Some days I think about how Nina's death has forever changed me, and I feel ok about that. I feel like there is something beautiful about that thread that weaves through and marks everything with its color.
Other days, like today, I think it's fucking bullshit, and that there is nothing beautiful or poetic about tragedy. It's awful, and I would do anything to hide this ugly hole it has left in me. I would like to hide behind a veil forever, change my name and my past and erase this meaningless, fucked up horror that I carry with me everywhere.
Some days I'm terrified by the notion that I'm always going to be a person whose baby died.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
4 months gone
4 months ago today, our daughter was stillborn. I wish I had more time to write today, to talk about how deeply I still feel her absence, how painful and yet sometimes empowering the process of healing can be, and how lonely it is on planet My Baby Died.
Yesterday I read a quote on Glow in the Woods, posted by a woman who was 8 years out from the loss of her son. It said, "Your absence runs through me like a thread through a needle, and everything I do is stitched with its color."
I wish she had lived. I wish it so much.
Yesterday I read a quote on Glow in the Woods, posted by a woman who was 8 years out from the loss of her son. It said, "Your absence runs through me like a thread through a needle, and everything I do is stitched with its color."
I wish she had lived. I wish it so much.
Monday, April 14, 2014
carrying it
I haven't updated here in awhile, and it is not due to any lack of FEELINGS; believe me, there have been a shit fuck ton of those. It's mostly due to feeling totally overwhelmed, and not really having the words, or the energy to find the words.
I started going to classes again last Monday, and holy crap, it was HARD. Despite my efforts to put the gossip train in motion, there were still quite few people who had no idea we had lost the baby. I had multiple people approach me and say, "congratulations!" And then I watched their faces fall, and watched them fumble for the words, and watched the utter shock and disbelief they were facing in realizing that, yes, babies die.
Part of me wanted to feel indignant over this assumption that everyone makes, that babies live and life goes on happily. This has happened often enough, to enough people of ALL walks of life, that I don't really think it should be as shocking as it is. But, the truth is that no one really talks about it. It's scary, and upsetting. When I was pregnant with Nina-Louise, I heard whispers here and there, stories told in hushed tones of tragic endings to happy pregnancies... but any time I allowed myself to think about (or god forbid TALK about) the possibility of something going wrong, I immediately shut it down with the rhetoric I had been told: it is SO very rare. Less than a 1% chance.
Let me tell ya. Less than 1% sounds a lot lower than 1/160. The odds are very high that someone you know, probably more than one person you know, is going to lose their baby. It is sad, it is awful, and it HAPPENS.
Our culture is not great with death. We have lots of euphemisms we like to use, like, "He's with Jesus," or, "We have an guardian angel watching over us now," or, the always helpful, "She was just too good for this world." But the cold facts are that our bodies are complicated and fragile, and sometimes something horrible happens, like a car hits it, or something just randomly goes wrong inside, like a bunch of cells decide to go apeshit and turn into cancer. And then the body stops working properly and sometimes medicine can't do a fucking thing about it. I hate how little control we actually have, as opposed to how much control we would like to think we have. But it happens. Spouses die. Parents die. Pets die. And even innocent, beautiful babies who you think would have a whole life ahead of them fucking DIE. None of what I'm saying right now is intended to detract from the truly tragic reality of losing a loved one. But tragedy happens, and until you've experienced that tragedy it is very easy to use euphemisms and find profound things to say to try and make the bereaved feel better, but there is a certain amount of value in just letting the bereaved be sad and fucked up for awhile, because what happened to them is sad and fucked up.
BUT. I also used to be a person who had not experienced real tragedy. I knew that some babies, OTHER people's babies, sometimes died. But I was fairly certain that mine wouldn't. And I would have absolutely been one of those sad people approaching a bereaved mom under the unwavering assumption that, since she wasn't pregnant anymore, there was undoubtedly a beautiful, funny, cute, chubby baby somewhere of whom I could ask to see pictures and videos. I would have continued to smile encouragingly as this poor mom fumbled for words, and then I would have felt my heart break for her as the reality of what she was saying slowly seeped in.
