Rules for surviving grief

I am going to start my own personal set of rules for surviving grief. This will give me something to remember and reflect on when I am struggling, and maybe, hopefully I can help someone else who is in pain.

Rule Number One: It's okay.
Of course I don't mean that it's okay that my son died. That is the farthest thing from okay in the world. What I mean is, it is okay to not be okay. It is acceptable, normal and expected to have a day, or several days or even weeks where the world seems like a gray, empty, and crappy place. I have days where I don't want to do anything but lay in bed and look at pictures of Nico. I know that it's not necessarily the healthiest plan for a day, but neither is bottling up that pain. Since I can't hold him and tell  him how much I love him, sometimes I have to just let my grief pin me down, even for just a few moments, because it is the only way I can have a time of feeling close to him.
The second part of this rule that is equally important, is that it is okay to be okay.  Having a day that I feel good, and don't think of him as often or am not completely broken when I do think of him does not make me a bad mother. It doesn't mean that I don't love him or miss him as much. Having a day where I feel okay means that the hole in my heart is not bleeding as profusely. It means that the stitches to that wound are holding for the time being, allowing me to be a fully functioning person. Granted, those stitches might burst and I might break down again, but I need to accept and embrace the good days and not feel guilt for them. Feeling guilty will not bring my baby back to me, it will  not solve anything. Blaming myself will only push me further down into the dirt making it harder to claw my way out to the sun and actually living. I can't bury myself in grief, no matter how tempting it may seem. I need to live, and I need to know that it is okay to live, and to live as fully as I am able, given how incomplete I feel.