I am completely over the hospital. I was certain I had put it behind me for quite some time and then I landed myself there again over the weekend. I have truly never been the person that gets sick, the person who needs repeat medical attention, or any of that. However my track record over the last year is forcing me to admit I have in fact been that person of late for reasons totally out of my control. I'm not into it. I didn't even want to write this blog post because I felt like everyone was shouting "SHUT UP about a hospital already!" (because that's certainly what I've been shouting to myself), but then Jeremy helped me realize that it's a pretty universal and hopefully relatable phenomenon to be bored silly with the cycles we find ourselves in ...so I wrote it anyway.

After calling my primary care doctor and visiting an urgent care clinic in my neighborhood and having both physicians sternly urge me to go to the ER, I (very unwillingly) conceded. The symptoms I was having coupled with recent surgery, a genetic clotting disorder, and having been put on post surgical estrogen patch all were too indicative of a pulmonary embolism to ignore I was told. So I went. I did the blue jammy dress thing, I got poked in the arm not once, not twice, but thrice (I can already tell I am headed for arm bruises that would make even the most consummate heroin addict blush), I submitted to test after test to rule out pulmonary embolism and visualized the dollars and cents draining from our bank account with every one.

In the end, everything came out clear. They can't fully explain some of my symptoms, which is uncomfortable to sit with, but they were able to rule out the life threatening things they were worried about and that is a relief. The whole thing got me thinking once again about how it's not so easy to leave the reproductive trauma of the last year behind (as if i needed more reminders, but they just keep on coming). It tends to follow you around in the most annoying and unexpected of fashions (just like all of our baggage does). Everything links to everything.  That experience lives inside me emotionally as well as physically and so I never know when it is going to emerge and stir up some trouble. 

The Universe likes to remind us that we are never fully in the driver's seat even when we begin to feel that we are. This can make us feel very stuck as it did to me as I sat there in the ER feeling stripped of my autonomy, but it can also be freeing depending on how you look at it. We're not so very powerful. We can work hard to move forward, we can bring as much positivity as possible into our lives, we can fiercely love the ones that are dear to us, but ultimately we can't control much else. As I laid there in that ER bed, I thought to myself, as unpleasant and annoying as this is, I feel lucky to have people in my life are that are continuously willing to wade through these rough moments with me. I know my support system loves me and they know I love them (I probably make that overly clear at times), and right now, that's the best remedy I can think of. There are going to be moments where we inevitably get stuck in the same old garbage and then all there is to do is fall back on that foundation--the work, the positivity, the love--to pull us out again. 

At the risk of being lumped in with the faceless masses of clichéd girls in oversized sweaters clutching pumpkin lattes to their chests at this time of year, I must say I do love Autumn. It's my favorite time of year. The leaves are starting to crisp up into oranges and ambers, the air smells delicious, and the skies are still bright blue (thank you for indulging me). The quality of light is shifting and that seems to have a ripple effect through everyone whether we directly notice it or not. 

I think what makes me really love this time of year has something to do with its relationship to change. This is the time of year when decay becomes beautiful and even though the end of summer is bittersweet there is an electric energy in the air of things to come. It's a time when Mother Nature holds our hand through an inevitable ending. And if you started reading this blog because you too lost a baby (or know someone who did), then you know that it certainly doesn't always feel like the Universe is holding your hand through an ending. So when this kind of seasonal coddling does occur, it feels noteworthy. All we need to do is look to the trees to be reminded that life is cyclical and that, like it or not, it ceases to cycle for no one. 

