This blog is an open invitation to walk with me through the darkest parts of my life into the light spots (and all the dappled shadows in between) so we can figure out together what the heck post-apocalyptic life is all about. The content is shifting slightly because I just happen to be in a place right now (incredibly!) where my uterus is not the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning (in fact it's not even the second or third thing--what what whaaat?!). For those of you reading who feel there is no way that you will get here... you will. Promise. One day it happens.

Right now is undoubtedly a light spot for me. I think part of the whole moving forward through pain thing is being really IN the moment and the place you're in. That's no easy task when the ache of the past nags at you fairly persistently, but I'm making a genuine go at it. My current situation has got me thinking a lot lately about this feeling of being split between two worlds. With one foot in each, half of the time I feel like a mighty heroine astride two wild paths (taming them both) and half the time like a clumsy skier (so, me) with two feet slipping independently of each other down the icy crags of an unfamiliar life terrain. There are so many dichotomies to straddle right now : the family I was born into versus the family I have created for myself, the city I was raised in versus the city I've made my home, the career that stubbornly won't let go of my heart versus the career (that I also love in its own rite) that seems more sensible (not to mention for which I did that whole little getting an MA and a License thing). However, feeling like you are smack dab in the middle of a transition is not a unique concept. Anyone who has experienced a loss is especially familiar with this dynamic.

It took a long while for me to unchain myself from the torn sensation miscarriage generates. It quite literally forces you into two worlds simultaneously as your heart and mind and body are prepared for a new phase of life that never comes. The transition from mommy-to-be to babyless mama and then to person just trying to be normal (and oh, say, walk through a grocery store without crying) has finally eased. It eased, however, only to lead me into a new time of transition. And so it goes. Really I guess it's no different than how life seems to gear us up for so many adventures--some of which pan out and some of which don't. I think I've been describing myself as being "in a period of transition" long enough to indicate this is no phase, honey, but rather the perpetual nature of being a human on any sort of life path. There will always be more than one reality smashed together, there will always be two (or more) possible outcomes, two sides of the coin, two roads diverging in a yellow wood. It seems that it's ALL transition and waiting to "arrive" is futile. You make some plans, the Universe says "oh that's cute, but no", you take a total left turn and run smack into something terrifying and beautiful, you do your best to not let fear sabotage you, and you start all over again. 

For those of you that have been sticking with me since I started this blog about ten months ago (wait, WHAT? 10 months? for those of you still reading, you deserve a medal. Bless you, children), you know a bit about my relationship to the endless babycentric emails that used to flood my inbox. There was a time when I couldn't bring myself to delete them because I was wretchedly heartbroken and desperate for the reminder that the pregnancy experience was real, even if it did crash and burn. All this time later, I still routinely receive a few stragglers in my inbox (just like I unnecessarily receive incessant emails from an online store that sells speciality jams and jellies because ONE time I bought a present for someone there. I digress). I have now moved forward from the phase of post-apocalyptic recovery when I was unable to hit the unsubscribe link due to underlying emotional turmoil and on to the phase that allows them to remain for no better reason than I'm just plain being lazy. 

For whatever reason, one of these procreation-themed emails caught my eye yesterday. It's a group called "August 2014 Babies" that I somehow got signed up for by entering my due date into a mommy-to-be website at one time. As I opened the email, topics like "Sleeping with a Hat?", "Diaper Genie", "Who's exhausted?", and "Cereal & Breastfeeding" jumped off my screen. I had a brief, but profound out-of-body experience where I gazed down from above at Parallel Universe Me. In a parallel universe, my thoughts of memorizing lines, or coordinating drama therapy groups, or planning a celebration for my upcoming milestone birthday (my...ahem...21st of course) might have been replaced by thoughts of whether or not my 4.5 month old was sleeping in a hat or how the heck I was going to raise this tiny human to be a confident, passionate, loving member of society.

