small shops and artists. Etsy type shops. Stuff made with love and purpose. Stuff with details that stick with you. I always liked those kinds of things better than anything you can pick up at a department store. I still have some of those kinds of things from when I was a baby.


I'm working on putting a website together. I don't know much about this online interweb mess, but I'm getting there. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of it with yall soon. If not, I'll just share some updates and pictures on here.


I already have an idea of how I want to do these care packages. But I'm still curious. What kind of things did yall find most helpful or comforting? What kind of things do you wish would have been available to you?