This time is steeped in nostalgia for me and leaves me feeling particularly reflective (Shocking, I know. I hear you thinking, "Does this girl ever stop with the reflection?" No. Not really. She doesn't). The fact that the Jewish New Year/high holidays fall at this time of year also kicks up this sense of contemplativeness. As I atoned for my undoubtedly multitudinous missed steps over the past year, I also got to thinking about what I want to carry with me forward into a fresh new year and what to leave behind. I've been feeling pretty positive since my surgery (punctuated by the occasional fun little wave of light weeping and panic of the "What am I doing with my life?!" and "Who am I?" variety. You know, just light stuff), so when taking stock of what I would "leave behind" as I step into a new year, it seemed the obvious and obtainable choice to finally drop some of my miscarriage baggage at the door. I don't ruminate about it on a daily basis anymore. I've looked at it from many angles and raked it all over the coals plenty over the last year. You would maybe think that putting it behind me would feel easier at this point. The seasonal endings and beginnings of Autumn remind me, however, that no matter how much I've healed, walking forward baggage-free is never really an option. The leaves that fall decompose under the snow and nourish the buds that will burst forth in Spring. Nothing truly gets "left behind". As much as I like forward moving motion, I am grateful for this. There is actually something sad about the very thought of "leaving it behind" because it implies loosening the connection to a moment in my life that was profound for many reasons.

I think the best we can hope for in this season of change is to be like the trees. We have to find ways to honor the scars that are carved deeply and permanently into our trunks and remember that cicatrices don't stop leaves from bursting into spectacular color, falling, and then starting to grow again. Over and over we cycle like this which means there is always a second chance right around the corner.

Very rarely the Aurora Borealis can be seen in places as far reaching as New York. This last weekend was one of those times. On a whim, I drove an hour and half outside the city at one in the morning in hopes of catching a glimpse. 

Chris and I were having dinner with one of my oldest friends (scratch that, my oldest friend. my first friend, in fact) and his wife (you know that thing where a good friend finds a partner who is even more fabulous than you could have dreamed up for them? she’s like that). We were finishing up our meal and deciding where to head next. Chris threw out the idea that if we drove upstate outside the ambient lights of the city there was an off-chance we could view the Northern Lights. In the kind of fevered decision making process that either results in total greatness or utter disaster, we decided to go for it. Chris and I went home to fetch our car and a camera and in the meantime our friends gathered blankets and a stargazing picnic of Oreos, almonds, and bourbon. 

We let the city lights fade behind us with only a rough estimate of where we were heading and a map of dubious origins that supposedly indicated the best aurora borealis visibility areas. By the time we arrived in the little town upstate where the internet told us a stargazing club often meets, things weren’t looking incredibly promising. The moon was glaring like a spotlight (an enemy to viewing the ionospheric light show apparently...and don't be scared, I only know the term "ionospheric" in this context because I was just reading an article about the northern lights) and the sky was otherwise obscured by tree cover. The proper Jack Kerouac quotes to tattoo on our butts to memorialize this experience were being bandied about jokingly (as one does). When “My witness is the empty sky” came up as an option we all burst into laughter at the absurdity of this (what seemed to be, at that point, failed) mission. 

It was sometime after that (and following a very dark and winding drive through an increasingly wooded terrain) when we found the entrance to a park and reservoir. Within we came to a clearing in the trees and almost didn’t believe our eyes when we discovered a few other star chasers convened there as well. We looked up to see great wispy streaks scarring the sky above us and fell silent in astonishment that it appeared we had actually done it. We laid on our backs under piles of blankets and stared up at the celestial formations above and the shockingly bright veil of stars. The air was chilly and smelled like trees and in that moment there was no other place on Earth I would have rather been. One by one our fellow astronomy enthusiasts dispersed so that it was just us and the crickets and the stars. 

At one point my girlfriend said, “You should write about this in your blog”. Until then it hadn’t occurred to me to link the two things. Here I was focusing on what I could bring up and examine from the last few months when the very title of this blog implies the present and the future. It turns out that part of my ever forward includes relishing and honoring the spontaneity and the adventures that wouldn't have been available to me if I currently had a two week old. Life didn’t go the way I wanted it to or the way I had planned, but it marched forward without my consent and it continues to present precious opportunities to love the life I have. It continues to present opportunities to learn from the disappointments and the heartbreaks. I think I’m at a point where I can recognize and appreciate those opportunities again. I'm not saying that I am or will ever be "over" it. When your heart shatters and then gets glued back together it will never be exactly the same. However, gazing up at the Northern Lights with dear friends and considering the vastness and beauty of the galaxy of which we are just one tiny part did wonders for refocusing my perspective. 