I truly wonder what my face looks like as I try to find the words. I have a spiel worked out in my head, but it never comes up fast enough. I'm sure it will, with more time and practice. And there are always the tears. I can never stop them from coming every time I have to say it. Yes, I had the baby, but she was stillborn. She didn't make it. She died. Yes, we have a lot of support. Yes, it's very hard. No, no, don't feel bad for asking. I probably would have done the same thing.
It's all pretty exhausting. But I'm managing.
I also broke up with my therapist, which is a whole different story. She just didn't get what I was dealing with, and she wanted me to keep coming to see her to work it through. But she said things that I couldn't get past, and the trust was gone, and I had to move on. It really sucked, because this happened at a time when I was feeling particularly lonely with my grief, and I realized that even this lady who I fucking PAY to hang out with me and listen to my problems really didn't get it. So, I have a new therapist now, and so far, I like her. But, I have to admit, I'm not terribly trusting these days. I hope it works out to be a good relationship. It's expensive and I'm not really sure where the money is going to keep coming from, but I know I need it. This is just too hard to manage alone.
The weekends are depressing. I try to keep myself as busy as possible, because those big open spaces in the day just should not fucking BE. It seems like everywhere I look, all my friends and neighbors are spending their weekends as a family, cooking out, having play dates, and here I am, fucking bored. I know there are a ton of things I can do, but the fact is that all I really want to be doing is caring for my baby. And any free moment I have in the day is a cruel reminder of just how open my schedule is, how meaningless my commitments seem, how pointless all of this seems without a child to care for.
When I truly decided that I wanted to have a kid with Turner was during the off season from roller derby. I had been SO busy up until then, practicing 4 times a week, classes 4 days a week, a massage practice on the weekends, working out whenever I could, away games, home games... my plate was full. Then, the season ended, and after the first couple of weeks of reveling in all my free time, I started to feel like... is this it? Is this all life is without all of these outside commitments? I mean, roller derby is awesome, but it's not something one can do forever; it takes a toll on your body. In those quiet days in the winter, I realized that ultimately that the meaning in my life comes down to family and relationships; these are the things that will be there forever. Love. It's simple, and it's pretty damn cheesy, but it's true.
It feels so frustrating to have found what that next step in life is, and not be able to take it yet. I want to be a mom. Yes, I understand that I AM a mom, technically. I have a daughter. But she died. So, being told, "But you ARE A mom!" kinda feels like the participation trophy I got at the end of every soccer season. Way to show up, kid! I am a mom to a canister full of ashes. It's not exactly the way I envisioned it.
I'm learning how to carry my grief. It's big and unwieldy. I really fucking wish that I could just put it down for a minute, or pass it off to someone for an hour or two, but I can't; it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes it's incredibly overwhelming, living with the knowledge that I will carry this grief forever. The other night, Turner and I went to a support group, and Turner talked about how he thinks about Nina-Louise all the time, and about how his final thought on this earth is probably going to be of her. And I wished that because his grief is just as heavy and terrible as mine, that it might make it easier for both of us, like we could carry the same grief and share the load. But his pain is his own, and mine is my own, and we each carry the pain separately and differently, and all we can do is commiserate about how hard it is, and maybe share what is working for one of us in a certain moment.
Despite our separate experiences, I always know that, even in a crowded room, I can look to Turner, and give him a sad smile from underneath the immense beast on my back, and I'll see him reflect the same expression back to me, as he struggles to carry his own burden, and we both know that, at the very least, that weight we each carry is love that we share for the baby we never got to raise. These days are kind of dark, and really tough, and the pain changes from day to day; sometimes the grief is lighter than others, which I hope is a sign that maybe someday it will lighten significantly, or that maybe my muscles are getting strong enough to manage. Lately it feels like we're just slogging through it, putting one foot in front of the other. The minutes and hours and days tick by, and we try our best to remember to laugh, to enjoy what we can, but it doesn't come easy. It's work. We're getting through it, but we're tired, and we really just wish that our baby had lived.
