10/07/2024
Today I cried for the possibility of who you were and who I, we would have become after you.
A lot of trauma came with post-partum after Benjamin — I’be been pretty open with the extremely heavy PPD, the mountains that causes your relationship to face and climb, and overall it took about 3.5 years for us to really make our way back to each other and heal from the pain and loss of what we thought would have or should have been our lives during that time. The release of who you were and then therapy and medication it took to become who you are — or rather who I am, who we are today.
It’s not never again of course, but the energy, the courage, the work it took to put yourself into a place where you’re even willing to look at the idea of wanting something you know almost killed you the first time — it’s so unfathomable to that girl, sitting in a chair with her newborn back then. A lot of the mourning and processing has just been losing something I was scared to want in the first place. And in the middle of my biggest wedding season to date, it just has felt like I could only process enough to keep me going.
Slowly, I’ve really started to stare at the scenario we’re in. I’ve had miscarriages before, but this just… stings a bit more in certain places. The timing of it all, of my work this year, of the endless illnesses back to back, of feeling so foreign to the body I was beginning to call home before reaching for a new door that unknowingly had fire waiting on the other side… it’s a lot of healing. A lot of acknowledging, and honoring. It’s bitterness and tears on the way to celebrate joy and life and letting yourself feel both and be changed by it all. And it’s unfair.
You know, one thing I’m so grateful for is learning to sit in peace with unfinished stories that may never be told. These are really just my thoughts today — no sweet end wrapped in a bow, and some days and full of laughter and hope and it’s not all of.. this. But let your days be heavy when they need to and rest in it. I don’t doubt next year will be an entirely different painting, but I do just occasionally let myself wish I didn’t have to reuse a once pre-intended canvas.
