This week is one of my very favorite holidays : Passover. All the holidays around this time of year have a distinctly "Ever Forward" vibe -- freedom, redemption, Spring, etc. However at the seder I participated in on Friday, I was particularly struck by a vital part of both the Passover story and my personal Ever Forward Movement alike--the importance of looking back to look forward. 

It is no mystery why I am so drawn to Judaism, theatre, and drama therapy--they all have the common thread of valuing storytelling as a way of healing and making us who we are. They also all use metaphor to help us understand ourselves, our worlds, our sense of wholeness and spirituality. In Judaism, we pass stories from generation to generation lest we forget and become doomed to repeat suffering. Anything physical can be taken from us, but what can never be taken is our sense of community connection, our shared history, our minds, our stories and collective memories. What's more, we don't only tell the stories as they happened to our ancestors, we tell the stories from a personal perspective as if they happened to us personally. This way we give ourselves less distance from the lessons of the narrative (very drama therapeutic!). So, the Exodus out of Egypt story is not just about when my great great great great great great (etc) Uncle Moshe came out of Egypt (kvetching the whole way, I'm sure, if he's truly a relative of mine), it's about moving out of whatever my own personal "Egypt" is. I've been thinking a lot about looking at my history so I can assess the things I am still a slave to and which of those are of my own making. 

I can honestly say that I am no longer enslaved by my reproductive disfunction. It took me a long time to be able to genuinely say that. It doesn't mean that I never think about it, or get stressed about all the unknowns pertaining to that mysterious abyss known as my uterus, but it does mean that it is not controlling me by occupying the majority of my mental and emotional space (possibly because the free-for-all that is my new normal keeps me perpetually on the verge of a mild nervous breakdown which is actually quite consuming of my mental capacities if you can believe that). Even though I have moved into a new phase, I have still been re-visiting the story of the past year and the years that preceded it as a means to taking stock of where I am and where I want to go. 

Up until a certain point, my life moved smoothly(ish) along a set, steady track. My inner insane perfectionist saw to that. I  definitely still find myself enslaved by how life is "supposed to" look or how I always thought things would go for me. In this season of rebirth and regrowth, I am trying to make my peace with the fact that just because my life followed a pretty linear path up until The Great Crashing & Burning, doesn't mean that things have to continue that way in order to be "right". I've been telling myself my own personal history lest I forget, lest I am doomed to repeat the thought patterns that lead me to have such stringent expectations of the way my life was meant to go. My miscarriage was always going to hurt like a B, no way around that, but that pain was intensified by the marked shattering of my oh-so-lofty expectations. In a way, that was one of the gifts that the trauma gave me, it shook me up and forced me to look at the things I want for my life in an intentional way and not just because they were next up on the docket of "To Do's". I still have a ways to go out of this particular enslavement, but seeing the shackles and the way they are restricting me (although scary and jarring to see) seems to be the first step. Buckle up your sandals, y'all!

Being in a total state of flux, transition, uncertainty, and generalized insanity, is a great time to check in with the essence of yourself, I find. It may seem like these are the times that you are the least “yourself” because you’re all out of sorts, but I’m finding that if I can get past the blind terror for a second, I am more authentically myself then ever in these moments (anyone else feel like these moments might be increasing in frequency?...and that maybe these “moments” are just , oh say, life? lets not spin out on that, but i’m just sayin'....).

I don't have a job (well, not one that is even remotely in my field). I don't know where I am going to end up living geographically. I don't know if I am going to have a baby right now. I don't know if I can have a baby ever. I don't know how to balance my creative passions/desires to effect change in the world with my need for increased financial stability and debt management. I don't know what to make for dinner. I'm not 100% sure how my stove works (kidding). At a crossroads here, people. 

