Category: SUNSHINE & DAISY

Discussing Babyloss with my boss

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I went on a business trip last week with my boss. In all the years that I have worked at this job, I’ve never gone on a business trip. I just kept getting pregnant and/or having babies. But now that Liat is one year and I am not preoccupied with getting pregnant again, I was glad to go. Just one day away from the office responsibilities and the house responsibilities was a welcome change.

It also gave me the opportunity to chat a bit with my boss. Although I try not to discuss this blog at work, my co-workers know about it, as do my bosses. In fact, I would not be completely shocked if they sat around reading it. Mildly shocked, maybe. But completely? No.  Hell, I wonder if his ears are turning red as he reads. these. words. right. now.

The boss I traveled with has never talked to me about the twins. Never really acknowledged it to my face. That’s fine. When I first returned to work 3 weeks after they died, I actually asked a co-worker to ask everyone not to make a big deal of it. But now, two years later, in the airport, waiting for our return flight, after a very abstract segue into the topic,  he said to me “It seems like you carry a  lot of anger about that situation.”

Oh. Um, hello.

Ok. I guess we can have this conversation. And I guess you’re reading my blog.

“I do.” I replied

“Why? It’s not like it defines who you are. Why would you want to focus on that instead of focussing on your other two blessings? It’s been two years. Why don’t you want to just put it behind you as just ‘something that happened in the past’?”

“OK. first of all, in many ways, it does define me. It just does. I am not the same person that I was before this happened. Therefore, by definition, it has defined me. But second of all, I think we are defining anger differently. I am not ANGRY…. like ‘I’M SO MAD!’ kinda anger… I am angry that I was forced to live through that experience. But not like, bitter anger. It’s more like, like …..”

“…Sadness.” He said.

“Yes, sadness. And I’ll always be sad about it. 2 years or 20 years. That’s just the way it is.”

We dropped the topic.

Two hours later we got on the plane. I (so unusual for me) still had more to say.

“Ya know… back to that topic…. I don’t want to forget about it and just put it behind me. I actually like talking about them. They are my children. You would never say to someone who lost a parent ‘put it behind you…. why do you want to talk about that'”

“But you never held them. You never looked at their faces, or saw them smile.”

I was surprised he said that. I know a lot of women would be appalled to have someone say that directly to them. I wasn’t. I was sort of touched. It was so… honest. I really felt like he was trying to understand my head.

“You’re right. I didn’t. And that’s really sad. But it really has nothing to do with the love I have for them. I love them as much as I love my other two children. I just don’t get to raise them.”

And with that, I think I saw a glimmer of understanding come across his face. And then, I felt at peace with the conversation. I closed my eyes and tried to get some sleep before we landed at 6am.
____

Today was the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Memory Walk at our local hospital.  I taped an oversized Sunflower and Daisy to Liat’s stroller and walked there with her. Just the two of us.

(I wore three Muchness bands, a silver sequin jacket, and my IN TOUCH WITH THE MUCH t-shirt… those things are my versions of ‘liquid courage’…. What? Oh. Doesn’t everyone have hot pink Duct Tape in their house?)

At the walk, a speaker talked about the importance of speaking up about our losses. About how, until those who experience these losses let others know and help them understand what it REALLY is to lose a pregnancy, to lose a baby, it will always be an isolating, invisible sorrow that others don’t recognize and can’t comprehend.

I felt good that I shared my feeling and thoughts with my boss, and maybe brought him a new glimmer of understanding. And so I decided to take that conversation and share it here. Through The MUCHNESS, I plan to educate the world.

Muchness Chat

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Tonight Elie and I went out with my cousin to a local bar where they had live music. I have lived in this town for years and though I knew this place existed, I’d ever been there. It was  the kind of place where locals hang out in their jeans. People danced to the live music and drank their beers and chatted with friends. I wore a pretty typical outfit, for me.

Those are my sequined pants and my turquoise boots with the sparkly purple laces. Some people looked at me funny… maybe it was the red leather jacket or rainbow scarf…. I don’t know… I wonder if I’m getting more outrageous with my clothes without even realizing it. I certainly was not invisible.

I was talking to my cousin about a lot of stuff- stuff I feel passionate about, stuff that I’ve learned since my loss, areas where I’ve grown… And as I heard myself talking, I interjected myself and said ” I should really blog about these things.”

