Here goes. I have been a widow for 15 days but I'm going to try to write my ten grats for today and see how I go.

1. Two beautiful, precious, loving children.

2. A roof over my head.

3. Enough food to eat.

4. Wonderful supportive family and friends. This in itself covers many more than ten individual grats but I want to stretch myself a little here.

5. My health is holding up pretty well.

6. I have a job to go back to, whenever I'm ready.

7. I don't have to worry about money for the next few weeks.

8. Lots of professional support, Australia has free health care, and everyone is going out of their way to help.

9. My son is happy at school, and they are also being very supportive.

10. This was much easier than I thought.

So it was my husband's funeral yesterday, and there was an enormous turnout, despite the fact that he always claimed he didn't really have any friends. The service was beautiful, his surfboard lay on top of his coffin, and during the laying of rosemary my best friend instead laid red chillies, which he would really have appreciated. His brother and sisters wrote a funny and moving eulogy about his nine lives (I think he probably had more than that), his Dad spoke about his childhood, the celebrant spoke on my behalf about the husband and father that he was. I sat up front with our two beautiful boys, the youngest entertained himself by climbing up and down from his seat, and our very wise and comprehending five year old listened and held it together until he laid his rosemary, then every heart in the place broke as he had a total meltdown on my lap, crying and screaming that he wanted his daddy back. Afterwards there was a procession of people coming up and offering their condolences - I still don't know who some of them were. This morning I opened some more sympathy cards, and was blown away by an anonymous pretty large donation to me and the boys. My house is full of flowers, cards, food and love.
We held a wake back at "my" place, and his friends and eldest son drank the last of his homebrew. I got totally fucking smashed, and have that awful feeling you get after an emotional and drunken night that I probably said some really strange and over the top things to people, who could do no more than feel sorry for me and hope I wouldn't remember it in the morning. I finally lost it, the neighbors who heard me running naked and screaming in the street for help on the night he died once again had to listen to me screaming and crying out his name. Thank God the kids slept through it, again.
So where to from here? I really have no idea. One foot in front of the other, hang in there for the kids, a day at a time, don't give up hope. I can't imagine what the future holds for us, or how my beautiful boys are going to cope without their precious daddy, only that one way or another we'll get through this together.
We'll do it for him.

I haven't been on this site in a while, and forgive me for not having the strength to search for this myself, but...
My husband died suddenly last week aged 38, we have two little boys.
Is there anyone out there who has been through this or can put me onto any good resources? I have absolutely no idea how I am ever going to cope.
Thank you.
We live in Australia.

So my three and a half year old sprays spittle on the floor, makes sure I'm looking, then laughs. He knows we "don't spit", he wants to see what I'll do and I'm just so damned angry that I grab him by his arm and march him off to the "quiet room", on the way he fake falls, so I grab him by his shirt, help him into the room with my foot, then slam the door as hard as I can, screaming at him not to dare to come out. My nearly one year old is on my hip taking it all in.

I just read liminal_mom's blog where she mentions that she lives in the UK. So I'm feeling a bit isolated in a new country town in Western Australia and am wondering whether there is anyone else out there from Australia (besides yummyaussiemummy - your name is a giveaway!). How many other bloggers out there are from the UK? Besides the USA (where most bloggers seem to come from), where else are you all from? Just wondering...

I've also changed my username - only been using this site for a week, but am about to tell some people about it and i'm kinda enjoying the anonmymity!

I have been on various antidepressants for absolutely years, including during pregnancy and breastfeeding (I was on Citalopram at this time). Due to another complication my little guy was both breastfed and bottlefed with formula in his first few weeeks, and after two weeks appeared to be having some kind of reaction five to ten minutes after having breastmilk. After a few days this became a fairly clear "seizure" (going stiff, eyes rolling back, not responding to us etc). We took him to see a paediatric neurologist (I am almost embarassed to say that this is free in Australia), who ran a lot of tests and couldn't find anything else wrong.

Anyone online at the moment? Just trying to work out the time difference between Perth (Australia) and America. It's nearly 3:00 on Friday afternoon here. Is it even Friday there yet?

Yesterday I just couldn't stop crying and my little man (nine months) saw it all. At first he was curious and seemed a little concerned - then he laughed! But it got me thinking. How much barely controlled emotion should I be exposing him to? With sadness, I'm inclined to share it with him so that he knows it's okay and normal and mama cries too. But what I'm really confused about is anger. I really don't like him seeing this, but aren't I just teaching him that anger is bad and should be repressed? The more I think about it, I'm not even sure whether it IS okay to be angry. Any comments?