I started going to classes again last Monday, and holy crap, it was HARD. Despite my efforts to put the gossip train in motion, there were still quite few people who had no idea we had lost the baby. I had multiple people approach me and say, "congratulations!" And then I watched their faces fall, and watched them fumble for the words, and watched the utter shock and disbelief they were facing in realizing that, yes, babies die.
Part of me wanted to feel indignant over this assumption that everyone makes, that babies live and life goes on happily. This has happened often enough, to enough people of ALL walks of life, that I don't really think it should be as shocking as it is. But, the truth is that no one really talks about it. It's scary, and upsetting. When I was pregnant with Nina-Louise, I heard whispers here and there, stories told in hushed tones of tragic endings to happy pregnancies... but any time I allowed myself to think about (or god forbid TALK about) the possibility of something going wrong, I immediately shut it down with the rhetoric I had been told: it is SO very rare. Less than a 1% chance.
Let me tell ya. Less than 1% sounds a lot lower than 1/160. The odds are very high that someone you know, probably more than one person you know, is going to lose their baby. It is sad, it is awful, and it HAPPENS.
Our culture is not great with death. We have lots of euphemisms we like to use, like, "He's with Jesus," or, "We have an guardian angel watching over us now," or, the always helpful, "She was just too good for this world." But the cold facts are that our bodies are complicated and fragile, and sometimes something horrible happens, like a car hits it, or something just randomly goes wrong inside, like a bunch of cells decide to go apeshit and turn into cancer. And then the body stops working properly and sometimes medicine can't do a fucking thing about it. I hate how little control we actually have, as opposed to how much control we would like to think we have. But it happens. Spouses die. Parents die. Pets die. And even innocent, beautiful babies who you think would have a whole life ahead of them fucking DIE. None of what I'm saying right now is intended to detract from the truly tragic reality of losing a loved one. But tragedy happens, and until you've experienced that tragedy it is very easy to use euphemisms and find profound things to say to try and make the bereaved feel better, but there is a certain amount of value in just letting the bereaved be sad and fucked up for awhile, because what happened to them is sad and fucked up.
BUT. I also used to be a person who had not experienced real tragedy. I knew that some babies, OTHER people's babies, sometimes died. But I was fairly certain that mine wouldn't. And I would have absolutely been one of those sad people approaching a bereaved mom under the unwavering assumption that, since she wasn't pregnant anymore, there was undoubtedly a beautiful, funny, cute, chubby baby somewhere of whom I could ask to see pictures and videos. I would have continued to smile encouragingly as this poor mom fumbled for words, and then I would have felt my heart break for her as the reality of what she was saying slowly seeped in.
I truly wonder what my face looks like as I try to find the words. I have a spiel worked out in my head, but it never comes up fast enough. I'm sure it will, with more time and practice. And there are always the tears. I can never stop them from coming every time I have to say it. Yes, I had the baby, but she was stillborn. She didn't make it. She died. Yes, we have a lot of support. Yes, it's very hard. No, no, don't feel bad for asking. I probably would have done the same thing.
It's all pretty exhausting. But I'm managing.
I also broke up with my therapist, which is a whole different story. She just didn't get what I was dealing with, and she wanted me to keep coming to see her to work it through. But she said things that I couldn't get past, and the trust was gone, and I had to move on. It really sucked, because this happened at a time when I was feeling particularly lonely with my grief, and I realized that even this lady who I fucking PAY to hang out with me and listen to my problems really didn't get it. So, I have a new therapist now, and so far, I like her. But, I have to admit, I'm not terribly trusting these days. I hope it works out to be a good relationship. It's expensive and I'm not really sure where the money is going to keep coming from, but I know I need it. This is just too hard to manage alone.
The weekends are depressing. I try to keep myself as busy as possible, because those big open spaces in the day just should not fucking BE. It seems like everywhere I look, all my friends and neighbors are spending their weekends as a family, cooking out, having play dates, and here I am, fucking bored. I know there are a ton of things I can do, but the fact is that all I really want to be doing is caring for my baby. And any free moment I have in the day is a cruel reminder of just how open my schedule is, how meaningless my commitments seem, how pointless all of this seems without a child to care for.