For those of us initiated into the motherhood club who were unable to emerge with a baby (or, really, anyone who had something dearly hoped for snatched away), there are always going to be a thousand moments like this. There will always be a child you know who is the same age as your baby would have been. There will always be a friend having a smooth pregnancy while yours was nothing but bumpy. There will always be a date that is secretly burned into your internal calendar when your child was meant to arrive. There will always be the persistent specter of "What Could Have Been". These reminders persist well beyond the acute trauma. It wasn't until I started to find peace and humor with this fact, that I truly felt a burden begin to lift. 

In this moment, I have no idea my position on diaper disposal or appropriate infant hat wearing practices and I find myself being increasingly okay with that. I find myself more focused on the work that I'm lucky enough to be doing right now and the beautiful safety net of friends and family support that grounds me. Life does have a way of reminding us of what could have been and it's natural to focus on that for a while, but if you look closely, those what ifs also help highlight what IS and I think embracing that instead seems to be a ticket forward.

Yesterday Chris returned to our life in the city and I stayed in my hometown to start rehearsals for this play. I walked back into the house after dropping him at the airport and it all finally hit me. This is a brave new world. I'm feeling homesick for Chris, for my friends, for my city, but I'm feeling so excited for what lies ahead. I'd be lying if I didn't add that I'm also ever so slightly shell-shocked. 

It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I have officially kissed a year of sadness, reproductive disfunction, and surgeries goodbye and now my feet are planted firmly in something brand new. It is maybe a bit strange to begin something totally new in your childhood home--a place so thoroughly steeped in nostalgia--but it's also perhaps the most fitting place to start. Everything is so familiar and yet my whole world has been broken down and built back up since last I was here for any prolonged period of time. It has left me feeling just a bit like a ghost wandering the halls of a former life looking for the place I fit (but, you know, a friendly-style ghost in a cute little hat, nothing too scary). Looking at old photos and revisiting old haunts has only functioned to intensify this feeling of distance and newness. 

Anyone who has dealt with any form of acute or chronic medical issue (certainly not limited to miscarriage or infertility) knows that it threatens to nudge your real life aside and take up residence as your sole raison d'être. It is exhilarating to be faced with the realization that the path that is set in front of me now has nothing to do with needles or hormones or health insurance or my uterus (and the entire internet took a collective sigh of relief that they were granted a reprieve from hearing more about those things for a while). With this exhilaration, however, comes some measure or terror of walking into the unknown. I haven't done any acting in a year and a half--and just under a year of that was spent under the oppressive burden of biological and medical obstacles. I feel like I'm stepping into an experience that used to feel like second nature to me as a whole new person. There is a fine line between the feeling of flying free and the feeling of a free-fall, friends. And here I am (happily) suspended in air somewhere between the two.  Maybe the best way to respect the emotions and the journey of the past while simultaneously moving forward is just to jump in with both feet and trust the lessons learned will function as a parachute. I have no clue what is about to unfold (that part, at least, is not new), but I feel totally ready to give myself over to the process. I predict that I will look back on this time as the slow crawl to the crest of the roller coaster just before it plunges me full-speed into all 2015 has to offer. 

This happens to be the exact day one year ago I found out we were pregnant. It doesn't seem real when I look back and see the whole of 2014 flash before me in the style of a hyper-speed fast forward montage--bright white flashes of joy and pain and IV tubing and crumpled tissues and cups of tea. The day we found out we were pregnant seems like a thousand years ago, but I also remember it with photographic accuracy. I can watch it all in my mind like playing back a video--quietly calling Chris into the bathroom to show him the positive pregnancy test with my mom, dad, and sister sitting in the living room of our apartment having just arrived to spend New Years together. I watch and re-watch that moment of stupefied silence where we just stared at each other shoulder to shoulder in our tiny bathroom completely dumfounded about what comes next when one of those things reads "positive". I see us blissfully ignorant of what the months ahead would actually hold for us. I like to play back in my mind the weeks that followed. I savor the final moments of a version of myself that thought of pregnancy as a promise.