Every morning, I go to work. I take a bus from NJ to Manhattans Port Authority and then I walk about 6 blocks to my office. Those 6 blocks are like ‘brain time’. It’s the moments where I often find myself thinking about where I am in my life and how I feel about it. It’s ironic because when I was in FIT I did the same walk and I remember thinking as I walked how cool and confident I felt with funky clothes and rainbow hair, and how I just loved when people looked at me and I naturally assumed they thought I was awesome.

I remember when I was dating Elie and doing that walk. I remember feeling a peace and calm. I work in the fashion district and often found myself comparing my appearance to those I passed on the street. I still sometimes pushed myself to wear more eye catching clothes, but it didn’t feel important. I was madly in love. I felt beautiful. I felt like dressing up for others was a waste of my time and energy and money. Elie couldnt care less about that stuff. It obviously occurred to me that I might WANT to think about taking it up a notch, but it was far from a priority.

I remember walking that walk while pregnant with Molly. I really dressed bad. I bought a couple of pairs of maternity jeans that were too long and a bunch of really shapeless tops. I wore sneakers every day. And a ponytail. I really was SO over the moon in love with the idea of this baby’s arrival, I didn’t care. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought I looked glowing and beautiful. And fat. I was piling on the pounds. When Molly was born at 36.5 weeks weighing 5lb 11oz, I was 55 pounds heavier than I had been. I’m barely 5’2. 55 lbs is like, almost half my normal body weight.  But I didn’t care. I had my baby and she was so stinkin’ cute.

And then I went back to work three months later. And I was still fat. Maybe not obese, but fat enough that my pre-pregnancy clothes no longer fit. So I was wearing my smaller maternity clothes. Which were still hanging on me. Shapeless. With sneakers. And a ponytail. By now, I felt worn. I still was waking yo with her in the middle of the night. I was tired in the mornings and hauling my tush out of bed, barely glancing at myself in the mirror and heading out the door. And I felt invisible. I’d walk that walk and think, ‘ya know, tova, you look like crap… why is it so hard for you to think about dressing up? or at least wearing decent shoes?” I was embarrased by myself and my appearance, but I didn’t want to spend money on clothes at that size, and I knew I really wanted to have another baby. Why put all the effort into getting back in shape just to get pregnant again?

When Molly was about 6 months I went shopping at target and nothing fit. The things that did fit just looked so unflattering. I returned to my mother in law to pick up Molly. I remember she asked “Did you get anything?” and I replied “yeah, depressed.” And so, for that entire year, I stayed ‘invisible’- dressing myself in poorly fitting bland clothing that, on the walk to work had me feeling completely muchless.

Then, after a year, I was pregnant again. It was summer. Then, we learned it was twins. Great. Stuck in the blistering sun with a huge tummy…. I mean, what on earth was I going to wear through this pregnancy?? I went to Target and they had these jersey Maxi dresses in a host of colors. They were like sacks that fell from shoulder to floor and hung there from two little strings. ‘Perfect!’ I thought. easy to wear, will grow with my tummy! They were completely shapeless and dumpy. I bout 8 of them. My summer wardrobe. Week 13- Behold:

It just went down and down past my ankles and swept the floor. Wearing them made me feel even heavier than I was. The walk to work was torture. I didn’t feel vibrant and pretty and pregnant- I felt drained and ugly and insecure.

And then I lost the babies.

And that’s when my walk to work became something else. That’s when it because about how I felt about the world. Myself. That walk became my reality check.

I would leave the house in the morning OK. I would get in the bus and for about half the ride I was OK. Then the tears would start to come. Sometime I was able to hold them back until I was off the bus but somedays, I simply couldn’t . I wore sunglasses daily. I walked through those streets and cried. Sometimes, a small weep. Other times, just full blown tear fest. And I didn’t care how it looked to other people. I just cried. then I got to work, pulled myself together, and tried to make it though the day. Then I’d leave work at the end of the day, head back to to the bus and cry the whole way there. I honestly don’t remember what I wore those days. All I owned were maternity clothes, but I lost the twin weight very quickly. I suppose that’s because my diet had become fruity pebbles, macaroni and cheese and wine. Classy. But I think more to the point, It didn’t matter what I was wearing. it didn’t matter that I was invisible or insecure or whatever… because I was just drowning in grief. Everywhere I looked. Everything I saw. Every noise I heard…. all of it was clouded by the fog and haze and brain numbing sound inside my head; “You are a mother of two dead babies. You are a mother of two dead babies. You were pregnant. Now you are not pregnant. Your babies are dead. They’re dead. Dead babies. That looked identical. Two of them. Two babies. They’re dead.”