In phases like right now, I am not on autopilot. My old patterns don't apply and my well-worn road maps seem to have up and vanished. I’m being forced to trail-blaze, and I’m being forced to dig deep into my inner reserves of strength, power, and creativity. I have always prided myself on having it fairly together so to be in this moment where I don't know what I will be doing next week (let's not even talk about next year) is a big challenge to my self-concept. This is a dynamic that my miscarriage certainly put into motion. When I'm in a "glass half full" mood, I can see it as one of the strangely positive offshoots of the whole wretched experience--the fact that it landed me in the scary and fertile ground of being utterly lost and separated from my old tightly held self-beliefs. This being lost unlocked (read: enforced!) my new self-discovery process. The original plan was that my new job would be to be a (cute, magical, easy breezy) mommy. Then I got pregnant and I said to myself, "Good planning, Becca, right on task". And then the other shoe dropped and I was forced to let go of who I thought I was going to be, and take a good long look at who I actually am. 

It's scary to let go of the constructs I've built about who I am and how I function in the world. It's a little like skydiving  without a parachute. Trusting myself in the midst of the chaotic free-fall is tricky, but that's the place that I'm trying to live right now. I am trying to trust that if I fall back on who I am at my core, what I believe in, what lights me up, and what I am capable of, then I will find myself on the right path. Yesterday I was sitting on a sunny bench and a man in a bright orange leather jacket walked by playing 90s R&B on a little portable boombox. He said (to me? or just near me?) "Just do you, child". I guess I'm trying to make my new job to "just do me" even when that "me" is not who I always thought it was. That "me" doesn't have to look how I always thought she would in order to be right. That same orange-jacketed prophet then picked something out of a trash can, but I'm not here to judge. The advice still stands. 

Ok, so, I'm in my thirties now, and I have to say absolutely EVERYTHING has changed (just kidding, nothing has). In a way I kind of wish a lightening bolt could have hit me at the stroke of midnight on my 30th birthday that zapped me into a new level of understanding and enlightenment, but it appears to be the same old me here. One of Jeremy's famous lines is "Nothing changes, Everything changes" and that, in a nut shell, is how it feels to be kicking off my 30's. My entire world has been turned inside-out and upside-down over the course of my twenties and in some ways I am completely unrecognizable from the girl I was at 20, but in some ways my heart, soul, and spirit have been unwaveringly constant. 

It's like that with my relationship to miscarriage too--nothing changes and everything changes. I started this blog to put words out into the universe about miscarriage when it was still very raw for me. I wanted to talk about something that "polite" people don't harp on. I wanted to combat the fear, shame, sadness, and stigma-coated guilt I felt when it happened with real-talk and humor and honesty. Here I am a little over a year since the maiden voyage of this blog, still grappling with the emotional wreckage of miscarriage in some ways, but simultaneously completely transformed in terms of the way I think about it and approach it. I've come to know that it is unrealistic to think I will ever get to a point where the phantom of it doesn't still haunt me in some small way. 

For example, on the day of my birthday, Chris booked me a massage. I went to the spa and my massage therapist was a little late. As I sat in the lobby sipping "detox" tea and waiting, a pregnant mama who looked about ready to plop out her baby right then and there waddled past me to check out at the front desk. I noticed her, but patted myself on the back recognizing that I no longer feel that old emotional sucker punch when I see someone blessed with a pregnancy. Moments later when I was called back for my massage, the therapist apologized for being a little late, but explained that her last client was very pregnant and was needing some extra time because she hoping the massage would trigger labor. "You understand" she said. And theeeeeere it was. The old 1-2-punch. Patting ourselves on the back, are we? Not so fast, kid.  I would be lying if I said that familiar stab wasn't there in that moment. I wasn't resenting that beautiful 87-month pregnant woman out there, but rather I was resentful that it doesn't occur to so many that pregnancy is a loaded topic for a lot of women. There is no way she could have known, but it also didn't cross her mind that making accommodations for someone fortunate enough to have a successful pregnancy might come at a bit of an emotional cost. Admitting that I felt this way isn't the most flattering, perhaps, but it is the truth of how I felt in that moment. The thought sparked and fizzled all within the span of 5 seconds, but the fact that those momentary flashes still occur reminds me of how the experience lives within me even when so much has changed in the overall way I think about it. Nothing changes ...even when everything does.