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to have a little escape with a dear girlfriend in her hometown by the sea. While there, I got to meet some of her family who were also in town. They were lovely and we had a great time getting to know each other. I felt instantly comfortable with them. As we chatted they asked how long I'd been married and about my job. Someone asked, "So are you guys planning on kids soon?" Dun dun dunnnnn. There was The Question. A question that has become unbelievably loaded for me this year. I've gone through phases with it. I'm in a relationship with it. It's my dearest hope and greatest enemy. It's nothing and everything. 

There was a time that question made me want to burst into tears. There was a time it made me extremely anxious. There was a time it made me angry. Now it does none of those things, but it still makes me squirm slightly only because I struggle with the right way to answer at this point in my journey.  How do I answer honestly, while not making the asker uncomfortable? How do share without over-sharing? How do I keep the conversation casual, without glazing over and disrespecting the deep hurt I'm still lugging around? So I said : "Yes, we definitely want to, but we've had a bit of a bumpy road in that area". I figured, that gives enough that they could inquire more if they wanted to, but if they were uncomfortable we could just leave it at that. One of the moms present offered a tip she used when she was having trouble conceiving. I could tell the miscarriage drift hadn't quite been caught and that was totally fine. Then there were some questions about how long we'd been trying and it started to feel weirdly disingenuous not to clarify. I figure, it is part of my mission to be open about this stuff anyway, so I shared (in as breezy a tone as possible where this topic is concerned) that the problem hadn't been getting pregnant as much as staying pregnant. This time it was met with understanding and was responded to in as kind a way as I could have possibly hoped for. As has been shown to me over and over during this experience, warm openness is 99.9% of the time met with warm openness in return no matter how potentially uncomfortable the subject matter. Despite any slight awkwardness, I am so completely grateful for every person that shows interest in an open dialogue about something that is so easily and often brushed under the rug.

This experience got me thinking about The Question. It got me thinking about how we talk about this stuff and the self-imposed timelines and restrictions we put on it. 

One of the first follow up questions that is often asked when I share about my miscarriage is : "Oh, was this recent?"  When I say it was six months ago I wonder what that means to the asker. What does it mean to me? Does that mean I should be over it by now? Is the time to talk about it drawing to a close? Do I get some sort of extension because I still have so many unresolved reproductive medical issues? Of course anyone would say, there is no "right answer" to how long to mourn or how long to talk about it, but sometimes there is a certain undeniable internal pressure to "be okay" and to make it feel okay for others too. I guess the best we can hope to do is answer The Question in a manner that is consistent with where we are in our journey and not to judge that place. Maybe the answer is as simple as the truth. I can't control if I make someone else a little uncomfortable with the truth of what is going on with me and if I shy away from the topic I miss an opportunity to normalize the larger conversation about miscarriage. I think if we find ways to share from an honest and comfortable place, then others will pick up on that energy and everybody will benefit. I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't also read a room before launching into a charming miscarriage anecdote (thats not a thing), but if the asker seems interested, then there is no reason to be embarrassed to share the reality of the situation.  Answering the questions that get thrown our way after miscarriage without that pesky added layer of shame seems like an important step in the quest Ever Forward. It sends the message to others, and more importantly to ourselves, that life can move forward and feel normal despite experiencing something traumatic.

What ways have you found to answer potentially tricky questions about miscarriage, infertility, or otherwise? 
Leave your suggestions in the comment section if you have ideas--i'm sure they'd benefit everyone who reads!! 

