On this Day

7 years ago today I lay in the Emergency Room at the local hospital. I was bleeding. I was pouring out blood of the baby that was never to be mine. This amazing medical miracle that I didn’t even tell anyone about except for my spouse and a few close friends was leaving my body. I lay in a bed with the doctors telling me “at least you got pregnant on your own” as my baby whose heartbeat I had just seen days before stopped.

On this day 7 years ago I lay alone, scared, afraid and shamed. I had a beautiful miracle 1 year old at home and I had just begun to grasp that I was pregnant with this miracle as I began to loose her. I lay there in despair and the shame came up. Had the choices I made in my life caused this to happen. Was this Karma coming to tell me that I was not supposed to experience the joy others had. Was I always meant to work harder for things others didn’t? Was I meant to suffer for my past?

Why did I ask these questions? Well the most obvious is that I had made a choice years ago to not continue a pregnancy and that choice, although the right one for me, always held shame and secrets. You might say thats the most obvious? How so?

Well my stomach, my pelvis, my reproduction has always felt shameful. I had endured at that point in my life countless surgeries and procedures to treat endometriosis, I had endured IVF, blood clots and more. My “magical women parts” had always been not even close to magical for me. I was scared and utterly embarrassed by my failure of my body.

The shame continued after the miracle of my first child when one doctor referring to her poor health as a baby said ” Well imagine if you had to develop in a womb like yours? That must not be a very nice environment”. That moment shook me to my core. OMG had I placed my child in an unsafe place from the get go. Damn it and my fucked up body!

When I found out I was pregnant with this new little one to say I was stunned and scared is an understatement. Was it ectopic..run to doctor..no. Was it viable..yes. Heartbeat..yes!!! HOLY COW!!!

I didn’t share. Why? I don’t even know. I just didn’t. Then one day teaching, ironically, pregnancy massage I felt it begin. I continued teaching..thats what people like me do. They keep going. I went home. I prayed. I cried. I mommied. The next morning it was clear as the blood poured out of me and the cramping began. This was not happening. I lay in the ER alone. What I always remember is this…one phone call to an old friend. She showed up. She sat with me for hours. She held my space. Others who “should have been there” were not but she was.

The day was horrific and traumatizing from the loss to the shitty care at the hospital. At the end of the day I came home to my daughter and continued on.

I barely processed this loss. I somehow felt like I didn’t deserve to feel it. I needed to find the “why” of the loss. I did. I found the blood clotting issue that had been missed. I was able to get pregnant with my son.

What I had never done was dealt with the loss, pain and shame. I stand for women’s rights to choose. However, I somehow felt because I had made a choice that I was paying the price. I felt somehow because I had reproductive issues my standards had to be different then others.  I had made a little section in who gets what in life and I was on the shit end of it all.

I was wrong. I was going through what so many go through,Shame. We carry it like a fucking badge of honor. All the shit and choices we have made or been made for us by whatever greater power and we sit in it. We sit in the dark and guard it.

On this day I lost a baby. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t make it happen by having an abortion or having endometriosis or from my previous eating disorder or from abuse I survived. It happened. I like to believe this baby helped me find the blood clotting disorder so I could treat it and allow Hunter Finn to come to us. Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is on this day 7 years ago I wasn’t alone although my memory likes to trick me so I feel alone. I have nothing to be ashamed of. My body did what it did.

Now on this day 7 years later I am a mother of 2. A really amazing mother at that. My choices, my successes and my shame I have carried with me. They make me me but they don’t define me.

I shine the light on my belly, my “trauma” , but I do not carry that in shame and secrecy any longer.

My belly is covered in scars some you can see and some you can’t but on this day…I embrace the glorious mess that I am as I hold the hands of my children and take one breath at a time. 

I am bruised I am brave

I have spent most of my life surviving. Treading water. I have often believed I was somehow Karmically bound to experience pain and struggle. I had decided that to give me why behind the what.

I have acknowledged my pain, my struggle like a badge of courage.

Sort of.

You see as I share my life and ALL that that encompasses I often do so with calm and never ever making it out to be bad. I have always felt compelled to share a positive except for with a few. Those I thought were my people. Each person I allowed the raw truth to be heard eventually left. I always believed again that it was because I allowed them to see the bruises, the ugly mess. I was wrong.

They left because they needed to. They left because I needed them to. It was just easier to blame myself. It was easier to be more messy inside then to realize that I am not all that messy.

I grew up unparented and feeling often replaceable. I often felt like a pain to the people I should have never felt like that with. I also felt like my role in life was to take care of people. I was never honed or raised to be a successful happy person. I wasn’t raised to have dreams and hopes. I was raised to survive.

 

As I have grown into this woman that I am. I have had to loose the most important people. I have had to be betrayed, traumatized and lost. These felt awfully familiar. That is until recently.

I have come to realize that although I have some serious scars and bruises they simply show my journey. My journey  is not something to hide from. It is also not something I must cling to anymore.

I do have to survive. I also have come to realize that survival is something I have mastered its the living I am ready for now.

It is often that music inspires me and speaks to my soul and body. I heard “This is ME” from the Greatest Showman and it speaks to me and so many others. It speaks to all of us.

There is a point where we all have a choice to own who we are..the good, the bad, and the motherfuckin UGLY and then we can choose to move on and through and with.

Today I choose to be brave! Today I choose to see more then my survival options but my options to live and be truly happy.

I think I can

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I grew up in a pretty fucked up house. In fact so much so that I have limited memory of being a child at all. I have spent a lot of my life trying to fill in the pieces…the pieces of my memory and my soul.

I do remember a few things and one of those things is my father saying I was just like the Little Engine That Could. I don’t remember much of this man as a child. The things I do remember shaped me very much. This man who was in and out of my life but mostly out. I held on to many of his words with white knuckles for my life. I never stopped identifying as that Little Engine. He told me I was the one to hold everyone together. I was the strong one. I was the little one.  He also told me and showed me  I was worthless, unlovable and immensely flawed especially in my body.

My gravity as a child was harsh and dark but somehow in darkness I found dance. Dance was my chance to escape that gravity. It was everything. It was my tears that I couldn’t cry. It was my screams that no one heard. It was my joy. My goal was to move through the friction and soar.

As an adult I have often lost my way, my joy on more than one occasion. I have lost my dance. Gravity can sometimes feel so freakin heavy that you just can’t find your way to fly.

Here is the thing: there is always music and movement. It may be quiet and small but I do know for me that somehow I always find my back to The Little Engine.  I think I can. I think I can. No matter how hard or heavy the load may be I will continue to try and dance.

This blog is intended to share me. My journey as a human, woman, child, mother, warrior, healer, seeker (you get the idea).

At times you may find yourself a part of my scattered and multi tasking life. Other times you will be sharing in my grounding and inspiration.

READY TO DEFY GRAVITY?