And then I was pregnant again.

****It’s 2am. I’m tired. I’m going to post this now and continue when I can….***

BTM vs. ATM (Before The Muchness Vs.After The Muchness)

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Originally posted by Tova September 23. 2011 / Reposted after The Great Server Crash of 2011

As I mentioned last night, I went to bed feeling fine and enjoying that moment while I had it. Because I woke up feeling not so fine. The 23rd. What a shitty day that was. That was the last day either of my girls lived inside  of me. The day we said goodbye to Sunshine too. I look at the little ticker in the corner of this page: 1 year, 11 month, 4 weeks, 1 day. That’s lots of words. In two days, it will just say “2 years”…

I opened my iphoto this morning to go pull some pics of my newest Muchness bands to get them ready to put on the site and while scrolling through my photo library I got pulled into pictures of Elie’s 40th birthday party. It was in November of 2009. Less than 8 weeks after our loss. I’d decided that I couldn’t let his birthday pass without something and it was an excuse to create some joy and celebrate the things we did have. It was on a  sunday night. It was supposed to be a surprise. We spent the day getting massages at a fancy spa near me. My boss had given me a very generous gift certificate after we lost the babies. It was a nice day. I remember the women who gave me the massage was chatty (for a masseuse) and somehow I mentioned that I was there as a gift because I’d lost identical twins recently. She told me she had a twin sister. I asked if they were identical. She replied “we used to be, but then my sister got fat.”   …something about her stupidity struck me even more than her callousness.

But anyway, that’s not the point. We came home from the massage and our house was filled with friends and family. I have NEVER seen such a turn out to a party in my life. Nearly everyone who was invited made the effort to be there, and it was appreciated. I thought at the time it was pity. “Awww, poor Tova and Elie, after all they’ve been through, the least we could do is show up at this party they are hosting at a not terribly convenient time.” And maybe it was pity. It’s OK. I was glad they were there and I think they were glad to have something they could do to show support.

Oy! Again, Not the point!!! The point is, I saw this picture in my iphoto. This one and a few others from that day.

I looked at my eyes, my smile, Elie’s eyes. even Molly’s, and I started to shake, and then cry. That party, that was a good day. Maybe the first good day since the loss. But there is so, so much sadness there. so much grief. so much pain, hidden behind that smile and those eyes. I used to look at these pictures and think “These are bad pictures, I don’t look so good” but now I see it wasn’t the pictures, and it wasn’t how I ‘looked’ …. it was everything else.

I needed to get this out before I can get done the 100 things I have to do today. But I want to end on a happier note. Here is a picture I absolutely LOVE from this past summer. This picture is joy. With my sun and daisy necklace, my sparkly muchness band. Our honest smiles that go deep. It’s Muchness. It’s my family.

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

Jess September 23, 2011 at 11:16 am

Sending you love, Tova. I’m glad you have come so far….

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judi September 23, 2011 at 11:29 am

you have a wonderful way with words, Tova. I felt the sadness and the joy all smushed together. much love from someone who “gets it”…

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Yvette September 23, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Beautiful family! Beautiful MUCHNESS!

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Jen September 23, 2011 at 2:51 pm

Tova, I am thinking about you today as you think about your little girls. What a wonderful way to honor them — with your words and, of course, this site!
I can see/feel the joy and light in the second picture.

Btw, how could it escape me that we share a day *your girls’ angel day and my girl’s edd*?

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Tova September 23, 2011 at 11:09 pm

Jen- I didn’t know that either. Or maybe at the beginning of this journey I did? What a long, strange trip it’s….. continues to be… :)

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Julie September 23, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Hi Tova.
I didn’t realize that our dates were so close…I’m glad your rainbow joined you the next year..I had a second loss the year after, but my rainbow has finally come! Wish I had known last year about the Muchness movement. :0)
L’shana Tova!

