The Upswing

I have started a new blog where I am focusing on gratefulness as a means to finding joy again. I still intend to keep posting here (I still need a place to process my grief), but this new blog is a step toward life.

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I hope you all find moments of joy and reasons to smile today. One day at a time, that is the only way through this.

If you also blog, I would like to come and check out your posts. Feel free to leave a comment below with your link!

Down the Rabbit Hole and the Long Way Back to the Top

After Haven died, my mom warned me about slipping into the pit. She said, "it is a lot easier to keep from falling in than it is to climb back out again." My mom is a wise woman. And I am in the pit.

Since my last post, anxiety and depression completely took over my life and I broke one evening. It was a long time coming, and I am actually shocked now that it took so long for me to break. I slipped into a panic attack, where I sobbed and hyperventilated and felt like my heart would burst from my chest. Three months of heart palpitations, insomnia, muddy thoughts, and feelings of panic and depression all fell on me at once, with the weight of grief giving them the extra force they needed to crush me.  My husband received a text from me that caused him to worry, and when he called, I could barely form words. He rushed home and spent the day with me, cleaning the house, making supper, and holding me close. I don't think he realized until that day how badly I was doing.

Sometimes I look at myself almost like I am standing outside my body, and I think about how startlingly unhappy I am. Most days it is all I have been able to do to convince myself that I don't want to die, and that life is worth living. I don't intend to hurt myself, but I have had little will to live. It is like the joy has been sucked out of my life...kind of like one of those airtight clothes storage bags. I feel shriveled and pointless and other a lot of the time. But even though it has been a truly black time, I can still see from my low vantage point that this is not the bottom. I am afraid of the real bottom.

I returned to work this week. It has been a mixed experience. People's reactions are not always what I would expect, but I will say that everyone has been respectful. I feel entirely like a self conscious outsider, but I think that will ease in time as I learn to be among the living again. A glimmer of hope seeped in this week. For the first time, I have felt kind of useful and even sharp. I even laughed for real a few times as I sat in familiar surroundings and engaged in the banter. When I get home, though, the worries crowded my mind again.

Experiencing this prolonged period of anxiety has really opened my eyes to how it has been stealing from me for years. It has negatively affected and even destroyed some of my relationships. It contributes to my low self esteem and self worth. It steals joy by leeching worry into my thoughts until they spin and push me off course. It steals my sleep too, and it has since I was a child.

My doctor prescribed me antidepressants and sleep pills to help even me out. I am hopeful that they will do just that. Honestly, I regret not taking them during my last major depression. Insomnia really does take things from bad to worse. Of course, this medication means that we have to stop trying to conceive for awhile. I was really upset by that at first, but I am at peace with it now. Almost grateful, really, for a reason to not try. I don't think I was ready. So if, when this fall rolls around, I am doing better, I will ask the doctor to wean me off of these drugs, and we will start over again. My doctor said, "I think you owe yourself the pleasure of enjoying your next pregnancy." I think she is right. It's going to be so hard when the time comes, but I know I can't make it harder on myself by rushing into it.

Today, I am feeling almost positive. I decided today that this devastation and this crash are not going to kill me. I am too pissed off about my experience to let it beat me. I realized today that I have been letting this situation turn me into a victim, but no more. I am going to get my life back. If that means a new job, a new haircut, or new friends, I am going to do whatever it takes to get there. If it means risks, I'll take them. At the same time, I care so much less about the piddly things now. Perspective is an incredible gift, and I am not going to waste it.

I ran into this quote today, and I'll close with it. It made me think about how I have always put off doing the things I want to do, and how I have let life happen to me instead of taking charge. If losing Haven did nothing else, it made me realize how short life is and how nothing is guaranteed. So why wait?

"It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're 'ready.' I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as 'ready.' There is only now." - Hugh Laurie

Blaming God

I have run across several threads on loss forums in which parents blame God for the death of their child(ren). I have wanted to comment, but don't want to give the impression that I do not understand the pain, anger, and bitterness. The seemingly bottomless grief that can well up at a moment's notice. I also haven't wanted to spark any religious debates in a place that is meant for support and healing. There is a time and place for all things. So I will respond here from my perspective. You may not agree with me, but please know that I would never belittle your grief and that this post is not meant to judge. I do know how it feels. This is just my journey. I hope this is coherent...

