One morning in Maine, while the kids were feral and free range on bikes somewhere on the island, Chris and I went for a walk. We ran into and chatted with a number of island folk, one of whom was once the teacher in the mixed grade schoolhouse and also happens to hail from Wisconsin. She is mama to a little girl just under 2 and has another on the way. She is in that great part of pregnancy where energy levels are back up and you are finally beginning to actually look pregnant. Before we said goodbye, I asked when she was due and she replied that her babe is expected in early November. After she was gone, I stood stock still in the road, gut punched for a moment by our proximal due dates. Or rather, the due date that was mine for the 11 weeks that I had been pregnant. I took a few big gulping sobs and let the tears come and flood my eyes and face while Chris held space for me in the empty road. His big empathetic heart my home.
And then, the rush of grief, the wave of emotion, was gone. I put my hand on my empty and hollow belly and we walked on. It is getting easier. In fact, it has become easy in the sense that it doesn't feel like the headline story and more like simply another scar in the make up of who I am. In the days following my miscarriage I dove for a spell into the worm hole of information and support accessible throught the internet. I consumed information both of the factual and emotionsl variety. I remember reading at one point that the intense initial period of grief generally lasts 3 months. That after 3 months the weight of the loss and the heaviness of the grief will have lifted and the way forward will be more clear. In those early days I truly thought that from then on I would live buried under the weight of my loss. I was swallowed by it. Equally difficult were the moments in which I wondered if I had made the whole thing up- that I had never really been pregnant to begin with- just hopeful and crazy. But there is some evidence. There are the emergency room bills and the small piece of citrine resting on the puja next to our other birth stones.
3 months have passed now and it has indeed gotten easier. Now when something reminds me of my ghost baby I can heave a few sobs and move on. I keep going. Because, really what other choice is there? I want to live this full and glorious life that I have been gifted. And I want to carry the stories that I have gathered along the way and that make me more and more of who I imperfectly, perfectly am. I by no means mean to make light of the very real and deep loss that is pregnancy loss, I just hope to express that I feel ready to move on. My focus is elsewhere. I have been doing a good job feeling my feelings and I am excited for this time that we are in now and for the time ahead.