Julie (another woman who gets it…)

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Tova September 23, 2011 at 11:07 pm

Julie- you know about it now! Even I didn’t know about it last year!!! Welcome to our little corner of the internet and congrats on your rainbow!
xox

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Where is the Muchness?

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I haven’t written too much lately. It’s not that I have nothing to write about, it’s that I feel a little overwhelmed. There is so much I want to do – so many places I want to take The Muchness Movement, and so little time in which to do it. Today is September 2nd. 3rd. It’s 12:15 in the morning. I’d been thinking about this post for a few days, and planned to post it in September 1st. September. That’s the month. If you check out the little ticker in the left hand corner, It’s getting close. Just 22 days away. 22 days and it will be two years since we said goodbye to Sunshine & Daisy. Two years since I (unknowingly) said goodbye to my old life and started building the one I have now. I still miss them. I’ll always miss them. My arms still ache to hold them. I still wonder what they would have looked like. What they would have smelled like. How it would have felt to have two identical looking babies look up at me, smiling.

I only see them in my mind as babies. I know some babyloss moms are different. They envision what their baby may have looked like as they got older. I don’t know. Maybe I do that too. I look at babies that are close to their age but I don’t imagine them that way. They’d have been premies. They’d have been smaller. There are just too many unknowns for me to make an accurate picture in my mind, so I avoid doing it.

I realized that I started this Muchness project in April. The twins were conceived in April. They lived for almost 24 weeks inside me. And here we are, three weeks away. Once I realized what The Muchness was capable of, I made it my personal goal to grow this project to really huge proportions by September 25th. I regret that I have not been as single-minded and focused as I wanted to be, and now the anniversary is looming and I’m feeling overwhelmed by all I want to do.

So, I’ve decided to take my to-do list ‘public’ and post it on this site. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last 2 years…. well, then that would be pretty sad because I’ve learned about a million things I never knew (back when I thought I was so smart, ironically) Anyhow, I know that when I put my feelings out there, it helps me move through them. When I share them with others, it helps me to stop swallowing them whole because they can just choke you. So, I’ve made a list. I’ve started a list. I’m even having a hard time finishing the list, let alone the things on it. Fabulous.

22 days to make a dent in the list and enlarge the Muchness Movement footprint. Molly and Liat are amazing little girls who will undoubtedly make their mark on this world. I want to pass on to them the inspiration and strength that their sisters taught me. That is Sunshine & Daisy’s gift to our family, and to any other individual or family that is affected by The Muchness. Their bodies may not have lived outside my body but their spirit does. I believe it is my responsibility to make this their legacy. God, that sounds so melodramatic. I almost deleted it. But I didn’t. Because I believe it. (and besides, The Muchy Tova is nothing if not dramatic 😉 )

September 1st, 2009. Our ultrasound tech, Sureka, said the babies were looking really good that day, so against standard protocol, she pulled out the 3-D ultrasound wand and took some pictures for us of our beautiful, healthy, identical looking babies. What a gift those pictures were then. And even more so now.

Sunshine & Daisy. Forever Missed & Always In Our Hearts.

 

Making Memories

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As I mentioned yesterday, Sunday was a monumental day. Here’s why.
On her day 2 challenge, April asked what was a great memory of a day with your family. That got me to thinking and I realized that every day since we started growing our family, that had the potential for greatness, has been clouded by what’s missing.
And once I realized what I was doing- what I was unknowingly cheating myself out of- I made a promise to myself to stop it.

Sunday was the annual balloon festival.  We went once. In 2009. I was pregnant with the twins and couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t be ok. I remember the day distinctly. I looked around and saw tons of identical twins.  That day might have been the one time I allowed myself to “go there” – imagining in my head what our life would be like with them. Would I dress them alike (I said no way- but I probably would have) . Would people look at us and ask about them like I saw someone ask about a pair of twins? Would be even be able to leave the house? Triple strollers are ridiculously large and Molly was still so young…. And to top off the day, I was so pregnant we left before the balloon launch because I needed a rest!
Those are the thoughts I’ve been associating with balloon festival.
Last year I was pregnant with Liat and was glad to have an excuse to stay home.
This year I was torn. I knew Molly would love it but I was not in the mood to be bombarded by those memories and visually assaulted by all the twins that are invariably all over the place at events like that.
And then I read Aprils post. And it was like a big swift kick upside the head. This summer is about new memories! It is about my beautiful family! What am I doing?!?!?

