Category Archives: Miscarriage

Giving You a Piece of My Heart

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376424_409722162439397_856502426_nI saw this on Facebook today, and I just loved it.

Maybe this happens as you get older, but I feel more and more that so much of my life has been spent trying to be right, always trying to maneuver myself into a position to never be wrong or to never look like I’m not in the know. And, I don’t want to be that way.

Beyond the fact that trying to live in such a strict set of absolutes is exhausting, it’s also not a pretty way to live. Contrary to what my want-to-be-the-smart-one brain always says, it isn’t the smart people that are always working to look that way. It’s just not that impressive.

It has been brought to my attention lately that grief is a selfish emotion. One that has its place, but must be moved away from. Clinging to grief is just that — clinging. It’s holding on to a past, an action that most assuredly prevents one from moving on to a future. The need to control, to define your own sets of parameters, to punish yourself for things you can’t change and that don’t matter anyway, to hold on to those things that are convenient to the emotions you feel at the moment… These are the actions of the fearful, not of the daring or the bold.

I have a thousand reasons to be happy, to smile, to dance across the threshold between today and tomorrow. In the shadow of grief, it is hard to see that.

And, so, it is time. It is time to move forward, not as a shadow of myself, but as the whole of myself — perhaps a little pieced together, but still. It is time to ask my husband how he is and really hear his answer, to answer that phone when my friend calls and offer something constructive instead of empty “uh-huhs.” It is time to treat my business like a business and not a bandaid.

It is time to stop holding my heart hostage for fear of it breaking further and giving of it freely, in the way of the woman I always imagined I’d become.

What does your heart have to say today?

In Bloom

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Today, we go to a new doctor to talk about our infertility. I’m dreading it. She will ask about our experiences, about our loss, and I will sob hysterically because if anyone even speaks about my twins, it is like a nuclear bomb exploding at the epicenter of my heart.

This isn’t healthy, so I’m working on it. I’m basically in survival mode. My mom told me recently that the turning point for grief comes at around 1 year. Here’s hoping.

On the business front, I am doing exciting things every day. I love it so much and am so grateful for this blessing in my life. My husband continues to support me, to encourage me. I am so thankful to have him as the other half of everything I do.

Without him, without this business that brings me hope and joy, I think I would have withered by now, curled inside of myself to hide from the world.

Instead, I continue to hope, though it leaves me the kind of vulnerable I’d rather never be. I continue to try, to hesitantly dream, scrambling through the dark for traces of light, for life. I am still in bloom, blossoming to become something and someone entirely different from what I expected. I hope I find a little more acceptance and forgiveness in the woman I become. She needs that.

Not together, but I’m getting there.

Giving Myself Permission

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This post is mostly me postulating. I’ll admit that freely.

Monday was a whirlwind day. I didn’t work, so I was home doing “other work” like a mad chicken. After my “other work,” Ryan and I went to the gym. I stepped on the elliptical, plugged in to my ipod, and worked.it.out.

While I was ellipticalling away, I realized something.

I felt like me.

I’ll admit here, that it’s oh so American privelege to say things like that. But, I am an American, and I do spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about me and my potential. For right or wrong, it’s what most Americans naturally do.

I haven’t really felt like me in a long time. So many wonderful things have happened in the past nine months, but they were all inked into my existence alongside the complicated pain of a moma that might have been. Most of my happy moments for the past nine months have come with a “but” after them. I am happy, but…

This is the natural progression, or atleast my natural progression. I struggle with being okay with not being okay. I am sure there are some of you that relate.

In a lot of ways, jewelry has been my saving grace. More so as I pick up orders and get busier and busier. Busy hands allow you to move forward. I’ve heard before, “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground.” It’s true.

Jewelry was something I had always tied to my old life. It was the thing my ex-husband and I did together. When I left Indiana, I left that life and that business behind.

I’m learning that things aren’t that black and white. There isn’t an old life and a new life. There isn’t a new me and an old me. A thin me and a not thin me. A happy me and a sad me.

A me that does jewelry and a me that’s a writer.

Life is so much more complicated than that. Sometimes, there are me’s that do both or neither.

Right now, I’m the me doing both.

I don’t know if this makes sense, but it does to me. This is the me that’s growing, the me that’s always been growing and changing whether she liked it or not. This is my road whether I struggle against walking it or not.