It occurs to me that it has been a full year since the blog post where I wrote about the day we were told there was no more heartbeat. The day I launched that out into the great black hole of the internet was significant for me. Sharing that pain was the decision that has ultimately been responsible for all the things that fall into the "everything changed" category. You can read (or re-read) that post here . 

Just like how at one point I thought "by 30 i'll surely have it all figured out" (ha!), many of us who go through miscarriage find ourselves thinking "by 'x' amount of time it won't hurt anymore". Time teaches us that we can't bank on any sort of time frame ...and that's okay. Some things change and some stay the same and my relationship to having a baby is constantly shifting just as my relationship to myself and to the world around me does as I grow older. 

So really, I have nothing figured out, but in acknowledging that, maybe I have everything.
 

This is my final blog post in my 20s. It is wild to step back and take a look at the last 10 years of growth, pain, laughter, ridiculousness, obstacles, triumphs, connections, losses, and love and see it as one phase that is now coming to a close. 

My 20s saw me travel from coast to coast of the good old US of A, take countless road trips with music blaring, seen me go all over Europe, to the Caribbean, and to Asia. It saw me get a BFA, an MA, an LCAT, an RDT, a CCLS (and several SOS's along the way), get married, get pregnant, clock many blissful hours on the beach with friends and family, work as a therapist, work as a restaurant arts specialist (hey, 20s aren't complete with a little dip into the service industry right?), work as an actor, write write write (a blog, a play, drafts of books, screenplays, endless poetry, endless journals, endless academic papers, ENDLESS cards and letters, a masters thesis...). My 20s saw me say goodbye to people and things I love, it saw me in and out of the hospital and on and off of various operating tables, it saw me fall apart multiple times and put myself back together with the love and help of the incredible people in my life.  

I carry into my 30s the lessons and the heartaches and the beauty of the last decade, but there is plenty I’m happy to leave in my dust as well. In celebration of ushering in my Big 3-0 here are 30 lessons or at least things I have started to try to figure out in my 20s that I hope to carry into my 30s and expand on from here. 

I'm certainly not saying I've mastered any of these, but as I sit here reflecting on the last decade and about to jump into the next, these are the things that feel important : 

1. Laugh at the things that feel un-laughable. Laughter is the #1 way I got through some of the dark places I’ve seen. There’s always humor to be found. Often the connection of sharing a sick joke with a like-minded friend can wrap up and improve a wretched experience like nothing else.
2. Trauma is a Key to the Next Phase. Making your way through most traumatic moments of life often unlocks the next level in ways you never could have imagined. I would not be the person I am today if I hadn't felt deep loss and pain and had to put the pieces back together in new and surprising ways. 
3. I can handle a lot. More than I think I can. I tend to forget this a lot. When it feels like the world is crumbling and over, it often signals something new and positive right around the corner. I'd like to remember the simple fact that after the dust settled of every chaotic moment of over the last decade, I've still been standing and breathing. That's something.
4. Just Be Me. After much trial and error I've found it's better to just be myself in the situations where I feel like a fish out of water. It's not worth it to waste time trying to force myself to fit the environment, it always goes better when I just focus on letting myself shine through and then decide if that environment is right for me.  
   
5. Chase the things that light you up! I’ve been lucky enough to get to feel truly alive over the course of the last decade on stage, while traveling, when academically or creatively challenged, when having deep meaningful conversations with those I love. I want to remember how that feels and strive toward it always. 
   
