Creme de la Creme

Creme de la Creme: The Best of the Adoption/Loss/Infertility Blogs:
Each participating blogger self-nominates one post that they wrote that year. The list is then created, curated and narrated with much love and care by Melissa “the Stirrup Queen” Ford (a.k.a. Mel). Note: The numbers associated with each post only reflect the order in which they were submitted, they are not ranked in any way.

2013 List — My post (#7): Kindergarten Past, Present & Future (August 25, 2013)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: A moving post, written to her three children — two of whom are living and a daughter who died — to mark their experience with kindergarten: past, present, and future.

2012 List — My post (#110): Semper Fi (March 9, 2012)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: The author recounts going to stand along the route to support the motorcade carrying a fallen Marine, and I cried by the time the cars reached her and the enormity of the loss set in.

2011 List — My post (#5): Breathing (A Poem) (August 23, 2011)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: With each breath a mother takes, she remembers the child she carried and lost. A beautiful poem infusing a body with oxygen and memories.

2010 List — My post (#17): Amazing Things Will Happen! (January 23, 2010)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: Jumping off of the words of Conan O’Brien, the author agrees that sometimes amazing things can happen, including her daughter who came after the family swam through a sea of loss.

2009 List — My post (#4): Grace and the Odds (March 12, 2009)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: A beautiful post that will make you cry knowing that the author is currently holding the baby discussed in this post.  A post about still having hope after being on the wrong side of the odds more than once.

2008 List — My post (#195): “A Very Interesting Heart…” (June 24, 2008)
Mel’s description of the post I submitted: A gorgeous post about reading her daughter’s autopsy report. Upon learning that the doctor wrote that Molly had a “very interesting heart,” the author explains this need to learn everything she possibly can about the daughter she will not get to watch grow up.

2007 — My post: P.S. (September 11, 2007)
I didn’t participate in 2007, as it wasn’t on my radar back then. But I decided to pick a post that I would have submitted had known about the Creme that year. My description of the post: I wrote this after watching a 9/11 tribute episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show that morning, which had profiled some of the children of those who had died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or on Flight 93. I also talked about how when we go through difficult and uncertain times in our lives the importance of being able to transfer what we learn from those experiences into being more sensitive to others who are also struggling, even if their trials are nothing like ours.