When I look back at photographs from this year, I find myself mentally dividing them into categories of "I was pregnant in that picture" and "I wasn't pregnant anymore in that one". I search my face like it is the face of a stranger and try to remember exactly how it felt. Sometimes I can summon the exact note of nausea or the profound sleepiness or the full body riot of excitement and maternal energy and sometimes I grasp for it and there's nothing more than shadows. That struggle of holding on versus letting go is finally melting into acceptance of the eternal push-pull just in time for the ball to drop again this year. Last year I went to a big New Year's Eve party pregnant and blissfully happy despite my head splitting, my stomach turning, and ever so aware of my marked soberness in a sea of drunken merrymakers. This year, I pull into December 31st after a year that has torn me apart and put me back together. I feel more ready than I've ever been to have a quiet evening with my family, cook a nice dinner, pop a bottle of bubbles, and ring in something fresh and new. 

Thousands of things could have marked this year for me--the year my sister-in-law got engaged, the year two dear friends got married, the year I came back to my hometown to be in a play, the year I first dipped my toes in the clear waters of the Caribbean, but for better or worse, I will always look back at 2014 as the year we lost a baby. It hasn't consumed me (well not all the way), but it has certainly burned itself into my heart in a way that will probably never stop stinging when touched.  I may never get the blissful naiveté back that I had a year ago today, but I've gained something arguably more precious. I've gained a deeper understanding of myself through the lens of life and death. I've had to test my courage and strength. I've experienced what it means to have your tribe really be there fully and powerfully for you in a time of need (you all know who you are, you kept me going, thank you thank you). I've reached new levels of being able to play with the unplayble and laugh at the unthinkable (because you have to admit spending this large of a percentage of a year in stirrups is funny).  I'm not the same woman who raised a glass of sparkling water to toast 2014, but I'm actually okay with the chewed up and spit out woman that will be lifting a glass of very real champagne tomorrow. It is a woman I never thought I could be. I used to think to myself when I heard about miscarriage, "If I ever lost a baby it would absolutely kill me", but, the thing is, it didn't kill me. In fact, I feel more alive than ever. 

As for resolutions, I resolve to take the heart-wrenching tidal wave that washed through this year and make it count in the next. This experience is no longer in the drivers seat, but I resolve to take the emotions it stirred, the connections it awakened, and the lessons it taught and breathe them into all the work I do and all the interactions I have. I resolve to let this experience be more than the sum of its parts. 

Happy New Year to you! I hope this year brings you all that you wish for...and if it doesn't, I hope it brings your family around you, your inner strength to the forefront, and your sense of humor to new heights. In two days we all get a clean slate. 

I don't like to brag, but i'm usually pretty good at the holidays. I like making a list. Checking it twice. The whole thing. I love baking cookies and selecting the perfect gifts for people and plastering everything in my path with twinkle lights. I make a point to send out tons of holiday cards and host special gatherings and play festive music. But this particular holiday season has effectively mashed up my brain and left a misshapen sugar plum in its place. I think it may have something to do with being oh so ready for this year to end. It's making this final push toward January 1 (albeit filled with joyful things) feel like the last couple steps of climbing a mountain. I'm going through all the holiday motions and doing my very best to be present in every moment of it, but there is an undeniable disconnect. I'm not particularly surprised that I feel off my A-game this December. The entire year has felt like the perpetual equivalent of getting up on the wrong side of the bed. I was never quite able to fully catch up. I'm sure anyone who has experienced any sort of trauma this year can relate to the ripple effect that lingers and becomes a layer of your day-to-day functioning that feels clunky and unfamiliar (I can't entirely blame the trauma though...it can't possibly be helping my mental jumble that i"m moving for 2 months starting Christmas Day). For the above-mentioned reasons (and the acute sugar shock I am experiencing resulting from eating a cutout cookie for breakfast), I have no coherent post to share with you this week other than to wish a very happy Christmas and a Merry Hanukkah (if you celebrate either of those) and a New Year that augers the birth of new and hoped for things for all of us. 

To each & every one of you who has read this blog every week and reached out and shared your own stories and thoughts with me, THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart, that has been the greatest holiday gift I could have ever asked for.

It takes more than one person to make a baby (this may come as shock to any of you that played hooky from middle school health class) and it takes more than one person to heal from a miscarriage. I've been thinking about the emotional recovery and perspective of the non-pregnant partner after a miscarriage occurs. Twice in the past my husband has been a guest blogger and shared his point of view (you can read his thoughts here and here), but it's been a while since I talked about this topic on these hallowed pages. Lately i've been thinking about the long-term affects of this (pardon my French) shit storm of an experience on my husband as well as on us as a couple. 

