your love will be

So when you wean you experience a hormone crash that can result in mental health issues. Knowing this, I had mentally prepared to experience the return of my depression around the time I weaned, since I miraculously didn't experience major postpartum depression. I attributed this to breastfeeding and the heightened hormones involved. So I've been gradually weaning Graham over the past couple of weeks. He'll be a year old this month and it's been a long labor of love to breastfeed. Even though this was the right call for us, it doesn't make the emotions of the ending of this chapter of our mother/son journey any easier. I'm a creature of habit, and the rituals of breastfeeding are primal and complex. Overall the feelings are bittersweet, but range from relief and excitement to have the time returned to me, not to mention full reign of my body -- to a grief of sorts over the loss of the middle-of-the-nights and early mornings spent so close, just us. Except now this hormone crash and incoming high tide of depression have been amplified by my sister's overdose. I'm not sure if I just need time to adjust, but a part of me feels like the trauma of the event is lingering and causing me to feel even more out of sync with myself than I have in years. It's like a pair of clawed fingers is gripping me around the ankles, keeping me chained in this dense fog. I think the only thing I can really do now (and I know this from past experience with my dad or addict ex's) is to help myself. Find an Al-Anon meeting. Find ways to manage my own feelings and expectations. It's just hard. It's hard because I have hardly any free time to myself. It's hard because I never thought I'd have to take these measures with my sister. It's hard that it's just another thing that now divides us. I guess a part of me is heartbroken. I know of things I can do to be proactive, but I'm not confident that any of the things will heal this particular wound.