So, I threw on a  sequined tank and mini skirt, tied my Muchness band around my wrist, packed our sunscreen and lunch and hit the road to the balloon festival.

And it was a beautiful, fun and surprisingly relaxing day! I won’t lie- I saw lots of twins and had mild flashbacks to 2009, but I didn’t let it in. New memories are what I made that day.

And we stayed for the balloon launch. And Molly loved it too.

When we left. Those girls were EXHAUSTED!

 

Mothers Day Muchness

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First, I want to say that I love reading everyones Muchness’s today. So amazing to get a bunch of women documenting the things that make them feel, well, their Muchness. I feel like it’s my mission to get this blog OUT THERE- read by more people and seen so they can be as inspired as I know so many of our current readers are. (I get emails… they’re inspired… just so ya know 😉 )

I took a picture for my Muchness Pic of the Day today and when I came upstairs into my mess of an office to post it, I saw something I’ve looked at a million times but never actually saw until today.
On my wall is a calendar.  It’s got pictures of handbags all over it and it was a gift from my sister-in-law for Hannukah, 2008. I hung it because I like the pictures, not because I need to look at a calendar on my office wall. Also, I don’t spend a ton of time in my office, but, well, I spend a lot of time in my office. Somehow, it escaped my attention until just this moment that this is what my Calendar has been turned to, since, well, see the pic…

That’s September, 2009.

Thats the month we lost Sunshine and Daisy.

For a moment after I noticed my head felt warm and my chest clenched and I almost felt like I was in a different place and time. Like time had stood still or something. Did I do that subconciously? I’m trying to remember if I did notice in the past but decided to keep it there anyway. But I don’t remember.  But now that I am writing about it, I will remember, the next time I pay enough attention to the stuff around me and realize it’s still there. Because, for some reason, I want to keep it there. I don’t want to take it down. So I wont. A part of my heart will forever be stuck in September 2009. And my calendar will be stuck there too.

Happy Mothers Day to all my Mama friends- Those with Babies here on earth and especially those with Babies taken too soon. A bittersweet day for a lot of people. I hope it brings peace…

xox, Tova

 

Pair of Shoes

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I came upon this beautiful poem on a blog http://myskytimes.wordpress.com. Sky is the lost baby of the blog writer. Although she didn’t write the poem, she did give me permission to use it.

I’ve been waiting for a day that felt right to share it. I think todays is that day (despite the fact that it’s late and I’m tired)

When I first read the poem , I was feeling really happy. This “Muchness” kick I’m on, it started so randomly, so organically for me, that I never envisioned it would become such a “thing”… and thing that seems to be resonating with people and offering them happy thoughts and smiles and positive thinking when they really need it. And all that positive feedback, well, it sort of started to feel like it’s own Muchness. The Muchness is my new Muchness. I still wear the sparkles, the awesome shoes, and honest-to-god, they still cheer me up (though sometimes they scratch my baby’s little face and I have to take them off when I get home) and I am SO PSYCHED to do some springtime Muchness shoe shopping… but I’ve gone days and weeks without crying,  and it sort of caught up to me today.

After the loss of a baby you cant stop crying. You cry and cry and wonder if you will ever feel happy and whole again. And the crying, it’s pain. Its exhausting. It just pulls the very life out of you. And then, eventually, you realize you won’t cry forever. At a certain point you may even find yourself laughing. And then, the guilt. How can you possibly laugh when your baby is dead? And you cry again.

I’ve been laughing a lot. But I don’t feel that guilt anymore. I feel like the laughter is a gift from the twins. I feel like this Muchness thing, the people who read it and benefit from it, and then tell me about it- I think that is a gift from my girls. And I really hope I don’t mess it up. But today, I just missed them. Sometimes you anticipate the bad days. You know when they’re gonna  hit you. The anniversaries. The holidays. The big family events. Other days they just quietly tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear “today you’re gonna cry.” But the crying is different now. Now it feels like  that is a way for me to connect with them. A way to bring myself back to the pain I felt so strong, for so long. I wanted to cry for them today, my baby girls I never met. So I did.

