"I Know How You Feel"

"I get it."

"I understand." 

"I know how it feels."

"I felt that way too."

However it's said, it feels REALLY good to connect with people, doesn't it?

Both my head and my heart are in a really great place right now. The last eighteen days have felt like the longest two and a half weeks of my life, but in that short period of time I quickly breezed through the five stages of grief and here I sit in acceptance. 

A big part of that comes from connecting with people, moms in particular, who can TRULY say, "I know how you feel" because they too had to hand their babies over to a neurosurgeon knowing EXACTLY what was going to happen in that operating room. Knowing that not only were their babies going to look like a stranger to them afterwards because of swelling, but that this surgery was going to change the look of their baby's face and head forever. 

These parents all talk about being on "the other side" of Cranio. The "side", post surgery, where you see for yourself that all the comforting things everyone has told you about how well your baby will do are indeed true. 

Yesterday morning I had the opportunity to talk to a mom whose baby girl had surgery with Dr. Tomita at Luries last summer.  What an incredible blessing she was to me, easing my mind of many of my fears. It was the perfect way to start surgery week. It reminded me that I have spent my entire adult life firmly believing that any awful things I've been through in my life are so that God could use me to connect with and support others going through the same thing. I had this OVERWHELMING feeling that we are all going to come out of this better and stronger than we were before. 

I can't wait till Grant is old enough to understand how amazing he was, how brave he made us, and how faithful to our Savior we all were during this whole experience.