Category: miscarriage

in bloom…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

When I settled on the word FAITH, for my 2019 journey, I really assumed it would be an adventure that dealt with my relationship with God. I truly believed the word was meant for me, (which is pretty much how I’ve come to my past WORD OF THE YEAR Commitments), and so I readily accepted the task of growing in my quiet time and prayer…

My year was not remotely about quiet time, or prayer. In fact, though I do believe in a God who is essential for every aspect of my life, the Faith Journey wasn’t really about that sort faith at all.

Every single month of 2019 met me with great loss. Sometimes it was an unexpected loss of opportunity or something beloved. Twice it was with the loss of lives. Then there were lost relationships that I believed I could not live without, that I had no worth without, but it turns out I had been wrong. It was the hardest year I have ever known, and yet…

Yet, I am here. As the theme of loss, in various forms, continued to flow through the changing seasons, I suddenly saw THAT I was more capable of handling them. My vision became clear, as I emerged from the fog I had spent so long in, that I could not merely live beyond the strongholds, but I could live better. I came to a peace I could never have imagined my life ever existing in.

The thing about Faith though, or at least my personal faith, was that it was deconstructed too. As I attended funerals, helped grieving family members and continued to build a business (when all I wanted was to curl up in a ball and cry) and live my life, new things grew in the absence of old. Sometimes these things came in the form of new relationships and precious friendships. Other times these came in professional connections and wisdom shared. Each day I was able to see clearer than I had seen in so long. The relationships lost, had never really existed. The benefit of them had never been mutual, and though that was appropriate for a time, the inability for me to exist outside of the other’s demands and orbit, the inability for me to be an individual deserving of any respect or love, was a problem. It was a problem many had seen for so long, but did not know how to talk to me about. (and it wouldn’t have mattered.) Honestly, I was not brave enough to sever those relationships, but I allowed myself toe courage to respect their wishes, and bold enough to allow life to go on, and unfold, and I have been continually blown away by what that has looked like.

Loss is sad. Loss can be tragic. Loss can also make way for new, and the new doesn’t negate the heartbreak of what is gone… We are shaped by the good and the bad that came before this moment. We are beautiful and capable, because of it.

On a shelf, in my living room, there is a small wooden heart which contains ashes belonging to my father, who passed away this past spring. So much of my life held complicated elements, where my father was concerned, and then one day that simply wasn’t the case. I am filled with gratitude for the fragments of time I spent with him, for the traits of him that I had long before I met him, and more than anything- for the absolutely amazing father he was to my half siblings. Though I’ve never held resentment against him, my soul did sometimes utter the question how can someone who is such an amazing parent, have a child they couldn’t love in that way? And then, on that day of clarity, I knew the answer… Because life is hard. Life isn’t fair. Things happen. We want everything to work out, and we hold often ourselves to the standards that we will get that cookie cutter life, but it doesn’t. With that same clarity came grace for myself as well. I had spent so long trying to become a mother, and then my health failed me and I had to move on from there. That motherhood ache never went away, and one day I sat beside a bathtub as my little adopted daughter played and I realized how incredibly full my heart was. I loved three amazing kids, and wouldn’t have traded one second of the hardship that led ME to them. In that moment I loved them so much that I believed our little family was meant to be.

The family that we fought like hell to bring together.

The process that drained us, and all of our resources dry.

One morning, in 2010, I sat at a brunch table looking at those faces and felt a sinking realization that the five of us would never be together again. I was devastated, and I was caught up in the overwhelming unfairness of that. My motherhood had been the thing I had wanted more than anything in the world, and that entire journey had been unceasingly difficult, and then suddenly…

Hanging on a print, of my favorite lyrics, is the silver etched thumbprint of my the beloved uncle I lost in early 2019. He had been the stable man my childhood knew, likely the one thing keeping me from the alternative of never trusting a man again. He had been the one to hold the fun, childhood teasing. He had been the man to walk me down the aisle. He had been the one, when I was a twelve year old broken child, to make the hard call not to take me in, because he could see the long term effect of how that wouldn’t really help me at all…

Littered on walls and shelves are framed photos from the years in between my motherhood and 2019. Photos of smiling kids my heart could have burst with love for… Photos of relationships dissolved to ash and blown into the wind. For awhile I questioned, do I hide the photos away? But no… It comes back to the unfairness of it all. My “motherhood” was never something I should have placed my faith in. That bursting moment which felt like destiny, wasn’t ever true. Broken and hurt children found their way into my heart, and there was never anything meant to be about what they went through. I bled my soul dry to love them, to fight for them and lost myself in the journey. I wasn’t ever enough, but they didn’t owe it to be to pretend that I was either- and that truth isn’t on anyone. Relationships don’t work out sometimes, and it is loss. It is tragic. It is ok… I could have spent the past 7 & 12 months in agony over how things hadn’t turned out the way I’d hoped and prayed they would, but that would be pretty selfish. The origin of how they began wasn’t anything like those once sweet children deserved either. Sometimes everyone gets hurt, and sometimes every one loses, because life simply isn’t fair. I was there, when I was needed, and the moments frozen on my walls remind me of the beautiful “motherhood” season which wasn’t painless, but I am so grateful for that fragment of time. Because there is loss, doesn’t mean the middle didn’t matter. It mattered a great deal, and all I have for it is love.

