surrendering and strength

It's been a good week.  I started writing my novel, which has been a great creative outlet.  The challenge is to write a novel in thirty days with fifty thousand words.  I'm writing a children's novel, and the main character's name is Luka.  She's thirteen and full of spunk.  In my imagination this is how Luka would have been if she was born healthy and strong, and grew to be a teenager.  I know it's silly, but it makes me feel like she is with me as I write. Writing has become a wonderful healer, and I'm really enjoying discovering the joy of words.  I've been really looking forward to Wednesday nights, because of yoga and getting a chance to root myself into the earth.  We also go for dinner after with friends, and it's a really nice way to break up the week. Yoga is a huge trigger for emotion. It is always a gentle and welcome reminder to live in the moment.  Last night the instructor encouraged us to find the balance in our bodies between surrender and strength.  Is it possible to be strong and let go?  It was a perfect metaphor for the last three months, and the grieving process.  It's a constant shift; one minute I'm a tower of strength, and the next minute I'm an emotional wreck.  I still cry everyday.  Some days it's buckets and other days it's a gentle cry after looking at her pictures, or her ashes on our dresser.  Surrendering has always been hard for me.  To truly let go has been one of my biggest challenges in my life.  I love to hold on.  Being pregnant and losing my child was the biggest letting go experience I think I will ever have.  If someone had told me that I would go through this, I would have told them that I wouldn't be able to, that I wasn't strong enough.  But I am strong, and from my strength, I have been given the gift of learning to let go. To surrender.  As we lay in silence on our yoga mats, we were instructed to recite a mantra silently in our minds. Mine was, "I surrender to the process of life, and I trust new life will come to me again." That is my hope and my wish, and I let it go for the universe to decide.