6. Similarly, follow love and passion. This is not always easy within the realities of finances, fears, self doubts, and medical dysfunction, but if we only have this one life, I want to spend it surrounded by the people I love and the things I love to do.
7. It’s okay to forgive yourself. I have been my own worst enemy at times throughout my twenties, but it's incredible what happens when I make the effort to reverse my negative self-talk. The world  can be tough, so I might as well cut myself a break and view myself with unconditional positive regard so others can follow suit.
8. Make sure the people you love KNOW it. There is no use holding anything back. What are you waiting for? Anyone could be snatched from us at any moment, make sure your loved ones know what they mean.
9. Nothing is permanent.  Thoughts, feelings, rough patches, worries are all of the moment and aren't forever. The miscarriage experience gave me tangible experience that nothing is guaranteed and life is to be treasured (refer to #8).  The upside of impermanence is that if you're unhappy with something, wait a sec, it will shift somehow.
10. Find Your Tribe. I've found I don’t need a million acquaintances, I just need my people. The ones who get me, who lift me up, who push me to be the best version of me (and the ones who make good drinks or bring me chocolate can stay too). 
11. Beauty is Everywhere. But if we don't take the time to notice the little day-to-day details we'll miss them. When I look back on the last 10 years some of the things that shine through the most are simple details--the way the sunlight filters through the trees outside my bedroom window, the smell of the air at Shakespeare in Delaware Park on a summer night before a show, laughing until I cry over ridiculous little things with my best friend, inside jokes with my sister, how long and perfect Chris' eyelashes are, my dad's voice, the way my mom always somehow knows to call when I need her most, getting a sweet card out of the blue from a friend. Acknowledging all these tiny moments are what makes my life feel so big and full. 
12. Guilt is the Anti-Motivator. In my 30s I hope to wrestle with my guilt complex more successfully. I want to let go of the guilt associated with "not doing enough" because it's not helpful. It stops me from just jumping in and doing as much as I can. This Saturn Return has been nipping hard at my heels...and now feels like the time for action and energy unencumbered by the guilt.
    
13. Screw Body insecurities : Now of course it's entirely unrealistic to think these will NEVER creep into my 30s (I'm still a woman living in our society and subject to toxic cultural norms after all and I'm sure I'll still bitch and complain plenty), but I’m doing my best to be healthy and strong and then leave the parts I can't control behind. Somewhere in my mid-20s I said to myself, I am never going to have the “perfect” magazine swimsuit body, but I like wearing bikinis. They are cuter than one pieces in my opinion and only I get to decide if I "can" wear them or not. I told myself that my curves are cute and womanly and sexy. Done. Bikinis. And so it has been ever since. The realization that I am actually the one who gets to decide if I feel good or not was revolutionary for me.
14. What Happens to You Doesn't Define You. Medical trauma (or any kind of trauma) happens to you, but it ISN’T you. I definitely felt first hand how easy it is to start to believe that you are what you experience. When I was in the Reproductive Endocrinology office every other second it was all consuming and thus hard to remember that it wasn't my whole world. The ticket out for me was finding ways to be uniquely ME within those alienating environments and thus try to claim them as just one part of me rather than them claiming me entirely.
    
15. I don’t know anything. So just stop reading this list right now. Just kidding, keep reading (if you want). The thing is, I cant know everything. No one can. But boy oh boy do we try. I'm working on trying to stop stressing when I don't know everything. The burden of trying to know the unknowable is something I can hopefully set down in my 30s.
    
16. The "Right" Way Doesn't Exist. The expectations I had of the “perfect” or “ideal” anything do not exist. Part of why the miscarriage was so hard for me was because I was holding so tightly to how my "perfect" pregnancy experience was supposed to feel and play out. I didn't want to let go of this vision of how I always thought it would go. So as I move forward into my 30s I hope to embrace that the path that is right for me or meant for me might not look how I always thought it would. 
    
17. Life doesn't get easier. Stop waiting for “when things settle down”. Guess what, kiddo? That ain’t happening. I've waited around long enough to know this to be so. Instead, I want to try to lean into the negative and hard parts, experience them fully, and move through them. I want to make things happen WITHIN (and even inspired by) the madness.
    
18. Give it time. I have it. Life has many phases. So, patience. 
19. Not everyone has to like me. This one is hard for me. I’m a people pleaser and a perfectionist (some might venture to say a bit of control freak as far as my "image" goes). I like to be sure I have a handle on how people view me, but honestly, I cant. This blog has been huge for that. It was scary to just put ME out there into the black hole of the universe for anyone to read, but it has also been so freeing in a "take it or leave it" kind of a way.
    