Sometimes letting go, is love too. This notion went against what I believed, but finally I learned this too.

In addition to the intense gutting of my entire heart and soul, I began to see the truly flawed theologies and belief structures I’d set my life by. Absolutely wrong, man made ideas, hashtagged for Jesus, when Jesus wasn’t present in them at all.

Faith… The journey was a slice, and a gutting. It was a refining fire, in the way that ravaged land is burned intentionally so that new, healthy growth can blossom.

Welcome to 2020, my year of BLOOM…

On trend…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay8 Comments

I am an enneagram four. It is literally NOT in my wiring to follow a trend. Growing up, seeking love, I might have dabbled in a music or apparel style only to get all cringy when I realized I simply could not commit. All of those weird 90’s kids, angsty and flannel clad, wearing our docs or converse, listening to music that made us FEEL- we were the real kids in America… The kids who didn’t want to follow the pattern, or color inside the lines. Most of us were Fours, only we didn’t know what that meant then. We found confidence (usually) in our need to find our own rhythms, and we found immense value in accepting all of the other “freaks” who weren’t trend followers either. We also, I’ll admit, still likely felt as though we were on the outside, always looking in; on the brink, but never really belonging…

When I was a young wife I developed a deep affection for Classic Pooh things. They were artistic and obscure little trinkets, hard to find, with steep price tags, when we did stumble upon them. Just before I turned twenty-three, a trend was emerging where every adult woman in the world wanted Disney store apparel themed in Classic Pooh. Dish-sets emerged, followed by entire kitchen ware collections, and household decorations, of the gently sketched little bear and his friends. Honestly, I was lived. Ironically, I was also on the verge of a shift, so as much as I may have wanted this trend to matter and wound my consistent strive for individuality- it didn’t.

When I feel in love with that sweet little bear, I was in this stage of my life where I deeply wanted a baby. In the way that I have always designed and decorated a room, within my mind, I imagined a nursery filled with unique little treasures featuring the gang. Those classically drawn images represented all things innocent and nurturing. They seemed to embody a heart full of aching, and my desperate need to hold my baby in my arms. As time passed, with each miscarriage I endured, the room filling my mind became more intentional. Whenever I’d stumble upon a new piece, I’d buy it, whether I could afford it or not. These were the things that I could do to control my shattering spirit. It wasn’t ever about Disney or trends, or anything other than the symbolism of something imaginary come to life- something cuddly and so incredibly love-able. My heart’s desire…

My seventh miscarriage had me so incredibly disheartened with doctors. It was the 90’s, and while women’s health medicine is still filled with frustration and horror stories, that decade really had this special way of making a woman feel like a complete piece of crap when she managed to have any fertility problems at all. (I have horror stories. I have small surgical procedures in a hospital hallway, by an eager (almost giddy) male doctor, while I was given no anesthesia or pain killer… I have football sized blood clots slapping onto a hospital floor, with a nurse saying “well, that happens! Hopefully the baby is there so we can be done with this and you can get some rest.”, I have promises of how I “definitely will not be losing this baby”, from the experts, while I sat miscarrying 3 hours later. The brutal times were significantly impacted, for the worse, by the medical industry of the time.) Each loss experience was completely different from the others. It is one of those bizarre, indescribable things… And so, when that stick showed a plus sign, in the autumn of 1998, I swore I would not see a doctor until I knew I was halfway through.

You see, in that same way that I was attempting to will God to give me a baby by creating a space for said baby to live, I was needing to blame someone for the lack of babies, thus far. The doctors seemed like the obvious common denominator in each messed up instance. No one would argue that they were not to blame for some terrible things. All of the people consuming my support network, at the time, would also wager that these doctors really did not care about me, my vagina or my future motherhood. The ambivalence with which I was handled was sickening… So, I blamed the doctors and I stayed away.

I ate saltines, took prenatal vitamins, and relished in the mornings I spent on my knees over the toilet. Everyone loved to reaffirm that the morning sickness was a good sign. The breast swelling came once again, the only consistent symptom with my pregnancies before. We slid gently into 1999, and my baby bump was slowly rounding. I had made it, I knew. This was it, finally. We found a highly recommended specialist, for at risk pregnancies, and I reluctantly agreed to see him. (By my rustic calculations I should have been 19-21 weeks along.)