When I truly decided that I wanted to have a kid with Turner was during the off season from roller derby. I had been SO busy up until then, practicing 4 times a week, classes 4 days a week, a massage practice on the weekends, working out whenever I could, away games, home games... my plate was full. Then, the season ended, and after the first couple of weeks of reveling in all my free time, I started to feel like... is this it? Is this all life is without all of these outside commitments? I mean, roller derby is awesome, but it's not something one can do forever; it takes a toll on your body. In those quiet days in the winter, I realized that ultimately that the meaning in my life comes down to family and relationships; these are the things that will be there forever. Love. It's simple, and it's pretty damn cheesy, but it's true.
It feels so frustrating to have found what that next step in life is, and not be able to take it yet. I want to be a mom. Yes, I understand that I AM a mom, technically. I have a daughter. But she died. So, being told, "But you ARE A mom!" kinda feels like the participation trophy I got at the end of every soccer season. Way to show up, kid! I am a mom to a canister full of ashes. It's not exactly the way I envisioned it.
I'm learning how to carry my grief. It's big and unwieldy. I really fucking wish that I could just put it down for a minute, or pass it off to someone for an hour or two, but I can't; it just doesn't work that way. Sometimes it's incredibly overwhelming, living with the knowledge that I will carry this grief forever. The other night, Turner and I went to a support group, and Turner talked about how he thinks about Nina-Louise all the time, and about how his final thought on this earth is probably going to be of her. And I wished that because his grief is just as heavy and terrible as mine, that it might make it easier for both of us, like we could carry the same grief and share the load. But his pain is his own, and mine is my own, and we each carry the pain separately and differently, and all we can do is commiserate about how hard it is, and maybe share what is working for one of us in a certain moment.
Despite our separate experiences, I always know that, even in a crowded room, I can look to Turner, and give him a sad smile from underneath the immense beast on my back, and I'll see him reflect the same expression back to me, as he struggles to carry his own burden, and we both know that, at the very least, that weight we each carry is love that we share for the baby we never got to raise. These days are kind of dark, and really tough, and the pain changes from day to day; sometimes the grief is lighter than others, which I hope is a sign that maybe someday it will lighten significantly, or that maybe my muscles are getting strong enough to manage. Lately it feels like we're just slogging through it, putting one foot in front of the other. The minutes and hours and days tick by, and we try our best to remember to laugh, to enjoy what we can, but it doesn't come easy. It's work. We're getting through it, but we're tired, and we really just wish that our baby had lived.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
just like heaven, just like a dream
I didn't write these lyrics. But I can't get the fucking things outta my head.
"The one that makes me scream" she said
"The one that makes me laugh" she said
Threw her arms around my neck
"Show me how you do it? And I promise you, I promise that I'll run away with you."
"I'll run away with you."
Spinning on that dizzy edge,
Kissed her face and kissed her head
Dreamed of all the different ways I had to make her glow.
"Why are you so far away?" she said,
"Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you?
That I'm in love with you?"
You, soft and only, you lost and lonely,
You, strange as angels,
Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You're just like a dream
You're just like a dream.
Daylight licked me into shape
Must've been asleep for days
And moving lips to breath her name
I opened up my eyes.
And found myself alone, alone, alone above a raging sea
Stole the only girl I loved
Drowned her deep inside of me.
You, soft and only,
You, lost and lonely,
You, just like heaven.
Written by R. Smith, S. Gallop, P. Thompson, L. Tolhurst, B. Williams
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
still
I wonder if I will ever stop being so sad.
I know that I give an outward appearance of basically having my shit together. And there is absolutely a trend towards "better" happening. I wear makeup now. I put effort into my appearance. I crack jokes. I don't talk about Nina-Lou nearly as much as I used to. I don't cry in public anymore. I am enrolled in classes which start on Monday. I took on an internship. I work out. I wear new clothes. All of these things are good.