When I was diagnosed with a jankity uterus (to use the medical term) I was referred to a reproductive endocrinologist/surgeon who I was told would discuss my options moving forward. Being the Type-A gal I've always been, I called immediately to schedule my appointment and get the show on the road. I was given an appointment ... two months from the date I called.  Now, maybe that's reasonable in the world of Waiting For A Manhattan Specialist Who is Really Good at Her Job but it is just NOT reasonable for Very Impatient and Anxious Foiled Mama with Eight Thousand Questions. So at first, I was a bit disheartened, but then before long I gave into the fact that the next step was simply waiting for my appointment to arrive. I love my OB and this was the surgeon that she highly recommended so I decided it was worth the wait. I got comfortable with the whole waiting thing. I took weekend trips, I had cocktails with friends where the conversation did not revolve around my tragic reproductive system, I did a lot of writing, I started remembering that I am actually pretty valuable and even fun as a person separate from all the difficulties of the last six months. 

Then the day came. The day of my long-awaited appointment. It seemed surreal that after all the anticipation, all the ignoring, all the adjusting, all the distancing, all the moving forward, all the reclaiming of my role as a wife/friend/daughter/sister, it was now time to plunge back into the role of the patient. By the time the day came I was completely dreading what I had been praying would speed toward me just a few weeks earlier (I'm just so very hard to please, aren't I?). By the time the appointment came around I wasn't even sure what I wanted anymore. I knew I wanted a baby in the ever-present aching way that I had become accustomed to, but climbing another mountain toward said baby seemed more than I could wrap my head around. Just when I had let my hyper vigilant mommy shield down, it was time to go back into battle. I met a dear friend (the one who has been through all this garbage too) at a cafe before the appointment and broke down in tears the second she sat down. "You're just going to let the doctor give you information" she told me and it helped calm me down. Sitting down and gathering information. Alright. That seemed civilized. I could do that.

The appointment did begin in a quite civilized manner but gained speed like a tornado and ended up whipping us into an all-consuming vortex. I went in prepared simply to talk about surgery to correct my uterine septum and left with knowledge of a potential blocked fallopian tube, an appointment for a (quite uncomfortable, i'm told) HSG test, and down 12 vials of blood which were waiting to be analyzed for everything from genetic markers for disease to insufficient ovulation. All of a sudden we were scheduling a sperm analysis and bandying around terms like In Vitro Fertilization if X, Y, and Z happened to go wrong. Whoa whoa whoa whoa WHOA!!!!! I thought. I just barely wrapped my mind around this whole having to have surgery for a separated uterus thing! It was clear we were not in Kansas anymore. 

I left the appointment feeling flooded with the very information I thought would be comforting. My only life raft was the systematic plan that the doctor had laid out. The plan is complex and filled with PS's, Also's, and caveats (I won't bore you with those), but I tried to boil all the elements down to the very bare minimum : 1. do the HSG to make sure my fallopian tubes don't need intervention, 2. schedule uterine surgery, 3. recover, and 4. try again. Being the natural born worrier that I am I scoured the plan for actionable items. What can I do to make this go smoother, quicker, more successfully?? And then it hit me. There is NOTHING I can do. All I can do is put myself in the right hands (check), have a basic, but not neurotic level of information to be an informed self-advocate (check, for the most part, although some of this stuff has made me seriously doubt my understanding of the human body), and show up when I have an appointment (have you seen my planner?! check!!). 

It turns out the biggest actionable item on my part is reminding myself that no amount of googling, or fretting, or obsessing will change the plan. For better or for worse, this is the situation that I am in and now I just have to continue checking off boxes until that baby is in my arms. There will be plenty to do then I hear. Ideally I will get to a point where I can even luxuriate in the feeling of everything being out of my hands. I'm shooting for a very zen, Buddha take the wheel approach to this one. 