It turns out that hormones are an odd duck. I wasn’t pregnant. My baby bump was a lovely nerf-football sized tumor, which had consumed an entire ovary and made a gigantic mess in my entire uterine area. The rise in some sort of something (this is how well I get science) had convinced my endocrine system that I was pregnant, and so symptoms mimicked pregnancy. It all sounded VERY Twilight Zone and I just knew the doctor was lying, and had disappointingy joined the big conspiracy against my babies, but eventually had to realize this was true. On a Wednesday night, in late January, I downed my first every peach bellini, and the next morning they sliced me open to bring that fat tumor into the world. I lost all of one ovary and a portion of the other.

Then March came, and I turned twenty-three. We had a big party, with a lot of friends, and I wore a denim Winnie the Pooh jumper as we paid a 90’s arm-and-a -leg for glow bowling. My white stitching was radiant beneath the black lights and while our beautiful friends were celebrating that I was alive, I wanted nothing more than the opposite. The doctor had said I could try and have a baby in the following year, but that the condition would happen again, and next time I’d probably lose everything. He had been encouraging, and internally I questioned how I hadn’t already lost everything. I didn’t understand how each bloody puddle that I’d sat broken in, upon ice-cold tile floors were so insignificant to everyone else. Hadn’t they been everything? Hadn’t those little heartbeats at least been something? The world was encouraging. Everyone acted like this had somehow solved the mystery of why I couldn’t carry a baby, and suddenly all roads pointed to a child of my own. I knew they didn’t. I knew that it was over. I couldn’t celebrate. I couldn’t find the happy, there within my inadequacy. I couldn’t have anything to do with that silly old bear again.

Just as the trend swept the nation…

I am an enneagram four. I feel things deeply. I process. I grieve. I march to my own rhythm, never following a trend. I, by nature, feel like an outsider aching to be a part of something. I couldn’t have a baby.

I got swept up in the fastest growing trend among American women…

I am an infertility and miscarriage survivor, and this is my story. One story, lost in the sea of millions.

(On the Collective Podcast this week I come together with four other brave women, vastly different in their own stories. They share their journeys and unexpectedly we find there, despite our differences, the commonalities of of both shame and hope. We find real. We would love for you to hear these stories. This is a safe space if you feel the need to share your own. Here is the link and it is episode 57.)

On being naked…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

Over the past month, or so, I’ve been really privileged to spend evenings in deep conversation with various women who were guests in my home. Sometimes there was laughter, and quite often there were tears. In some instances there were glasses of wine, while every time there was an abundance of food. In these moments I found myself humbled by the absolute magic that forms when we simply bring women together, in a cozy environment, and let them be. Let us be, because this includes me too.

Women are so heavily armed in layers. Many design their layers out of fashion and appearance, but in truth these shields of armor are much deeper in roots than that. While our multi-tasking minds can be a huge asset in many areas of life- it is a hinderance here. Subconciously we can judge another woman in an effort to make ourselves feel validated, while simultaneously obliterating our perception of self worth in the very same fragment of a second that we are taking stock of the countless negatives we bring to the room. It is exhausting… And we walk around under the weight of these silent, habitual patterns twenty four hours a day.

Until the magic moments happen, anyway…

Lights low, maybe a little background music. Glasses full, with whatever she wants- no judgement here… Around purply-plump grapes, cubes of cheese, warm breads piled with butter and richly colored seasonal produce. Everything warm and pleasant- slowly our layers fold back. A woman opens up about a heartbreak, and every single time another tears up because she can relate.

In that space it is suddenly safe to be truly naked, naked from our self protection and our shames. In that space we are seen.

In the times that this has happened, over these past weeks, the magic moment of amber beauty has caught me off guard, stealing my breath, every single time. You’d think I would be better prepared, but I am not. I finally realized why- because we cannot script or plan for these times. They cannot be forced or coordinated. The stripping and pealing of layers must happen organically, on their own.

May we find more naked moments…

We are them too…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

There is this amazing time-lapse video bouncing around the internet that shows the blossoming of various mushrooms deep within forested areas. It is absolutely fascinating, disgusting, inspiring and flat-out-weird all at once. Isn’t that life, though? Most of the time.

As humans, we stumble upon stories ripped straight from the lives of others. The horrific crimes we can’t comprehend, the amazing tales of survival and super human fathomings. We love the miraculous, the oddly tragic- the real life stories. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been inspired to do something bold, brave or heroic after looking at an individual, upon hearing about their boring upbringing, which was followed closely by their average college, marriage and work experience, carrying them to this point of completely mundane normalcy. Films and books certainly aren’t written about people like this.