I read excerpts from a fellow TTTS moms book. I know almost all the women in the book, and know their outcomes. I have the book on my phone and just read the page it opened to. It was the women talking about the day they learned they were expecting twins and how happy they were. And I thought back to that day in our lives. And I cried. I cried on the bus to work like I did every day for months and months  after our loss. And I thought about our babies. And I missed them.

People who haven’t been through a loss like this probably think that by now, 18 months and 7 days and another baby – we’re probably “passed” it… over it… don’t think about it very frequently… it’s something that happened to us in the past… but, it’s not. Maybe for some babylost parents it’s that way. Not for me. For me, my loss defines me. As much as my children, my husband, my job, my religion… maybe more. Probably more. I don’t think these bad things happen for a reason. (and, word of advice, never suggest to a babyloss parent that they do) But I do think that it’s up to us to create something positive from our loss. For any little good that can come from my loss makes my babies short lives less in vain.

Sunshine and Daisy

Here’s that poem. I love that it’s about shoes. I understand those shoes. However, I’d like to cover them in sequins. 🙂

http://myskytimes.wordpress.com/pair-of-shoes/

I am wearing a pair of shoes.
They are ugly shoes.
Uncomfortable Shoes.
I hate my shoes.

Each day I wear them, and each day I wish I had another pair.
Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step.
Yet, I continue to wear them.
I get funny looks wearing these shoes.

They are looks of sympathy.
I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs.
They never talk about my shoes.
To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable.

To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.
But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.
I now realize that I am not the only one who wears these shoes.
There are many pairs in the world.

Some women are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them.
Some have learned how to walk in them so they don’t hurt quite as much.
Some have worn the shoes so long that days will go by
before they think of how much they hurt.

No woman deserves to wear these shoes.
Yet, because of the shoes I am a stronger woman.
These shoes have given me the strength to face anything.
They have made me who I am.

I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.

Author Unknown

 

 

 

 

Snapshot of my life

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Color Splash on HGTV is coming tomorrow to give us a living toom makeover. I had to find a new spot for my Sunshine and Daisy print. Nowhere felt quite special enough until I thought of this spot. This feels perfect.

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The first night it was there, as the mobile music played and I nursed their little sister to sleep, I felt like all my babies were together with me in that little room. (molly is a big girl! Not a baby!) it was one of the most emotional moments I’ve had in a long while, and it felt good to cry for them. I miss them.

Contemplating the Muchness

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Ever since Saturday night I’ve been thinking a lot about this Muchness kick I’m on. I knew that having the guts to wear that outfit meant I’d reached a new level in my healing but a friend posted some pics on facebook from the party and looking at them really impacted me.

After we lost the twins I often found myself looking into the mirror and wondering who was looking back at me. The sorrowful, aging eyes, the pale, pasty skin… Grief takes so much out of you, emotionally and physically. And even as time passed, even when Liat was born, I could always see right past the happiness. When I looked into my own eyes, in the mirror, in photographs, no matter how big and true my smile, I could easily see the sorrow.

Part of the reason for my sadness was knowing I now have the burden of having to carry this sadness. I’d look at old photos of me- from my wedding, being out with friends, Mollys birth and see a spirit and energy in that girl’s eyes that does not belong to the new me. I envied her. She had vibrancy, humor, unbridled optimism. But I can’t be her. I can only be me.

When I started my 30 Days of Muchness it was really on a lark. I thought it would be fun and cute for people to see. I never dreamed it would have the transformative, healing effect it did. Somehow, forcing myself to see the sparkle helped me find the light. It changed my perspective. Helped me put back on my rose tinted glasses.

I had a good time Saturday night. I didn’t drink and I didn’t stay out too late. But I looked at these pictures and see, for the first time in a long time, a hint of that girl I was before. Maybe it is, in part, the outfit. That is an emsemble a girl would wear- not the woman I now know myself to be. But I think its more than that. I think its knowing I’ve hit a comfort level in the grieving process that escaped me until now. I look at those pictures and the grief isn’t as apparent in my eyes as I am used to seeing it. And for that I credit Sunshine & Daisy. Although I never would be on this journey if I’d not had them, I know that they are also the reason I am finding my peace.