The interesting part that perhaps some of you can relate to, is that in the midst of all these things that I cannot control, there are a great number of things I actually can control that feel insurmountable (or simply uninteresting) in the face of all the medical commotion. For example, I could be developing a really on-point workout plan to lose the last of that post-miscarriage depression weight, I could be writing these blog posts well in advance instead of scrambling at the last minute, I could be kicking my private practice into hyper-drive. However, focusing on the things I can't control keeps stealing focus from those I can. Call it being human, call it just being ME, but I think finding a way to switch this imbalance of allocated energy is a big part of the work of moving forward. There is a fresh frontier of gray area between being gentle with myself and letting myself off the hook that I continue to butt up against and weed-whack through.  I'll keep on finding ways to transfer my desire to take control to those things I actually can control and as I do you better believe I'll continue to report back from the frontline. 

I am just returning from a fabulous getaway weekend to Jeremy's (my best friend, if you're new to the Ever Forward blog cast of characters) hometown. It was a visit flooded with family, laughter, delicious food, happy chaos, and babies--gorgeous tiny people as far as the eye could see.  Above all, however, what struck me during our visit was the extreme level of maternal energy. It is palpable within the homes of Jer's mother, sisters, and grandmother. This energy settles around his close-knit family like a protective shield and seems to make everything within its reach glow with a kind of well cared-for comfort. When removed from my usual environment it's always interesting to take stock of the things that are shifting within me and those that are too stubborn to budge so far. This weekend of family goodness allowed me to do just that.

Our tale begins in front of Jeremy's mom's refrigerator. It is, in a word, perfect. It's a portal to a mythical land where jams and leftovers don't take up permanent sticky residence well past their expiration dates. It is meticulously stocked and laid out in anticipation of her children's wants and needs. The fruit and vegetables are washed and sliced and neatly lined in tupperware. There are little tubs of chicken and tuna salad and roast turkey. There is fresh squeezed apple-ginger juice and pineapple-mint juice (because obviously you need two pitchers of fresh-sqeezed juice). There are bottles of coconut water and kombucha. There are dried apricots that taste so much better because she thought to chill them. I stood in front of this majestic microcosm of a perfect world and said to Jer, "Do you think I'll ever be able to pull together a mom fridge like this?" to which he jokingly said most definitely not. My maternal inadequacy became a bit of a running joke (of my own making) in several moments over the course of the weekend. For example, when we ate Grandma's famous chocolate chip cake we joked that I would never be able to make it with the special secret ingredient (love, of course) that makes it taste so good. When Jer's mom seemingly effortlessly produced a flawless family dinner for a bajillion people I joked again that this was all soooo out of my league. 

This wisecracking was all just silliness and fun, but looking back on it I think it reflected a very real paranoia that was ignited as soon as I started having reproductive issues. What if I am just not meant to be a mom? If you knew me pre-apocalyptically, you know this is the LAST statement I would ever make about myself. I, since a very young age, believed in my bones that I was meant to be a mom. I believed that because of this impenetrable fact, that motherhood would come to me naturally in the way that it is clearly so natural and right for Jer's beautiful sisters (who radiate the kind of cool, down-to-earth mommy warmth to which I aspire). But here I stand with the medical knowledge that, although I may have always felt I was born to do this, my body was, in fact, not.  I long for it to be a physically natural process for me, but I have to accept that it is just not at this particular point in time. How do I reconcile my long-cherished theory that I was put on this Earth to (among other things) be a mother when my dysfunctional uterus is telling me otherwise? How do I convince myself that it's not the Universe trying to steer me away? 

For this and other reasons, I have found myself shying away from children a bit since the miscarriage. This is insane for me, of course, because everyone knows that kids are my thing! Children and I have always had a mutual love, respect, and understanding. However after the diagnosis of having a uterus with special needs, I guess I started subconsciously second guessing myself. I feared the emotions that being around babies would trigger. I feared I would not be able to bear the rejection if a child placed into my arms sensed my tentativeness and began to cry to get away. Perhaps on some level I feared not being able to comfort a little one would be further evidence stacked against my insufficiency as a mom or as a woman. This sounds embarrassingly self-indulgent as I type it, but that is the raw truth of something that has run through my mind many times. It is hard not to take it personally sometimes and so I wanted to lay it out on the internet table in case you are out there thinking it also and feeling crazy because of it. You're not. Or at least we're crazy together and you're not alone. 

