{"id":43,"date":"2009-09-01T12:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/2009\/09\/01\/on-the-surface\/"},"modified":"2009-09-01T12:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-01T12:22:00","slug":"on-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"On the Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever ordered broccoli cheddar soup from a restaurant and had it come to you with a little layer of skin on the top? You know, where the milk has cooled and binded all of its little particles together? Then, even though it kind of turns you off for a second, you go ahead and break the skin and realize what is underneath isn’t all that bad? In fact, it’s usually better. I feel like some people live their lives like that layer of skin, never breaking the surface because they’re too afraid of what is underneath. It is a lot easier to live that way.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
I will admit, I used to be a surface girl. It is easy and low-risk to have a relationship (friendship or otherwise) with someone when you don’t ever really talk about how you feel or how that person makes you feel. You never risk hurting someone’s feelings or losing the relationship. But, at the same time, if you have an issue with something and never share it, you begin to hold onto it and feel hurt or sad or mad or all three rolled into one. For a while, Jake and I were getting very upset about the way some people were handling the death of the girls. We were hurt that they were being shoved out of everyone’s minds; we were hurt when people sent e-mail forwards that might have been cute to others, but were insensitive to us; we were hurt when we didn’t hear from people for long stretches of time simply because they didn’t know what to say to us. Now, though, we’ve started expressing ourselves and not only does it feel good, it feels like we’re living much deeper lives.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
As Jake and I have gone through everything, we have learned just how many people are too afraid to talk to us, because that would require breaking their own surface. On the girls’ birthday, we were very surprised when some very close family members didn’t call or contact us the entire day. It hurt us a lot. We didn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to at least call us and see what we were doing for the girls’ special day. So, we asked our families, and it turns out, they were all too afraid to call. They all gave the same response ‘We just didn’t know what to say so we didn’t bother calling.’ And we gave them all the same response ‘It’s ok just to call and tell us you don’t know what to say, but you’re thinking of the girls today and loving them.’ I’m so glad we talked to them because we were able to let them know that we were using the girls’ birthday to celebrate their lives, not mourn their deaths. Hopefully future birthdays will have everybody celebrating instead of mourning.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Along these lines, if you have questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask. We love talking about the girls and the life we shared with them. We also talk about their death and the months that have followed, not only to help us heal, but hopefully to help others as well.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever ordered broccoli cheddar soup from a restaurant and had it come to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetgirlies.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}