As I write this blog each week, I think about my relationship to the experience of miscarrying. It gives me a structure and a containment for my emotions, a platform to explore those feelings, and a vehicle with which to connect with others who are going through it. Even if I didn't have this blog, however, I do think that the partner who physically miscarries gets more opportunity to speak about and process it (whether we like it or not). There seem to be fewer venues for the other partner to express his or her experience (I would refer you to the incredible work regarding support for partners that The Miscarriage Association in the UK is doing if you are interested). There seems to be an initial expectation for the non-pregnant partner to move forward faster or perhaps "stay strong" for their lady. This disparity is clear right off the bat, but what about four, six, eight, ten months down the line? 

Even having moved through the acute phase of heartbreak, I am consistently surprised by the way it lives with me every single day in big ways and small. It only stands to reason that this experience also has an insidious way of clinging to the non-pregnant partner as well. There have been a few distinct times over the course of the last ten months that Chris and I have had to really pause, reconnect, and respect that fact that our differing styles of coping and recovery were butting up against each other. I am constantly wanting to name and deconstruct every phase of my emotional journey (this may come as a shock to you) and he is more inclined to put it all in the past and not dwell on it. Sometimes this difference in survival mechanisms emerges incognito in the form of other issues and we've had to make a conscious effort to keep that in check.

There is no guidebook or marital preparation for surviving the motional exhaustion a miscarriage brings to a partnership. Initially you cling to each other for support and then you start the process of finding your way out of it. The latter journey has to be, at least in part, an individual one even though the trauma is experienced as a couple. Although it weighs on us less that this point, the experience definitely activated fears, disappointments, and insecurities that we've had to work our way through. Without communicating about these emotions, they have some pretty dark and sneaky ways of embedding themselves where they don't belong even all these months later. As much as we might wish it, miscarriage does not exist in a vacuum. It is like the glitter of emotional experiences (it gets everywhere and even when you thought you cleaned it all up you find more stuck in the oddest of places). 

There is no doubt in my mind that what we went through has made us a stronger partnership. Our bond was reinforced by experiencing and helping each other through something that only the two of us can ever fully understand. However it clearly hasn't always been a picnic. We both fell in love with the same dream and both had our hearts broken when it fell apart. The subsequent months have been made up of rebuilding, making new plans, mourning the loss of old ones, and most importantly keeping pace as best we can with the differing rates of each others long-term recovery processes. I think continuously reminding ourselves to drop our expectations of how bouncing back is "supposed to" look (or how long it's supposed to take) and respecting each others different styles of coping wins "Most Constructive Step" in our process of healing. 

When you have never been pregnant (and never wanted to be) and find yourself face to face with a pregnant lady, one of two things usually happens : 1. you smile and silently acknowledge the miracle occurring within said person, or 2. you maybe give it a passing "dang! she's ready to pop" thought, but ultimately it has no impact. I miss that. There was a (ok, highly irrational, I admit) phase when whenever I saw a happily pregnant person I would feel like screaming "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO HURT ME!?". Those days are gone (thankfully... for the most part...) and I now I have a much more functional, if complicated, relationship to the preggos of the world. I am able to feel genuinely excited for pregnant friends, but my relationship to pregnant strangers alternates erratically between magnanimous and just a plain old grab-bag of crazy. 

Sometimes when I see a crushingly pregnant person on the train, or at work, or in a store, I will want to bend over backwards to accommodate them. I'll feel this kinship, this closeness, and I'll want to honor the process this expecting stranger is going though. I think I have developed a survival mechanism of reminding myself with each and every pregnant person I see, that I have no idea what kind of difficult journey this woman may have gone through to get to this point. I have no idea how much heartbreak she has endured to achieve that waddle. I try to bestow as much generosity of spirit upon her as possible no matter what her pregnancy journey because that is how I would hope to be treated if this thing ever ends up working out for me. 

