No Regrets, No Apologies

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.  I want to

know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your

dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your

moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your

own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have

become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.  I want

to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without

moving to hide it or fade it or fix it….

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer
(Click here for full version of this poem)

Last week’s post was a tough one for me.  I was in a place where I needed to write, I needed to get all of my thoughts out of my head and out of my heart.  I had to have a release of some sort or I thought I might just crack or spontaneously combust or apparate to another place altogether.  So I wrote, and I wrote much differently than usual, I wrote without much thought, I wrote and just let the words flow from my heart onto these pages.  But then when I was done, I hesitated.  It was darker than most.  It was possible that it would not be well received.  It was likely that others would judge the place where I was, judge my dwelling, misinterpret my intentions and meanings.  I considered and reconsidered and then remembered why I started this blog in the first place.  It is for me.  It is my space to be who I need to be and when I need to be it.  Of course, I am glad that you are reading, without any audience at all, I would just be writing a journal.  I know I want more than that, but at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter if I have one reader or 100 readers, this space is here so that I can do what I need to do and do it in the way that I need to do it. Not in the way that you need me to do it.  So I posted.  I posted my heavy heart and my dark spirit, I posted my angst, my pain, my fears and challenges.  I posted little hope or inspiration or any semblance of fight.  And after a dark week of internal struggles and after putting my heart on the line and posting what I needed to put out there, my heart finally began to feel a little lighter.  The heavy weight seemed to lift a bit, almost right after I hit the “publish” button.  And I know I’ve said before that I need you to know how I am feeling, but I should reiterate, I need you to know all of it.  I’m aware that I have talked about my pain before, I have told you of my heartaches, but I have yet to tell you of my difficulties without letting you see the window of hopefulness into my soul.  And, I’ll have to say, most days that window is wide open.  But I also have days that are so much heavier than others, days when I can’t seem to find that hope, no matter where I look, days when I just can’t seem to give my soul the pep talk that it needs.  I think it’s important for you to know that this side exists too and not every day is the same.  This is not a linear progression, it is a scrambled, messed up configuration of emotions, that are often unpredictable at best.  And although I think I might have caught a hint of pity or judgment (neither of which I desire) in a response or two, I have no regrets of posting it and will offer no apologies.  It was where I was and it is who I am.  I have chosen to be an open book, I have decided to put it all out there, and I will remain true to myself and my feelings at all times.  I owe it to myself.  I am worthy of that.  I can “sit with my pain, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it”.   I found that poem when I was in grad school about 11 years ago.  During this present week and thinking about my last post, many lines of this poem kept popping into my head.  So I pulled it off the shelf and reread it.  I thought a lot about this poem back in the day, gave it to many as gifts, but now, rereading it again, it brings new and enlightened meaning to my heart. 

I know that some of my thoughts may be difficult to relate to and could possibly be challenging to understand.  Especially if you have never experienced a loss such as mine.  Or even if you have, our losses might be similar but our experiences with them could be very different.  But let me try to at least attempt to explain how our first loss affected me.  A year and a half before Wyatt was removed from my world, my dad died.  It was sudden, unexpected and intensely painful.  I defined that day when I got that dreaded phone call as “the worst day of my life”.   I was only able to use that term to describe that event for exactly 1 year, 6 months and 29 days.  Something far more painful was on the horizon.  There was no way in that moment of losing my dad though that I thought there could be anything more painful.  I loved my dad like any daughter loved her dad and then some.  We had established a relationship in my adult years that was incredibly fulfilling.  I had so many memories and experiences with him that were so fond, I found it incredibly difficult to let him go.  I hurt so deeply.  In those moments of grieving my dad, I would have never imagined that losing a baby who I had never “met”, who I had never hugged or kissed, a baby I had never played patty-cake or peek-a-boo with, a baby who I had not had the opportunity to form any memories around except for the nine months of nurturing him inside me….I never, ever in my wildest dreams, thought that losing a newborn baby would hurt more than losing my father.  Never would have thought it.  Never.  Ever.  So when the pain started rolling in on this newly defined “worst day of my life”, when in an instant my newborn son was now my newfound angel in the sky, not only was I experiencing shock, pain, heartache, and grief, but I was also experiencing a heart breaking and gut wrenching surprise.  How could this hurt so much?  How could this be so painful?  I’m not sure I will ever be able to answer the hows or the whys, but I do know it was brutal beyond words.  And although I have lived through this and have often felt I have “moved on”, this pain will always lie in my heart somewhere, and some days it sneaks back up on me and punches me in the gut.  It just hurts.  Bad.

But I guess I feel like there are a few things I still need to explain.  Some things that I want you to know.  I don’t want you to look at these as justifications or apologies of any sorts.  I just need to be sure there is some sense of understanding of who and how I am.  First, I don’t dwell.  I live.  I live every day with a piece of my heart broken that can never be fixed, no matter how many babies that survive enter my world.  Abigail did not replace Wyatt in any way shape or form.  She was a blessing, a true blessing that I am grateful for every day, a blessing that I know just how lucky I am to be able to hold onto with each passing day.  I know of this fortune, I am acutely aware of this fact.  Acutely.  But she was a different experience for us than Wyatt, she is a different child, she is her own being.  She was not a do-over and having her did not fix everything and did not make my pain go away.  She brought joy, incredible amounts of joy, but don’t think that joy makes my heart heal in an instant because it doesn’t.  That joy and that pain often sit right beside each other and battle on who gets to play each day.  Thankfully joy is often the winner, thankfully joy seems much more powerful than the pain, thankfully joy shows up at all. Thankfully.  I also hope you understand that despite some of the pain that I express, I enjoy and appreciate Abigail to the fullest.  If there is anywhere in my life where I am fully present, it is with her.  I will never ever take her for granted.  She makes my heart soar and can lift my spirits with only her smile.  She doesn’t know about my dark days, at least I try to shield her from as much as I can.  She knows of our losses, but I try to expose her to all of the goodness that is in our lives, so she knows of those things more frequently.  The light from her sheer presence most definitely wards off much of the darkness, and I appreciate that light more than you know.  I appreciate my life as it is, it is good, and I am grateful.  But I will not apologize for grieving the things that have been taken from me or for wanting the things that others seem to so easily acquire.  I will not apologize for these things or feel shame in holding onto them.  I most definitely have no regrets in offering my story to you on these pages, no matter how much darkness or light they reflect.   I also hope you know how incredibly grateful I am, however, in your willingness to read, your desires to return, and your abilities to lift me up out of the darkness when I need it the most.   I am truly touched and grateful for you.  So thank you for tolerating the dark from time to time, I am truly hopeful that much more light is soon to follow.