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stepha

@stephamanley_

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I cried so much watching this movieeee, 😭 i love my sisters so much, and i miss my brother so much too, i never wont… it is a beautiful wonder how we can even regain dance and silliness after loss 🩵… and gwen im so sorry 😂 #watercolors #grief #siblingloss #voicemailsforisabelle #artforsale

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Talking to the blue moon of course 💙 🌖 📞
#reclaim #secondchance #watercolor #bluemoon #talkingtothemoon

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Impossible 🌈 Rainbow
One day, while my family was trying to find our way back to something like normal in a life that felt anything but, something happened. Something small and impossible.

Before our eyes, a little rainbow appeared, its light stretched from her navel, far out to the edge of the universe.

We all saw. We all stared.

it didn’t seem like she belonged, because the air was still so heavy. And yet, there she was. Unapologetically. And she had curls.

At first I just held her. I looked at her face, and when she looked at me and smiled, I remembered what it felt like to smile from the heart, not just the muscles on my face.

I remembered play… Breathing

I kissed her little cheeks and tummy, blew raspberries on her tiny feet. I sang. I dressed her up. I started writing more about life and less about death.

I returned to my body and I started to have fun. And while i was with her, I didnt feel guilty for being alive, or for the belly laughs. She needed and she deserved guilt-free love. And fun.

It must have been so hard for her to arrive in a home that was so broken and sad…. To be born into a family’s ache, her family.

I often imagine the conversation Paul and Stepha might have had somewhere, that whole year when neither of them was here. I see them like a memory meeting in a window of space and time. Paul trying to give her advice, and Stepha laughing and saying, it’ll be fine.

I’ve always known she’s a brave soul, because I’m pretty sure she knew what she was jumping into. And she did it anyway. And I’m so grateful to her for that.

With her I understood that even though my heart had been broken into so many tiny pieces, some of them were just dust, but… it still had a beat. And it could still work.

When Stepha came, it was the first time that I, not yet being a mother, felt my heart expand. To make space for someone I could love so completely.

She allowed me to live in wonder again, because watching her was just wonderful.

I loved her from my mother’s womb, but most likely from way before, and I will love her in this life and every one that comes after.

You, a little bean.
Me, thirteen.
#loss #grief #birth #childgrief #childlikewonder

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“When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark” 🌙 ⭐️ #mentalhealthawareness ayer fue el día mundial de la salud mental… yo AMO esta frase del Mad Hatter hacia Alicia en el país de las maravillas (“cuando no puedas ver la luz (o el lado “bueno”), me sentaré contigo en la oscuridad”) es una de las cosas que más necesitamos escuchar cuando la vida cuesta, todos pasamos altos y bajos, más quizás en la pandemia, es tan simple y poderoso 🌙 … sin pedir detalles, explicaciones o porqués, solo acompañar con amor y paciencia es sanador 🌙 ⭐️ …we are all the mad hatter, we are all Alice 💛

#handstandjourney #reclaimingmybody #selflove #wellnessjourney #mentalhealth #mamadecabeza #aliceinwonderland #whenyoucantlookonthebrightside

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