Grieving

I’ve been quite sad lately. Stuck, uncertain, frozen. I’ve also laughed harder than I have in a long time and have felt tremendous amounts of love for my husband, my friends, my family.

Grief is kinda tricky like that. You might have heard of those five stages but, in my experience (personal and observed), it’s so rarely that clean. On any given day, you might experience a range of emotions as a result of grieving something you’ve lost: disappointment, relief, sadness, and even joy. You might wake up one morning and think “wow, I don’t feel that weight on my chest anymore, I must be healing” and then end up curled up on the couch unable to explain why you’re sobbing a few weeks later. There’s also no predictable timeline for how these things will go. Grief can last a lifetime.

For me, it’s the unexplainable, the really complicated parts of life that remind me how truly out of control we all are. It’s in these situations where acceptance, radical acceptance, is the only thing that can set you free.

So here’s me accepting that I was pregnant, that my family and friends shared an immense amount of love and excitement for us, that we started setting up the nursery, that we brainstormed names, that Jonathan gave my belly lots of kisses, that the embryo stopped growing and my body didn’t recognize it. I accept that even though life stopped growing in me, my body still stored a lot of fat, I was nauseous every day for a solid month, and have plenty of hormonal acne scars to prove that it tried.

There’s no neat bow to tie on this story. Just a heavy heart, a tired body, and a tiny flicker of hope that something new will grow again.