I didn’t have it in me today to go to a baby shower. I often think I’m past all that old hurt. That celebrations of other people’s babies should no longer make me wish for what might have been.

But, I’m not always as strong as I’d like to think I am. After a morning of feeling homesick and being sad that I won’t see my family at the holidays, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to sit in a room full of fertile young Mormon women and talk about how I don’t have children.

I still have sadness. I still mourn for the babies I lost, for the mother I could have been.