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Lisa45,

I'm so glad that you're writing. You have so much pent-up emotion and have dealt with it for so long that it is huge. And it seems like so much of it is grief. Grief can affect everything else in our lives unless we deal with it -- and we all deal with it at our own pace and in our own way.

Here is what I see all tangled up in your emotions:

-- Your feelings of loss and abandonment when your husband left you;
-- Your grief over your recent miscarriage;
-- Your feelings that your relationships with your two older children are insufficient and incomplete;
-- Your desire to have another child;
-- Your acknowledgment that the relationship is lacking between you and your husband;
-- Your sense that you just need to pack all this away and move on in your life, which is in direct conflict with all the other things.

It's like all those things are pieces of string that are tangled in a huge ball, and as soon as you tug on one of them a little bit, they pull on all the others and make the tangle worse.

Since you can't find counseling where you are, I am wondering if you are interested in some books on how to deal with grief and loss. It feels like this is the biggest thing going on for you, and you are dealing with it all on your own.

I went through Amazon.co.uk because I thought it might be easier for you to order from there. But I'm sure that Amazon.com would have these books as well if you would rather order from the U.S.

This book has 100 stories from women who have miscarried, and women who have read it wrote wonderful things about it (scroll down and read their reviews):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miscarriage-Women-Sharing-Marie-Allen/dp/0471548340/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276876851&sr=8-9

And this book is written by a woman who herself had a miscarriage:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Love-Personal-Stories-Miscarriage/dp/1569245436/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276876851&sr=8-15

And these books are about working your way through grief:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grief-Grieving-Finding-Meaning-Through/dp/0743263448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276877251&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Grief-Sue-Morris/dp/184529677X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276877251&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/I-WasnT-Ready-Say-Goodbye/dp/1402212216/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276877251&sr=1-7

I don't think you are crazy. I think you are a woman who loves being a mom and who has had some losses in her life that are hard to cope with at times. I think everything you are feeling came from somewhere. And now you're trying to figure out how to move ahead.

In terms of your husband -- I want to say, gently, that nobody owes anyone else another child, Lisa. He made a mistake -- a bad one. But he ultimately did try to do right by that mistake. It sounds like he was always honest about what he wanted (and didn't want) and that he, too, has had some things in life that he didn't expect. That doesn't forgive the fact that he left you and his baby when you were pregnant, but we are all human and we make mistakes.

It is up to you to decide what is more important to you, and act on that. If it is more important to you to try to have another child, it seems like you're going to need to leave your husband and seek other alternatives, like artificial insemination. If it is more important to you to keep your 10-year-old's home intact, then it seems like you need to stay and work through not being able to have another child. You don't have to know the answer right this minute. Order a book or two, read, think, cry, grieve, and work through it as best you can. It'll be a wonderful step toward whatever your future is.

Will you check out those books and let me know what you think?

June 18, 2010 - 9:21am

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