Two reasons for this are:

  • because that sort of life wouldn’t really inspire much of anything. (Maybe a little envy from someone whose lot in life has been particularly harsh.)
  • That sort of life doesn’t really exist. A perception of that sort of life can, but that sort of life itself? It’s not even possible. There may be seasons when we identify with feelings that our own journeys have been that uneventful. There will be other times, perhaps when we’re drowning in our own overwhelm, and we may perceive someone else’s seemingly drama free life is just like that.
  • bonus point- the moral of the lesson here is, just because something may look, or feel a certain way, in a moment- doesn’t mean that it is.

That idea, the idea of normal + boring, I think most of us have pretty wrong. We think, in times of distress, that this must be what simplicity and peace is like. It wouldn’t be. That imaginary life I’ve described? It is a one dimensional, apathetic version of what we minimize in our minds. Period. We only feel our lives are dull and boring, when we are discontent in our own circumstances. We only reduce someone else’s story to such when we are attempting to reduce them, in our minds, or when our circumstances feel too big/loud and we long for small/quiet. It is a perception. Period.

If we could see a time-lapse of our own lives, we would be amazed. There are hardships and heartbreaks we’ve all known, and many of us are living them as I type this. Sometimes it is easy to hear the circumstances of our own journeys in comparison to another person and think we have nothing to share. It isn’t true. Each and every one of us have lives comprised of many things, things both beautiful and horrifying, that others may need to see.

We love the stories of the hero who lived through incredible difficulties, overcame extreme odds and we sit through the movies and documentaries about them, awed. They inspire us. We read books about them, tell others about them, and often make changes in our own lives because of the incredible examples those people were. Our entire world is built on the foundation of everyday people living through something and then paving the way for a better future because of it. (NOT despite it. BECAUSE OF IT.)

Guess what, friend- you and I? We are that very sort of person. The abuses we’ve known, the mistakes we’ve made- these things can bury us in their rubble, if we let them. How do we not allow that to happen? We choose not to let it. We move on, altered for the better, because. Because, because, BECAUSE- Always.

Someone, somewhere, can see the time lapse of your life (in a sense… not an actual time-lapse video, because that would honestly be awkward for everyone.) and move forward, for the better, too. The mushroom is merely a fungus, living on the ground, and sprouting from the mildewed bits of dirt on the forest floor. Often they are toxic. Sometimes they can make people happy, or paranoid, or what have you. Some of them are ugly, many are beautiful and often they are an annoyance. They come from the worst, often remain the worst- but their journey when viewed with a nutshell perspective is mesmerizing.

Friend, we are so much more than forest fungus. We may come from the worst, but we don’t have to settle for becoming that.

What did you believe?

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay3 Comments

What were the beliefs you shaped, as you celebrated birthdays inching closer and closer to forty? Are you still on that journey, dreading those four decades of candles? Does that dread stem from reasons you possibly don’t really understand?

Growing up in America, I experienced the message of 40’s wickedness coming at me from many angles. Media, film, print, and the women I knew who crossed that threshold before me. At some point, around 32, I began to hear women whispering revolt to these society driven ideas, sharing about how their lives began at 40, or were simply better at 40. I allowed a fragment of hope, but also, I noticed these thoughts came after the dreaded age, and perhaps this was spoken within the context of “those lies we tell ourselves”.

My truth is that this past March I turned 43.

Three years ago, when I turned 40, I had- HANDS DOWN- the very worst birthday imaginable. (for anyone keeping score, it’s true- I’m prone to “bad” birthdays) This years celebratory event reminded me that life’s circumstances, as well as the actions of other people, aren’t really the things which should be defining our lives. The past few years have absolutely been among the most hurtful and challenging that I have known. That the fact though, life happens… Yours, mine, bad seasons, beautiful seasons and a whole gaggle of mediocre in-betweens. I’ve been frank, but the question remains: Is life better in my 40s?

It is.

Obviously there is no magical age which stops all of the out-of-our-control elements. It isn’t that I’m “living my best life” now, but it is true that I AM DIFFERENT. I care more, (and more intentionally) about the important things. I don’t care about the toxicity, the drama or the elements that simply aren’t worth my energy any longer…

Stemming from a brief social media exchange about this very topic, I invited my new friend Ritu to be a guest on The Collective Podcast. You guys, this lady is PURE light- and not because, now that she’s 40, she has it all figured out… She’s just lovely, and her life of experience (good and bad, just exactly like the rest of us!) has led her to this beautiful point in life. She’s working on a novel, that I personally can’t wait for, but her poetry book Poetic RITUals is available now! Come listen to Episode 40, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe!

Are you heading to 40, and worried? Are you past that point, and different?