20. Ritual is essential . The little traditions, special celebrations, and ceremonies that I have created with my family and best friends are a huge part of who I am. They make my life uniquely mine and serve as a way to highlight the things that are most important to me as a person. I would not trade them for anything!! 
    
21. Keep your heart open. Even when it hurts like hell. Especially when it hurts like hell. You never know what is right around the corner and you'll miss it if you close down. 
    
22. Crying is good. Wash those eyes out! I've had meltdowns on trains, plains, automobiles, unicycles, in cafes, waiting rooms, and in the middle of the damn street. Let it flow. If you don't connect to the low lows you can't feel the high highs! 
    
23. Don't Give Up On Heels, but don't Break Yourself.  I'm a shorty, so heels have always been essential. I've always dreaded a moment that would arrive where that "sensible shoe" monster would catch up with me as it seems to claim the sexy shoe lives of so many. So...don't give up on heels--but find the ones that you can actually walk in (because you look cuter when you're not distracted by the deafening shrieking of your feet). I include this A. because shoes are important. and B. because it is a metaphor for not compromising parts of yourself while still "making it work" practically in the real world. That's a tall order, so we'll start with the shoe thing, k?
24. Family is where it starts and ends. Make your given and chosen family a priority and nurture them at all costs. They connect your ancestry to your present day to your legacy. They are everything. When the worst days of my life happened and I felt all that love pour in from my family it transformed everything. 
25. Don't Live in a Vacuum! Reach out and connect about the things that scare you. Speak them outloud. Write them down. Find even just one person who you can trust to hold your darkest burden. When I miscarried I felt so isolated. I knew this was happening to tons of women, but no one was talking to me about the nitty gritty insane details and fears. When I started this blog, it cracked open a whole new way of looking at things. I felt validated and less alone and the infinite variety of stories that came flooding in were endlessly healing. Talking about scary things doesn't threaten to make them worse, it allows those things to loosen their death-grip on you so you can move forward. 
    
26. Go off-roading. You don’t have to have a road map every second. However, the problem is, I am a maniacal planner. One of the biggest things I want to work on in my 30s is living fully sans road map, because it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no road map. I hope my 30s find me living fully and honestly within the uncertainty of a wild, winding road.
    
27. Practice RADICAL self care! My 20s have taught me to never underestimate the importance of hot baths, wine, nice candles, long walks with music blasting in earphones, journaling, little treats, spontaneous road trips to places with fresh air, and alone time! These things are not an indulgence, they are a mode of survival! I would be way crazier without them (yes, that's possible, I heard that). 
    
28. Try not to compare. Their path is not your path. Whoever "they" are for you. Everyone is working against their own demons and at their own pace and that can't be applied to you. My early twenties were very much more aware with keeping pace with this made up check list of "what I'm supposed to do" compared to ... to who? my friends? my parents' path? to the world at large? to television characters? I have no idea. 
    
29. Keep it moving EVER FORWARD. There is no way out but through. The past may be a fuel and a source of inspiration and motivation and context, but you can't go back there. Dwelling there is a one way ticket to stagnation. So keep your eyes locked on the horizons ahead. I've found that the best way to move forward, for me, is to fully acknowledge what I'm feeling as much as possible and as frequently as possible and accept it. Then the next step is to pack up that acceptance and bring it with me into the things that I love.
    
30. All You Need is Love. It's really all that matters. If you share your love freely and let others love you back-you are set even in your darkest hours.

Alright friends, it's been a wild ride, and I have my work cut out for me in this fresh, new decade! Thank you for being such an important part of my 20s. Catch ya on the other side!!!!!!!!!!

I'm foregoing a full post today, because it is a big day in the world of moving "ever forward". Today I pack up my last two months--my clothes, my books, my memories, and my experiences (and my kitten!)--hop a plane and transition from life as a working actor in my hometown back to life as a drama therapist therapist, artist, 
and generalized crazy lady back in the city. 

Stay tuned for more picking up the pieces and finding creative ways go put them back together next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This experience has been a dream and it is bittersweet to say goodbye, 
but EVER FORWARD ! there's a lot more life to live ahead!