Slowly, I’m coming to accept it. I’m coming to accept that I can be thankful for these unexpected joys — jewelry instead of my babies — without forsaking the latter for the former. In a gray world, you can do that. I can be happy and move on toward the future without forgetting or leaving behind the past.

Sometimes, you just have to give yourself permission to be happy.

Still Looking Up

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August 1st.

Most likely, this would have been the month our twins would have been born.

While I was standing over my jewelry in the kitchen, “patina’ing” as I call it, I said to Ryan out of the blue, “When will it stop hurting?”

He paused. Though he hasn’t been affected the same way, he knew what I meant.

“It might never completely stop, baby,” he said. “Over time, it won’t hurt quite this way, but something like this may never go away completely.”

He tells me the truth. He doesn’t sugar coat and I appreciate it.

It isn’t unusual for me to sit at my jewelry desk, wiping tears with my left hand and with a jewelry tool in my right. I’ve come to understand that humans have an incredible ability to be both sad and happy at the same time, to long desperately for the past and yet feel excited for the future.

For some reason, I never expected to feel like this… this strange combination of grief and excitement, thankfulness and anguish. I never expected that all these combinations could work together, that I could smile with tears in my eyes, but here it is and here I am.

Still looking up.

Before you speak, think. Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?

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I haven’t written much in a while. Yes, I guess I posted only a week ago, but I haven’t said much. And, that’s mostly because, well, I just don’t have that much to say.

Perhaps I’m just… getting older, growing up, changing.

When it comes to my miscarriage, I have whined, I have complained, I have cried and ached and pined. I have questioned my beliefs, questioned life and everything in it. I have missed them. I have missed them. But, perhaps more important than anything else, I have changed.

My miscarriage has changed my life. It has changed me. It has forced me to cross an invisible threshold that once crossed cannot be uncrossed. I am a woman with the memories of a girl. I think at first, I thought that it was temporary, that somehow I would come out of this loss and be the same person. But, no. There are parts of me that are just … gone.

I realize that this was inevitable, that it happens to every one of us. My sweet, sweet friend just lost her mother. An acquaintance of mine just lost her father. Another acquaintance is watching her young son battle an aggressive brain tumor. A family member is losing his marriage.

These are the experiences that take us across life’s thresholds. It isn’t just me. The very fact that I sometimes feel so desperately alone is merely my human failing telling me that surely no one on this wide and wild planet can feel as I do? But I am wrong. Of course I’m wrong. As Maya Angelou says, we are more alike than we are unalike. And, that’s probably never more true than in the fact that we all suffer the loss of our innocence. We lose what we thought would be in favor of what is.

In many ways, this is just as well. I have become more aware of my priorities not just in my own meager life, but in life in general. Having a place to live: important. Having everything I want to fill it with: not important. Talking endlessly about how much some little stupid thing annoys me? Not important. Finding the right words when someone says “I miss my mother so much?” Important.

And, this extends too to my online life. There was a time when it just seemed so important that I stay engaged, that I stay plugged in, that I stay relevant. It would be the way I’d become the writer I’d always wanted to be, how I’d launch this career that would gain me both a living and a life. But, now… I find myself coming back again and again to that quote by Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

I’m sure you’ve heard it. It goes:

Before you speak, think. Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?

Sitting here in my studio, I am watching the clouds pass behind a grove of very tall Douglas firs. The sun is that hot-golden hue that it becomes just before it gives up its place to the moon. And, I’m wondering if this post I’m writing satisfies these questions. Most likely it doesn’t.

Most likely, I’m doing what we so often do now. We don’t even consider how we might improve on the silence, because there is no silence. Instead, we are competing to make the best noise.

And, I guess what I’m saying is that my particular life-changing thing has made me question if I want to do that. Most of the time anymore, I don’t want to.

Instead, I want to kiss my husband because it is the sweetest thing in my world. I want to workout because it is the right thing for my body. I want to talk to a friend because I actually have something to say. I want to open a Word document and work on a story I’ve been writing because it is something worth writing.

Because in my world, these things are necessary. They are true; they are kind. They certainly do not hurt anyone, and while I do not entirely know yet if my life is improving on the silence, I believe that a little more time spent in the silence will at least allow me to learn how I might contribute in a significant way.

All this is to say, I realize I am not the same person I used to be. My natural inclination is to mourn that, which is … strange. Why do we human beings mourn the loss of who we used to be so much? We grow, we change, we evolve. This is the way of things. This is the supposed to be. This is what happens after the happily ever afters we see in the movies. We go on, and we change, and we fall apart. And, then, we go on again.