This brings us back to the hometown visit and the army of perfect littles that were running, skipping, swimming, jumping, snuggling, and playing joyfully around us all weekend. I was gearing myself up to feel crushed by sheer volume of successful pregnancies represented by their beautiful little selves, but instead something very different happened. I didn't think of any of that. All I thought about was playing hide and go seek, was coloring, was filling juice cups, was wiping noses, was cuddling tired babies, and dancing with wide awake ones. I felt myself swept into a family environment where grandparents and aunts and uncles (even honorary ones) pitch in so that love and protection happens as naturally as breathing. And I too felt it coming naturally to me when I was around my people -- the tiny ones. I felt mother energy flow out of me like sunlight in the way I always knew it was meant to. Warm and vibrant and easy. I was given the gift of having the kids reach up to be held by me or plop onto my lap and realizing that I know how to provide for them without thinking. It was a comfort, a reconnection, and a gift that I never expected to be so lucky as to receive from this trip. 

Those little ones formed a tiny apple juice-fueled coalition aimed at reminding me that my heart was made for maternal love even if my body wasn't. Maybe the only way to quiet the doubts is to jump in with childlike fearlessness and trust that instincts and fate will take over. This is a knowledge that I am sure my emotions and hormones will challenge from time to time, but one that I will do my best to keep rediscovering. I know I am heading in that direction. 

This is the story of the first time I woke up and my miscarriage was not the very first thing that flashed through my mind. 

I woke up. The sun was streaming through my windows. I distinctly remember thinking, what day is today? and then realizing comfortably that it was Saturday. I looked over and Chris was still asleep. I gazed at his long eyelashes and thought, as I often do, about how unjust it is that boys always get the loveliest doe eyelashes. I thought about how when he wakes we would go and have brunch around the corner. I’d get eggs benedict. Or maybe heuvos racheros. Chris would get French toast. We’d bring the paper and linger over mimosas. I reached for my phone and checked the weather. I walked into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee while I waited for Chris to get up. I lit a candle that smells like freesia and the ocean to me. As I plopped myself down at the counter and opened my laptop, I noticed my blog was open. It hit me. I realized I had spent a good part of the morning without one thought of losing the baby or about blood work or about my wonky uterus. I remember musing to myself that this must be how it is. It must happen in tiny increments until one day I make it to lunch without thinking about it, and then to dinner, and then a day or even two might pass without defaulting to that now-familiar emptiness. I don’t recall exactly when on the calendar this day occurred (which I suppose is a good sign because it means there have been many of these days since), but I remember clearly the emotional response to the gift of a tangible sign that on some level my heart was healing. I felt hope beginning to take up more prominent space within me alongside the pain (which doesn't appear to be vacating any time soon, but rather taking up fairly amicable residence within me). I got to experience this new version of me for a moment as if the Universe was nudging me forward by giving me a taste of what could be. 

This is a short, but significant post for me. I hope if you are reading it out there in the world and you feel like there will never be a day where you are not sleeping, breathing, and living the pain of miscarriage (or whatever sadness might be plaguing you) every solitary moment, you can take my word that a morning will come where you will notice what you have before what you don’t. There will be a morning where you find yourself conscious of the possibilities that are available to you before the ones that were taken away. 

I'm sick and tired of thinking about miscarriage and babies and fertility. I'm tired of my emotions being dictated by it. I'm tired of the look I see on my friends faces when they gear up to be supportive once again. I fear (possibly based on paranoia rather than reality) that everyone is sick of hearing about it, but the truth is that no one is more sick of it than I am.

I'd like nothing more than to let it go. In fact, armies of 4 year-old girls obsessed with the movie Frozen seem to be belting at me to "Let it Go" every day. I'd love to oblige. Truly. Because this stinks (and their off-key toddler singing is loud and hurts my ears). However many factors seem to be conspiring against this goal. 

