A Decade of Change

Find a photo of yourself taken 10 years ago and display it on your blog along with a current photo. How have you changed since the day that photo was taken?

Ten years ago I was expecting baby boy number two, due to arrive in the same stickiest, hottest part of July that his brother had arrived  four years earlier.  I don't have many photos of myself that year.  I was never a cute kind of pregnant and that was still before everyone was showing off their baby bumps in form-fitting, stylish maternity wear and posing for photo shoots.

But I did manage to find a couple after digging through a box of jumbled up snapshots buried underneath a pile of clothes in my closet floor (ahem...at least some things never change). They were taken at the small baby shower my friends gave to me at our home though I can't remember the month.  Judging by our clothes and my size, it must have been sometime in May or June.

Though I don't talk about the grief so much anymore, this year, 2013,   certainly did not ring in without my silently acknowledging the fact that not only will my "baby" turn double digits this year but the end of it will mark the ten year anniversary of the most horrific day of my life. 

Yes, I have moved on...made a new life...grown in my faith...gained strength, wisdom and empathy, none of which do I  think I would have fully acquired otherwise. You don't ever truly go back to the person you were after experiencing something of that magnitude.  It just isn't possible.  

One of the three precious friends I met through an online support group once said to me that it finally hit her, what was so familiar about me and the rest of us...it was our eyes.  She recognized something in our eyes that she saw every day when she looked in the mirror.  I had not noticed it before but I realized that she was so spot on with that observation. 

I can see it now, when I look back at photos of myself before that horrible awful day.  It makes sense really. How could something that wounds our souls in such a deeply profound way not change anything about us physically?  It's subtle, but it's there. 

I don't think I could even begin to list the many other ways in which I've changed in the past ten years and yes, I do catch myself wondering, from time to time, who I'd be today had that tragic event never occurred.  That's only human nature, I suppose, and only unhealthy if we allow ourselves to dwell.  

A decade is bound to bring changes, no matter our circumstances. These past ten years have also been some of the best of my life...the birth of another child, so many firsts in the lives of he and his brother...becoming a full-time mom to them...my marriage to Charlie...traveling to places I'd never been before... the purchase of our home...the discovery of the magical straightening/flat iron.  (Oh, what a glorious day!)

I'm looking forward to seeing what the next ten will bring and also think that perhaps I should consider handing over the camera a little more often since the most recent shot I could find of myself without sunglasses was this one (my profile pic) taken in July. Oh well, I suppose a few months isn't much when we're talking in decades...

See what I mean?  The flat iron is my friend.