Transitions are hard. Endings are hard. When I was younger and doing theatre I would get positively devastated about closing nights. I remember when I was twelve an older actor I did a show with saw me getting tearful after our last performance and said to me, "My darling, without closings you can't have opening nights". I've thought about this at many important junctions in my life.  I am thinking about it now with closing of the show I'm doing lurking just around the corner. 

I'm not only closing the play, but also closing yet another chapter of transition. With those closings always comes a rush of uncertainty. Being in my hometown to do what I love has been a beautiful means of making me feel lit up from within and valuable again, but it was also partially an escape from the uncertainty of what would happen next for me after "The Year that Miscarriage Built". Leaving home to do the play greatly reduced the possibility of jumping back into Baby on the Brain which also had the side benefit of keeping me safe from the fear of more reproductive drama. Now I have no more excuses other than to face the music and see what happens. If it works out then great and if it doesn't I will have to deal with that too. Spending time resisting the uncertainty of that is not doing me any favors.

I've been thinking about Buddhism a lot and the concept that trying to push negative emotions away only intensifies them. I'm doing my best to lean into the things I am feeling as a way of unlocking an even more present and mindful way to manage the fear of the next step. Our human brains constantly seem to seek zones of safety which inevitably fall apart because the world is inherently unsteady and uncertain. We spend so much energy trying to reconstruct our crumbling safety zones that we miss out on what is right in front of us. I am guilty of this pretty consistently. I am constantly grasping at the "right" path, the thing I'm "supposed" to be doing or feeling, or the comfort of a pattern. 

Miscarriage (just like all traumas) tends to really hit home the message that "life is uncertain" (yes, thank you, I probably could have done without this particular reminder, but there you have it). The truth is, though, that the message of uncertainly is present even when things are going seemingly perfectly (and if they are for you please contact me so I can ask you how the heck you're managing that). The not-knowing is scary, but it is also what makes life an adventure. I'm about to step into another new chapter and it is wildly terrifying, but when things are the most terrifying they also have the most potential to be magnificent. Often I catch myself waiting for life to "calm down" or "smooth out" before I really get down to business. It's clear now that that's not how life works (in fact it's probably just the opposite). Life will always be unclear, bumpy, confusing, and wonderfully messy. I think its high time I did my best to make friends with that uncertainty so it works with me instead of against me. I'm about to endure the heartbreak of a closing wrapped in a closing, but I will try to keep faith that an even more spectacular and unexpected opening is around the corner. I will try to remind myself that the unforeseeable is not an enemy, it's an opportunity. 

Hey, does everyone remember my best friend Jeremy (Ever Forward Blog recurring character)? In celebration of the fact that I am going to see him TOMORROW for the first time in a month and a half (which has been a slow and painful death of my soul that I do NOT care to ever repeat...from here on out we can only be cast in plays as a pair), I dedicate this blog post to a concept to which he introduced me. 

A while back, Jer shared with me this New York Times article about the concept of "thin spaces". We've woven that idea it into our lives quite a bit since then. To quote the author of said article (Eric Weiner), "thin spaces" are "locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever". Ok, this seems very grand. But really what we're talking about here is finding those spaces that just click, the atmospheres where you feel like the best version of yourself, and where that version comes easily, like breathing.  The article talks about thin places more as physical locations that are so at one with themselves that you can't help but feel that same way when you are in them, but I feel they can be more of an intangible state too. I find thinness  in a particular song, a mind space that offers a moment of blinding clarity, or with company that lights me up from within--I think it can be any moment where you unexpectedly find yourself closer to the Eternal Everything. Best of all, a thin place shakes you up from the inside out. It disorients you spiritually and makes you look at things in a different way while simultaneously boiling you down to your most true self. 