But I still cry most days. I still think about my daughter all the time. I still feel complete and utter anguish at the thought that we struggled for so long to carry a pregnancy to term, only to lose the baby in the very end. I will never, ever be excited about a pregnancy again. I will forever assume that any pregnancy I carry is doomed. I am still fucking empty and alone and I hate all of it.
3 months out is a weird place to be. No one talks about my baby anymore. I feel like it is easier for people to pretend she didn't exist than to acknowledge her life and death. I am filled with righteous anger and indignation when I feel her being ignored, yet, most of the time, I say nothing.
And fucking Mother's Day is approaching. Not looking forward to that one. I plan to sleep and drink my way through it.
I am still sad. My baby died and I wake up with that truth every single morning. I fear that my sadness is overstaying its welcome in the land of the living. I feel like a constant reminder to my friends of just how shitty things can be. I am a walking worst case scenario.
It still hurts. It still feels like a big empty nothing that tears through me and leaves gaping holes in its wake. It aches and it burns, and the fury I feel at the injustice in all of it is silent and utterly lonesome. The reality of my life as a bereaved mom is so overwhelmingly sad, and that sadness is so big, that if I let it all in, I fear I may choke and die.
Ultimately, we all grieve alone.
It's fucking hell.
I know that I give an outward appearance of basically having my shit together. And there is absolutely a trend towards "better" happening. I wear makeup now. I put effort into my appearance. I crack jokes. I don't talk about Nina-Lou nearly as much as I used to. I don't cry in public anymore. I am enrolled in classes which start on Monday. I took on an internship. I work out. I wear new clothes. All of these things are good.
But I still cry most days. I still think about my daughter all the time. I still feel complete and utter anguish at the thought that we struggled for so long to carry a pregnancy to term, only to lose the baby in the very end. I will never, ever be excited about a pregnancy again. I will forever assume that any pregnancy I carry is doomed. I am still fucking empty and alone and I hate all of it.
3 months out is a weird place to be. No one talks about my baby anymore. I feel like it is easier for people to pretend she didn't exist than to acknowledge her life and death. I am filled with righteous anger and indignation when I feel her being ignored, yet, most of the time, I say nothing.
And fucking Mother's Day is approaching. Not looking forward to that one. I plan to sleep and drink my way through it.
I am still sad. My baby died and I wake up with that truth every single morning. I fear that my sadness is overstaying its welcome in the land of the living. I feel like a constant reminder to my friends of just how shitty things can be. I am a walking worst case scenario.
It still hurts. It still feels like a big empty nothing that tears through me and leaves gaping holes in its wake. It aches and it burns, and the fury I feel at the injustice in all of it is silent and utterly lonesome. The reality of my life as a bereaved mom is so overwhelmingly sad, and that sadness is so big, that if I let it all in, I fear I may choke and die.
Ultimately, we all grieve alone.
It's fucking hell.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
I miss her.
I spent a relatively short amount of time with Nina-Lou. And I spent all of the time that she was alive without ever once looking upon her sweet face.
But I miss her.
It's strange to miss her, even though we never got to do any of the things I wanted.
Today is a beautiful, blustery, rainy with patches of sunshine day. It would have been a wonderful day to bring her to the park. To show her how the wind gently caresses our faces and moves the branches. How the dog stares at the ground with her head cocked to the side, before pouncing and digging. How the birds sing to each other in a strange rhythm we don't understand.
I sometimes feel her soul with me in moments like this. Today I am not sure if she's here or not. But in any case, my arms are empty.
But I miss her.
It's strange to miss her, even though we never got to do any of the things I wanted.
Today is a beautiful, blustery, rainy with patches of sunshine day. It would have been a wonderful day to bring her to the park. To show her how the wind gently caresses our faces and moves the branches. How the dog stares at the ground with her head cocked to the side, before pouncing and digging. How the birds sing to each other in a strange rhythm we don't understand.
I sometimes feel her soul with me in moments like this. Today I am not sure if she's here or not. But in any case, my arms are empty.
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