Then there's the other part of the time when generosity of spirit is harder to come by. For all of you reading this who have gone through it (or anyone who has been around someone who has something you desperately want but can't have) you will recognize all too well that cocktail of despair and envy and bewilderment that sneaks up and knocks the wind out of you when you least expect it. It's never that you wish this other woman wasn't having her experience, it's just a struggle to make peace with the fact that it is easier for some than others (namely, you) and there is nothing you can do to change that fact.

Like any self-respecting person with a masters degree in creative arts therapy, I have been moonlighting in the restaurant industry (hashtag living the dream) while awaiting this theatre gig I have coming up (that part actually is kind of living the dream). One night a woman called my place of business and told me that she didn't have a reservation, but that she was "ten months pregnant" and dying to have her final pre-baby meal at the restaurant. I replied by telling her that I'm pretty sure she's exceeded the human gestational period to which she laughed and exclaimed "Oh my gosh I really have!!" and in one of my moments of munificence toward those of the knocked-up variety, I squeezed her in for a reservation. 

Later that evening when she came in I saw she was not kidding. She honestly looked like she could barely stand and that she may very well have been swinging through for a quick bite on the way to the maternity ward. Despite there being no way this lady was at all comfortable, she was the definition of glowing. She looked happily exhausted. She leaned herself back awkwardly in her chair to accommodate her belly as her eyes twinkled across the table at her husband. I watched her laugh self-deprecatingly. I watched the two of them seem to savor every second of their potential last pre-baby date night. I was transfixed. They looked so excited and this sense of magical anticipation hung around them like this perfect gossamer shield from the rest of the world. They were the flawless vision of the image of pregnancy I had before this year--before pregnancy did not mean a promise anymore. 

There was something about this couple that I needed to see. I needed to be reminded of a (perhaps naive) stereotype of pregnancy so I could move towards it again with the same excitement I used to have. I've heard it jokingly said that the only reason people have more than one baby is because they forget the pain of childbirth. It gets clouded by so much joy, so much busyness, and your memory is effectively erased by the intoxicating smell of your new infants tiny noggin. Maybe I needed to start to find ways to forget the pain of miscarriage by obscuring it with an idyllic image that my younger, less jaded self would have expected. Maybe the only way to really jump into this thing again is to allow myself to indulge in the belief that a happy, perfectly carefree pregnant lady is a real thing and, even more so, that I could still be that radiant creature. Believe me, when I get there (from this blog to Gods ear!) I will cherish every seat that is given up, every reservation that is slipped my way, and I will do all I can to be a beacon to everyone who hasn't had the easy road. I will do my best to be what that lady in the restaurant unknowingly was to me. I won't take a single second for granted. I will glow a glow that says to my heartbroken sisters of miscarriage : Don't shut your heart to happiness because you've been hurt badly before. Don't give up.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful that all of you tune in to read this blog every week. I'm thankful that we are making our way through this journey to move forward after miscarriage (or whatever personal upset you happen to be going through) together. I am thankful for the love and support of my incredible friends and family without whom I would have truly lost my mind this year. I am grateful for my husband who has been by my side heroically even through the midst of his own struggle to reconcile the aftermath of heartbreak. I am extremely thankful for the lessons this year has taught me and the ways it has helped me to grow. I'm also thankful for stuffing. And sweet potatoes. And pie. And the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

Truthfully, the thing I love about Thanksgiving is the tradition. I love the familiar voices, the familiar stories, the familiar flavors. We make and remake the same recipes year after year regardless of how the family around the table changes. This year there won't be a new baby at our table as we may have expected, but the comfort of this holiday is a constant. Life is so often fragile, and changeable, but Thanksgiving reminds us that family and tradition are not. So in the most maternal gesture I can think of to share with you, I'd like to make a Thanksgiving offering of my mom's sweet potato casserole recipe. This is the recipe I have prepared every Thanksgiving that I have not been able to be with my mom (including once overseas where, let me tell you, it is not easy to scrape together the ingredients for a turkey day feast). It's the recipe I bring to my in laws house to trick them into thinking that I'm a real live grown up that can make a Thanksgiving dish. It's the recipe that is my favorite thing to have left over. Enjoy! Wishing you, and whatever your family looks like this year, a beautiful holiday.