Two months after my miscarriage my pregnancy hormone levels were still not reading negative. My OB was following my levels to rule out a partial molar pregnancy (still is, actually).  She told me the drop was admittedly quite slow, but nothing to be particularly concerned about as long as they were consistently trending down. It seemed that my body was quite literally refusing to let go and clutching desperately to this pregnancy. I became best friends with the lovely nurse who drew my blood every week. She wears bright red lipstick and always compliments my shoes. We have a schtick about the weekly blood draw being our fun little tradition. She talks about her son and I talk about how my week went. It is usually a surprisingly cheerful part of my day even though it involves getting poked with a needle. I brought both Chris and Jer in to meet her so I guess that means she's now officially in my crew. We hug like old friends. So, letting it go seems increasingly out of the question as this little show and its players have firmly woven themselves into my day-to day. They are so much the fabric of my life right now that I can no longer pretend they are something separate. 

For a long while, I would give a weekly report to my nearest and dearest that pregnancy hormones were still surging through me. We'd usually have a snarky banter that went something like "well, we could have told them that" referencing the fact that I was still acting totally bonkers on a fairly frequent basis. I could just as easily laugh giddily about this as break down in spirit crushing sobs. It was anyones guess which it would be (don't I sound delightful?). They say postpartum sadness is unspeakably hard when the pregnancy results in a baby, and I was completely unprepared for the effect it would have when the pregnancy resulted in me being alone with my thoughts. The hormonal free-fall and consequent sluggishly resolving chemical imbalance wreaked havoc on my ability to emotionally move forward. 

This experience has refused to let go of me in more unexpected and cunning ways as well. This was made abundantly clear when I had to go get an MRI to rule out a uterine septum (SPOILER ALERT : I have an almost total one! which means more antiseptic-soaked surgery blog posts to come before carrying a baby is even an option for me. So basically I am in the Olympics of reproductive malfunction and I'm gunning for the gold in several categories). In the days before the MRI I found myself a total wreck. This was not uncharacteristic in general (please refer to the lingering pregnancy hormones), but it was out of the ordinary as it pertains to a simple MRI. I nearly started hyperventilating talking about it over coffee one day. I worked in an intensive care unit for years, for goodness sake, and thought I was almost fully desensitized to most routine medical interventions. Turns out there was some definite post traumatic D&C effects lingering in me that sprung to life at the thought of another IV, another allergic reaction to hospital tape, another runway walk in a scratchy light blue gown and grippy socks. 

This whole experience has burrowed down deep and rears its ugly head when I least expect it.  There are still pregnancy website email pop-ups to which I can't bring myself to unsubscribe. On a day that happened to coincide with two births in my family, I got a very conspicuous email announcing  "Congrats! You're in your second trimester! Start telling the world!". I know I set myself up for that sucker punch because I have complained in the past about how cruelly relentless and annoying those emails are and I could have easily stopped them by now, but I haven't. Part of me also still wants to see them. This part of me defiantly and stubbornly doesn't want to make it easier to forget. Maybe I am not ready to release the parallel universe version of myself that is now moving through the normal stages of a healthy pregnancy.

I guess the heart of the matter is, there is too much focus on letting go. I've been guilty of slipping into the false sense that the end goal is a version of me who does not think about my miscarriage. Moving "ever forward" is not about detaching from what happened, it's about learning to carry the weight of this experience with increasing dexterity and humor. It is about allowing the sadness to be present, but not chaining myself to it and giving it all the power. The sadness and pain deserve honor and respect because moving through those emotions is what is shaping me into a stronger version of myself. 

It is less about letting it go and more about letting it be.

