It has been nearly 7 months since this episode of depression has started. I am feeling, generally, better. I am not cured. I have an enormous amount of spiritual and emotional work to do. I am not free from the ghosts that haunt me, yet.
Yet. That yet is my clue, that I am, in fact, better. Even on days when I don’t feel better, that yet sits somewhere within me, acknowledging the future. Even when I fight the process – and, do I ever – that yet is the closest thing I have to hope when depressed.
My mother was with me, at my sister’s wedding, a week or 2 after we noticed the depression. She diagnosed me on the spot. Grief. You are grieving, she said. I’ve been around this before. I’m telling you. This is grief. It had perhaps been coming on for a while – the full systemic meltdown of Karen holding it together. The laundry list of things only half grieved for had been left hanging on the line in all weather as I raise my kids and got through each day.
There were potential moments for unraveling, which I held at bay. I will always make that attempt. It is in my nature. I do not know how to be another way. If I did, I would rip of the bandaid and get it all done in one day (ha!). I flirted a few night ago with stopping my meds, because then perhaps, I could have full systemic meltdown and be down with this. Will depression leave me alone forever, if I let it have me now.
Oh, wait, that sounds a lot like bargaining doesn’t it? Oops. My mother was right. It appears I have been grieving and doing all the steps at the same time, or dancing around them in some unrecognizable pattern, but then finally, here I am actually bargaining with depression. However, I am dancing on the edge of something here…could it be acceptance.
There was a rather drastic onset to this episode. However this may sound (and to me it sounds extremely pathetic), I crashed more fully than I ever have upon learning that my best friend was moving to Italy for her husband’s work and not to Northampton to come a-church-planting & staying in birthy business with little old me.
Yes, I know, it sounds extreme. But to me, my world crashed down around me. I was looking forward to a new community – that included her – a new phase of my career- that included her – a difficult challenge for my family – that included hers. I saw a new, exciting phase of my life opening up before me. I was scared and amazed all at the same time. It looked like I had a gift in my hand, one I never expected. I held it and thanked God for it for about 10 months. Then, poof.
It hurt. It still does, that potential loss sitting out there waiting for me to experience it in the day to day.
It hurts in itself but also reflects the way miscarriage hurts. I peed on the stick, already knowing the answer. My heart a-flutter for 3 minutes, but staring the whole time, watching the test absorb the pee, watching the lines appear. My brain and heart move fast. I see the ages my kids will be when the baby comes. I see the craziness, the joy, the rearranging of furniture and car seats. I have no hold back in this area. Who I am to check my heart into place, to warn it to be more circumspect?
I stop enjoying alcohol, soft cheeses, ibuprofen, hot tubs and lunch meats. I choke down prenatal horse pills, vomit them up. Prop myself awake to take care of the kids and the house. My stomach turns at the thought of food, but I snack frequently to keep the nausea at bay. I pop B6s to boost my liver and suck on crystallized ginger to keep it all down where it needs to go. My ligaments instantly loose (more so with each pregnancy), my belly poking out (earlier each time, I have herniated my abs…or maybe Isaac did 10 years ago this week). Soon my clothes don’t fit – sooner than you’d think. All my energies pushed into this new creation.
The first spot of blood is like the floor disappearing. All suddenly gone and inexplicably so. Within a day, or maybe two, all is gone but the wondering why, the missing, the longing and birthdays that do not happen. This weekend marks what would have been Jordan’s 8th due date. I won’t say birthday. She was not born. My miscarriage with her was more like a labor than anything else, but it was not a birth.
If my story were a book, there would have been many foreshadowings of this huge loss – many stories that mimic this pattern. There have been echoes of it in the 8 years that follow, including one less traumatic miscarriage of a second girl baby that I carried not as long. But this is not a book and it is too much for one blog post to contain.
My miscarriage was in October; her due date early May – the same stretch of time this depression has crashed in on me. Over these hard winter months, I have been given a gift that did not bloom until spring. My pain over has been working itself out in my body. Since my sister’s tragic loss in February – a much loved baby girl born too soon – I have had a recurrent dream of reaching, reaching for something that is not there. In the morning I wake up with a strange shoulder injury, loose in my shoulder blade, tight in my neck, me elbow aching the way it did when all I did all day was carrying a very small baby in its crook. Twice now, I have woken with a shirt damp from milk – yet, I have not nursed a babe for over 18 months.
Once, exactly, I dreamt of my girls. For the very first time, I had a dream of being with them and not of loosing them. We sat together on a green hill of a farm, where we lived. We were rinsing fresh strawberries in water coming from an underground spring, gurgling through a rock that held the sun’s heat. I awoke sore in my arms and my breasts, but delighted to have tasted some of their sweetness, delighted to have seen their peace and joy. I never expected this passage I have been crawling through give me a gift such as this after so many years.
And speaking of gifts, another sweet one, came my way this week.
Jordan and Lily Rose are the names we gave our girls. A woman name Carly has been given a ministry to help those who grieve. It is a small gift to see their names in the sand at sunset. Yet somehow, it helps. I always struggle, having no where to go, no body to bury, no headstone to rest flowers on, no bed of grass to tend. We shall go today and tend to our magnolia tree and later I will share a picture of that. I am carrying the word yet in my heart and the taste of spring water and strawberries in my mouth.
Oh, Karen. I’m so, so sorry. xoxo
Oh, Karen. I’m so, so sorry. xoxo
Beautifully written, Karen. I am sorry you are going through so much sadness right now.
love you so much.planted my strawberries yesterday….now i will think of all three girls….
Beautifully written, Karen. I am sorry you are going through so much sadness right now.
love you so much.planted my strawberries yesterday….now i will think of all three girls….
i don’t think your friend going to italy is trivial at all. it sounds very upsetting.
i don’t think your friend going to italy is trivial at all. it sounds very upsetting.
oh, Karen. I have no words.but that names in the sand website? I am crying. what a gift.
oh, Karen. I have no words.but that names in the sand website? I am crying. what a gift.
This made my heart ache, Karen. I’m so sorry.
This made my heart ache, Karen. I’m so sorry.
Karen, Do you know of/read Glow in the Woods? It’s a group blog for parents who have lost babies. It may help to hear other voices. With my recent miscarriages, I find that I have no control over how they find me and attack my joy.
Karen, Do you know of/read Glow in the Woods? It’s a group blog for parents who have lost babies. It may help to hear other voices. With my recent miscarriages, I find that I have no control over how they find me and attack my joy.
Oh wow Karen – my heart is aching this Mother’s Day as I read this. You have written it so so beautifully. I am reaching for “yet” with you in my spirit…and rejoicing that HE makes ALL THINGS new…
Oh wow Karen – my heart is aching this Mother’s Day as I read this. You have written it so so beautifully. I am reaching for “yet” with you in my spirit…and rejoicing that HE makes ALL THINGS new…