The Velveteen Rabbit...

One of my favorite quotes:
I especially love the last paragraph, about becoming...As a bereaved parent, I can relate to this part, and refer become to healing...really to the 'new normal.' You become. You begin to heal... You become a different person through your grief, through your healing. The 'new' person that emerges... It doesn't happen all at once...

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I am real. I have become. I was broken by the death of a child, and I am now held together by beautiful memories, beautiful friends. By an undying love. I don't have sharp edges, and I don't have to be carefully kept. I am real! And I am only ugly to those who don't understand...