I've been thinking about thin places a lot lately because I think its one of the few ways I can find to describe the sensation of terror and exhilaration and silliness and comfort and heartache I feel in the darkened wings of a theatre right before I step onstage and then as soon as I step off. I get this same sense of heady thinness when walking into the empty theatre before a performance when the lights are still dimmed, the smell of upholstered audience chairs and scenery dust hangs on the air, and everything is absolutely quiet with the knowledge that in a matter of an hour or two the room will burst into life. That buzzing energy can only be described as my own personal slice of the Divine. With the run of my play being at the halfway point I am once again facing a moment of transition in the road ahead. I'll be leaving the cocoon of one magnificently thin space and journeying out in search of the next (or with the hopes that it will find me). 

Before The Great Reproductive Apocalypse of 2014™ (just kidding, you know I have no clue how to "TM"), I used to always think that pregnancy would be like the ultimate mobile thin space for me.  Since I was young I would hear stories from my mom about how blissfully happy she was when she was pregnant and I expected nothing different. As a little girl I would play mommy with the detailed authority of a 5-year-old that knew precisely what she was born to do one day. So many times since my miscarriage I have wondered if I will be able to have an experience anywhere close to blissful when I get pregnant again (notice the positive "when" language I'm using to trick the universe? that works right?). Will it be possible to cultivate that energy around me despite knowing what I know? Can a thin space exist when the air is choked with the ghosts of a past trauma? Sure, I think so, I just don't know quite how yet, but as usual, I'll jog ahead and let you know what I see.

Once the world breaks your heart in some way (and it seems to come for all of us at some point, doesn't it?), I guess there are always going to be fractures that don't quite re-set as they were before. You find yourself questioning things you never questioned and parts of you that were as deeply engrained as your very identify heal into something slightly alien. I would argue also, though, that this healing process makes feeling things even more intense and wonderful despite the accompanying confusion and disorientation. Thin and thick places are constantly in flux and what made you feel like you were coming home to yourself one minute may evaporate without warning, but I think perhaps there is an even higher incidence of  locating heavenly "thin spaces" when you've been to hell and back. The shattered pieces of your heart reflect and illuminate in a new way that lights your pathway toward collapsing the space between you and the magic of the Universe. 

I read an article recently about the neurological changes that occur when one becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child. 

The article talks about the intense internal shifts that the body and brain undergoes. I mean, I or anyone who has experienced it, could certainly have told them that. The moment I was pregnant, my blood started pumping differently, my hormones rioted, my heart felt as if it was swelling to the point of explosion. The momentum forward was terrifying and exhilarating until it all crashed to halt. It makes perfect sense that my gray matter was also undergoing massive renovations at that time. The article I read likens motherhood to "discovering the existence of a strange new room in the house where you already live". All these brain changes and hormones prepare you to bond with your child when he or she arrives. They prepare you to be something that has been within you the whole time, just waiting.

My question is, what happens to those neurologic structural shifts in those of us that don't get the opportunity to see the pregnancy all the way through? Few people talk about that.  Do those internal transformations get smoothed out and then washed away like pebbles on the beach or are we left to sit in this new room that was built with nothing to fill it? If my apartment was big enough to have cleared a room for a nursery before I miscarried, I imagine it would feel a little something like that. If Motherhood is a new room that you never knew you always had, then miscarriage is much like having an empty room within your home that has tiny toys and tiny shoes but no tiny hands and feet to match them. I found myself feeling like both a stranger and a natural in that room and it's an odd cocktail of comfort, confusion, and pain. 

I suppose if those neurological modifications do stay in place, they must end up getting reallocated elsewhere. It's hard to decipher where exactly when you are in the fog of depression, but once that begins to clear, it's not so much of a stretch to start to look around you and notice the places that the extra helping of nurture, protective energy, and maternal perception may have landed. For me, I see it in the way I care for my little chosen family in the city (first kind of annoyingly in the manner of force-feeding them soup and fussing over them incessantly, but then in a more--I'd like to think--tolerable and easy-to-appreciate way), I see it in the way I fiercely protect the ones I love and the things I believe in, I see it in the way I value the small moments of beauty that are given to me on a daily basis because I know for certain that nothing is permanent. I guess in a perfect world those biological alterations are turned back onto one's self and relationships in a positive way. 

