Anything That Feels Like An Exhale
One thing I've learned: Self-care isn't face masks and bubble baths. It's not manis and pedis, or Target or Starbucks. It's anything, anything, that allows you to find an exhale.
It’s Christmas Eve and my husband is putting our kindergartner to sleep. Surprisingly, we’re pretty well ready for the early morning ahead, but we’re both fried.
We’ve been passing like ships in the night for more seasons than I can count, always passing along logistics or calendar items, questions about schedules and coverage of work and home and school. It’s been… hard, to find each other through the haze of everyday challenges - and when you couple that with compounding traumas, it becomes nearly impossible to maintain the sense of emotional connection.
Tonight is one of those nights that I need to connect to people who’ve both loved what I’ve loved and lost what I’ve lost. I have a strong partnership and a miracle of a little girl, but I also have three babies in heaven and a body that refuses to stop sending distress signals even though there is no imminent threat.
I feel too much tonight, being reminded in real time that grief besides gratitude is both feasible and exhausting, and I was scrolling through my phone thinking about how I could take better care of my heart when the answer was right in front of me all along.
Write.
Write to the babies that aren’t here.
Write about their Christmas lists.
Write to myself.
Write about what I have and what is noticeably missing.
Write when the voice in my head tells me I’m not strong enough to sit through both sets of feelings at once.
Write when the voice in my head reminds me that one living child doesn’t replace three dead ones.
Write to feel. Write to process. Just…. write.
Finding the lights
In truth, I’ve worked really hard this season to find the lights, even amidst some of the most intense trauma recalling and processing of my life.
I’ve paid more attention out the window when were driving at night. I’ve noticed the tiny moments with my girl that feel like magic. The kiss on the cheek. The sparkle in her eyes and the grin on her face when we opened the stocking stuffer gifts that she’d chosen for us, and picked out on her very own.
The pictures littering the desk and walls in my office - all various ages and stages of her and I, of hearts and flowers and now of Christmas trees, of Glinda and Elphaba, of Wednesday and Enid - shows she’s never seen but has come to love because of me. And that’s when I remember. The losses may always hurt like hell, but raising her is still the deepest most important gratitude I’ve ever felt.
It’s the feeling I’ll walk to the end of the earth to protect.
Amidst the darkness
I’d be lying if I said there weren’t still moments that threaten to pull me under.
Moments of missing both lost babies and lost friends that hurt so deeply the pain seeps out from my heart and escapes from the corners of my eyes or the tightening in my throat.
Our home should be full of littles. Noah and Victoria would be closing in on 3 years old, and Rowan would be just a couple of weeks old. No doubt we’d still be in the thick of new parenting, diapers and bottles and pumping and snuggling, but I also know that we’d be grateful as all hell for all of it. And that, that stings more than I can say.
I’m grateful to have a partner who fervently believes that believing I’m going to survive will in fact make me survive.
I believe - I - I believe in the good. I believe that it's been a hell of a year, and I believe that in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we'll all be okay. I believe a lot of things. I believe that - I believe that Denny is always with me. And I believe that if I eat a tub of butter and no one sees me, then calories don't count... I believe that believing we survive is what makes us survive.
*Izzy Stevens, Grey’s Anatomy.
Tonight my arms ache. My empty arms acutely feel restless without anyone to hold. My body was prepared to have a baby, but it screwed it up somewhere along the way. And for that to be the end - the end of our story and the end of our family building, well, I’m just not sure I’ll ever make peace with it.
Home is Where The Heart Is
There’s a degree of irony, that home is where four of the most traumatic, most heartbreaking tragedies have occurred in the last few years, and it also still feels like a safe space. That’s undoubtedly because of my partner, and I never want a minute to go by without recognizing that in this relationship, he has carried beyond a full load for far longer than either of us could’ve imagined.
Tonight I’m grateful for the warmth and the love, the truly unconditional love - from my partner, from my daughter, to the babies in the stars and to our friends up there with them.
I’m practicing self care by using the best outlets I know - the SHARE support group, the people in my inner circle, distraction, writing, reading, and not going down a rabbit hole.
The fantasy of what could’ve been - it’s too hard tonight.
Tonight is just about what is. It’s the calm in the storm. It’s the ship that has chosen to rest. It’s the tiny tornado that will ransack our living room tomorrow morning in a gleeful stupor bursting at the seams to see what Santa brought for her and what Mom & Dad bought too.
My biggest challenge, my biggest goal, is to stay present with her during that time.
To put my grief aside, and to allow the gratitude to grow.
There will always be time to grieve. There will always be more grief. There will always be things and people I can’t talk about without getting a lump in the back of my throat. But the moments of gratitude, they can be harder to find. And so while they’re being showed off in front of me, I promise I’ll hone in.
This one’s for you, B. It’s always for you.
Love Mama.