Even on the day we found out that Haven had died, it never occurred to me to blame God. I was, and am, crushed, but blame for God never entered my mind. This world is often a cruel place. I grew up poor, with a mean, abusive, and mentally ill father. My mom was a shell of a person for many years due to crippling depression. Fear and anxiety were my constant companions. Abuse of every kind was rampant among my extended family on both sides, and the same goes for mental illness. My aunt also lost a daughter, Katarina, at full term and only got to glimpse her before the nurses whisked her away. I lost a cousin at 31 to cervical cancer. She was a gentle soul and mother to a little girl. My father-in-law died at 48 after suffering through severe illness for 11 years (crohn's, a liver transplant, medically-caused diabetes, cancer, then a prolonged, excruciating death). He was a minister and a good, kind man. His mother died young from breast cancer. And then my daughter died suddenly at the height of my joy and the most precious thing in my life was ripped away. All of these things are unjust, unfair. But terrible things (genocide, war, murder, rape, forced prostitution) happen around the world every day and I never once blamed God for those before, believing that they are all a part of this broken world full of broken people. Why should I blame him when the pain lands on my doorstep? And I won't pretend I'm not in pain. It's on every breath, in every movement, in every thought and prayer and wish.

Faith is a choice, or rather, a long string of choices. Today, I choose to believe in God's goodness. Today, I choose to believe that God has a plan. Today, I choose to believe the promise that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord. Either I believe in God, or I don't. Faith is not dependent on circumstances. In the Bible, God never guaranteed that life would be easy and that we would always receive what we want (unfortunately, a lot of Western teachings imply this). You need only read the stories of those in the Bible who went through unimaginable things to see that their faith did not bar them from pain. The point is that God is there with us through every one of the difficult things we walk through. He knows our pain, weeps with us, and strengthens us if we allow him to do that.

I have read facebook posts by atheist friends who imply that it is the weak who cling to faith. But to be honest, it takes serious strength to choose a life of trust and surrender in the face of loss. It would be much easier to sink into hate and bitterness and anger and never crawl out of that place. In choosing faith, I am choosing life. God sees my life from its humble start to its humble end, the good and the bad, and he has a plan. I may not understand it, but I trust him. I know that God sees all that has happened and all that is to come, but I don't believe that he caused Haven to die just because he knew that she would. Our minds always want answers, but the truth is that bad things happen to good people. Every single day.

I think it's important not to deny our feelings, but to acknowledge them. Today, I am pissed off and I can't stand the sight of pregnant women or kids. Today, I am terrified that I will lose another child and I'm angry that I have to feel this way. Okay. I let myself feel it. Sometimes I spend entire days feeling angry and ripped off. I believe that anger is a part of grief and should be felt and expressed fully. But I look at my feelings this way: these intense feeling are temporary; they don't change my long-term, overarching feelings. Bitterness is not somewhere I want to set up camp. There is recovery. I really do believe that. It won't be tomorrow or next week and maybe not even next year, but there is life after loss. Someday I will smile again without forcing my lips into an upward direction. There will be pure joy again. Have I lost innocence? Yes. And I'll never get that back. I'll never know pregnancy without fear again. I might never even know the joy of mothering living children. But I choose to believe that I will be okay in time, no matter what.

I choose faith.

Because this is a sensitive topic and I do not want debates on this blog, I am going to close comments on this post. But if you would like to talk about this with me, please do send me a private message.

Do It Anyway

I have been thinking a lot this week about life with grief, and the life to come after. This line of thinking was prompted by an episode of Call the Midwife (my guilty pleasure tv show). In one of the episodes, the main character has lost someone. One of her patients, a Holocaust survivor, says to her, "You will feel better than this. Maybe not yet. But you will. You just keep living until you're alive again." Simple, but profound. Because when you lose what is most precious, a part of you dies too. I don't think I'll be the same me when this grief fades, but I do know that I will someday feel joy again.

I read a blog post today regarding fear and our response to it. The blogger's fear was linked to following through with a desire of hers. She went on to say that her theme for 2014 was "do it anyway." I really liked that, and I've decided to adopt it. See, I'm riddled with fear right now. Fear of venturing outside my house. Fear of returning to work in June. Of not being able to bring a living baby home to stay. The fear of all of the days without my daughter that stretch before me like a never-ending sea of sadness. I am realizing that the only way to the other side is straight through. I need to give myself time and space to grieve, but I know I can't stop there.

I don't agree with people who think that you need to deny your struggle in order to overcome it (fake it 'til you make it). I think that real courage is looking your fear in the face and forging onward in spite of it. So right here and now, I am making the decision to choose life and hope and to "do it anyway." Despite the fear, I am going to move forward. One step at a time. One anxiety attack at a time. One tear-filled night at a time. I am going to summon all of my courage and do it anyway. I'm going to live until I'm alive again.

I took a small step yesterday. I was wandering around Walmart and I saw maternity clothing on clearance. I bought four shirts for when I am full term next time, even though I don't know if I'll ever have that wonderful experience again. It made me feel anxious, but I rang them through and brought them home, where I promptly ripped off the tags so I wouldn't chicken out and return them.