I remember thinking a lot about postpartum depression when I miscarried. Not that I can speak from direct experience, but if we are going to keep going with this metaphor, I imagine postpartum depression is like walking into a room where you expected to feel at home only to find that you do not recognize your surroundings at all. Postpartum is a phenomenon that also doesn't get enough airtime, but that's not the only thing linking it to miscarriage in my perception. Postpartum is directly related to the emotional and hormonal hangover that exists after having a baby. There are certain expectations of how you are "supposed" to feel after you give birth, and falling short of that only intensifies the pain. In the case of miscarriage you may not have carried a baby for nine months, but you still underwent a massive emotional and physiological overhaul, had all those maternal expectations, and even experienced the pain of contractions or surgical intervention at the end (or both if you're lucky like me). Then you walked away with no baby to serve as a salve to your soul. That physical, emotional, and spiritual hangover after miscarrying is the very substance that makes up the fog I've been weed-whacking through over the last year. 

As the days and weeks draw on I can't help myself from continuing to look at this whole experience from a million different angles. Aspects of it make more or less sense and new lenses emerge through which things become more or less clear. Maybe that too is part of the process of how the body and brain heals from miscarriage. At first the physiological shifts make it impossible to have any sort of clarifying distance (so if you are in that place give yourself a dang break!! you're only human!!). We are all subject to the wild ride of hormones and brain chemistries. "Mommy brain" is a thing I always hear new moms talk about and it's surely more than just being exhausted and overwhelmed. It's about learning to walk around with the internal renovations that have occurred over the last 9 months--that is no small feat (moms are superheroes!!) So for the babyless mamas out there who feel they are going absolutely mad, maybe take comfort in the fact that you too are reconciling walking through the world with would-be mommy brain. It isn't easy to do right away, but I think there are ways to embrace the thwarted neurological preparations and make them work for you. Even if those changes happened without a baby to share them with, you can share them with the world and they can become a positive part of the evolving woman who walked through the fire of this experience. 

On Saturday, I looked at the date on my phone and realized a year had passed. It was one year ago that we sat in the choking silence of a darkened ultrasound room and felt the world crash down around us as we were told there was no more heartbeat (I wrote about that day here).  A whole year now stands between me and the darkest day of my life. Although largely liberated from its grip on me at this point, it has carved itself into the grooves of my bones and been ingrained in the fibers of my being. It will probably always live there.

On Saturday morning the first thing that occurred to me was that it was my mother-in-law's birthday and then I remembered what, unfortunately, also happened that day. Last year I woke up filled with nerves and got in a cab uptown to the hospital with every intention of showing up for mom's birthday dinner later with great news. This year I woke up also filled with shpilkes (aka : nervous energy - I don't use nearly enough Yiddish in this blog), but this time about the start of tech rehearsal weekend to which I was about to drive (gosh, the difference a year makes!). Rehearsal kept my thoughts blissfully at bay for the better part of the day. However, as I drove home later that day I started to feel a to-the-core tiredness drag me under. It wasn't so much that I was acutely sad or actively running through the events of a year ago that day, but more that there was an undeniable undertow lapping at my heels. The memories buried deep down were weighing me down from within.  As the night went on I found myself so sleepy that I was shivering and put myself to bed a respectable bedtime for a fourth grader.  

I'm not the same person I was a year ago. This year has shaped me in so many ways. The way I cope with stress and relate to other people and look at the world has undoubtedly been richened by the ripple effect of an event that occurred one year ago. I think that is what this blog has always been about. As the days and months stretch on and I share with you how it is going, I am figuring out new elements of what it means to move forward from something like this. The more I accept that my traumatic experiences have become a part of me (and an important, meaningful one at that), the more whole I feel. That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around when you are in the thick of it, so if you still are, you'll have to take my word for it. I'll be out here in the dark like a lunatic with a flashlight for you and I'll let you know what's coming up ahead. The only way out is through it. I know it's not always easy, but keep trying to believe that everything shifts in magnificent ways that you never could have anticipated if you just keep putting one foot in front of the next.