In the days following my d&c my body was completely unfamiliar to me. I was so distended I felt like my uterus entered a room 4 feet before I did. The very fact that I could feel my uterus (a body part that up to this point I really only had a theoretical knowledge of) was unsettling to say the least. I felt my organs shifting and settling in the absolute most bizarre way. I couldn’t get into a comfortable position no matter what I did and when I laughed it was like sandpaper scraping against my raw insides. This was certainly not what I was prepared for when the doctor said the recovery “will feel like the tail-end of a period”. For those of you that don’t know, there is literally no planet where the end of a period feels like that. And for those of you that do know, you can back me up. I talked to my girlfriend who had been through this before and she said “oh yeah, my body felt normal again in about a month”. A MONTH??!! This was a cruel level of D&C related humor for which I was NOT prepped. 

In the meantime I tried to keep things business as usual. However it was becoming increasingly clear that I hadn’t the slightest idea what usual was anymore. One night, four days after my surgery, I made plans to have dinner in the city with Jeremy and a couple other friends. An hour before I had to get on the train I started to feel like someone was jabbing my uterus with an icepick. Pleasant. When I begrudgingly told Jer how I was feeling, he responded with a very understanding, “Don’t push yourself!”. Don’t push yourself. I’d heard it so much lately. In part I wanted to listen to it, but another part of me was prepared to do any amount of pushing necessary just to feel like a normal person who does normal things. The flaw in this logic was, of course, these weren't normal circumstances. And worse than that, it was seeming abundantly possible that there wasn't any “normal” to begin with. And for argument's sake lets just say there was a "normal", well, I certainly wasn't going back there. My hormones were free-falling, I was crampy, I was often sad, I’d get weird pains out of nowhere and was entirely indignant about all of the above. I kept thinking : this experience took my baby dreams-- did it also have to sap my energy, my physical comfort, AND my ability to function appropriately in my world??!

So, I decided to trek my stabby uterus to the train anyway. I had to. As I made my way through the Meatpacking District I felt like the first earthling to land on Jupiter. I walked past two bearded guys smoking cigarettes in standard issue hipster uniform, a girl in sky-high heels laughing shrilly, a cute couple walking huddled close together against the chilly February air. I observed each of them distantly like a scientific researcher studying a specimen and not like a fellow member of the human race. Were these creatures happy I wondered? How must it feel to laugh in a way that isn’t met with a corresponding wallop of pain? I mentally slapped myself, shrugged off the jewel-encrusted mantle of self pity, and turned up my music to drown out my thoughts as I trucked my achy self toward the restaurant. The dinner was fine. Nice even. Low lighting and a couple strong cocktails helped. But engaging socially felt a bit like working a muscle that had atrophied. Talking about normal things like iPhone malfunctions and gym anecdotes felt clunky and insincere, while simultaneously wildly comforting. I wondered if I seemed normal from the outside or like some creepily vacant pod person. I made a mental note to ask Jeremy later, but I don’t think I ever did.

After dinner the group decided to go bowling. Now, this is something I would not generally do under normal circumstances (isn't it cute how I've created this myth that my life used to be "normal" ...ha!) so the fact that I happily went along speaks to the depth of my desperation to trick myself into believing that I was fine. There was a little version of me inside my head saying “just go home! you’re in pain! no one cares but you! why are you doing this!!??”, but there was also a counterpart that was already luxuriating in the crisp air and playful conversation as we walked toward the bowling alley too much to listen. As I was playing (badly), the neon lights and Top 40 Hits almost entirely drowned out that little naysaying voice. I drank beer and leaned comfortably against Jer gossiping and giggling while waiting for our turns.

I put myself into a cab at the end of the night and felt physically wretched, but blissfully calm about it. Looking back I recognize that day as the start of a big shift for me. I realized I had to let go of this concept that one day things would be as they were. Instead it was up to me to keep putting myself into situations that no longer felt quite familiar...until they were again.  This has by no means been simple. When things start to feel better emotionally my body would remind me that they were not and when my body began to heal my emotions would take a turn pulling the old "not so fast". I think this is an aspect of healing from any loss or trauma that no one tells you about : healing is not linear and your body and soul will heal at different rates. This day also got me thinking about seeking to find a balance between taking care of myself and pushing to seek a new normal. It's a frustrating push and pull, but it also might be the ticket forward.