As if to cement my thoughts on the subject, I received a package in the mail today from a friend in Tennessee. She had been sewing a gorgeous quilt for Haven while I was pregnant and finished it the day she found out that she had died. I opened the long-awaited package, and accompanying the quilt was a beautiful, handcrafted glass heart. I immediately knew that this would be my symbol of hope in the months to come. I hung it in the nursery so that I can peek in and see it whenever I need a reminder.

When I logged in today, I noticed that my page views had doubled since the last time I logged on. If you find yourself here, I want first to tell you that I am so sorry that you have felt the grief that comes with the loss of a child. But I hope that you find some comfort in reading about my journey. It's ugly at times, but I hope it all leads to a joyful end. Please feel free to comment or to contact me privately if you would like to.

Comfort

I have read so many websites and forums and blogs about families who have lost like we have. Everyone has their own set of thoughts or beliefs that bring them comfort. I just wanted to share the things that help me. I know it's not the same for everyone, but these are the things that keep me going...

When I was pregnant with Haven, I remember thinking about how she was special, the product of one of the millions of eggs I was born carrying inside, and one of the approximately 525 billion sperm my husband has produced/will produce in his lifetime. That she was the best of the best; the "best" egg chosen by my body to be present that month, and the strongest of my husband's sperm over those few days. If we had gotten pregnant any other day or month, she would have been an entirely different person.

I also learned yesterday, while scouring blogs (I do little else lately), that there is a fetal cell migration from baby to mother during gestation. Those cells go on to live inside the mother, sometimes up to decades later, finding new homes in her eyes, heart, brain, etc.

These two thoughts together bring me comfort. They mean that I have always carried a part of my daughter with me, through my childhood, through my teen years, through every good and bad decision, every up and down. We were always together. And if her cells live on inside of me, I'm still carrying a part of her.

Though my faith feels complicated right now, I find comfort there too. I don't pretend to know God's thoughts or His plans, or how they all "work together for the good of those who love Him," but I believe that no person, however small, goes unnoticed or unloved by Him. I believe He grieves with me. The Bible says, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." It also says, "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit me together in my mother's womb." That means that God put together my little girl, cell by cell, and He loved her far more than I ever could (and believe me, there is not much that is fiercer than a mother's love). I don't have His eternal view, and I don't know how this (relatively) small event and Haven's small, sparrow life fit into the course of history, but I believe she was significant, nonetheless.

Yes, I am so, so angry and bitter some days that it eats me up. Sometimes I can't even catch my breath for the pain of missing her, and everything is just ashes in my mouth. But yet I find beauty and, yes, even joy in my life. Even in this disaster, this unfathomable tragedy, I have found joyful moments. The moment she was born was the most beautiful and terrible moment of my life. Even my long labour (38 hours from induction to her birth) had moments of awe, of stunning beauty. It was almost a holy experience.

So, yeah, I am totally wrecked. Losing my baby, my Haven, was like having my heart ripped out, then being told I still had to go on living somehow. I will never, ever, be "over" what happened, nor will I ever not miss my baby girl, not wish things were different, not ache to hold her. But I think that all of these things, the anger, the agony, the emptiness and loneliness, and then the joy...it's all a part of grief, and I intend to feel it all to the fullest. How else can one rebuild and move forward? I will take this anguish, these broken pieces, and allow God to form it all into something good. I think I owe that to my little girl. Surely she wouldn't want me to be sad, and angry, and bitter for the rest of my life?

I'll keep on living, even when life seems too empty to bother. One trudging step at a time. Breathe in, breathe out, and repeat...

Stretch Marks

When we first found out I was pregnant, I was in shock. I had suspected that I might be pregnant, but because we had been planning to start trying about seven months later, my mind somehow didn't believe it could have happened that one and only time...

Shock eased into cautious excitement pretty quickly. Then, after the first trimester, I started to relax and settle into motherhood. I watched my belly grow with delight. I relished every change, every pain, every new sign that my little girl was growing strong. The sight of other children made me smile. Holding babies made my heart sing. I found myself having a greater capacity to love others because I loved the little person growing inside of me so very much. Joy bubbled up inside of me at the thought of her, and I marveled at the beauty of life.

I really believe that carrying my precious daughter made me a better person. A kinder person. Being a mother changes the way you think and the way you experience life. I found myself seeing every person I met as someone's baby. I am about to say the cheesiest thing ever: loving Haven made my heart grow. My heart has "stretch marks" now, much like the beautiful stretch marks that Haven left on my skin. They show the world that she was here, that she lived.

My baby may not be in my arms, but I am a mother now. I hope that I never forget the things that she taught me.