From the day of the positive pregnancy test, my mind switched gears. It switched from aspirations and baby planning to PTSD and sleepless nights. Endless hours of slumber are now lost to staring blankly at the ceiling, wondering if I should give into this new week's set of worries. As my panic progresses into an all-consuming whirlwind, I contemplate tossing myself into triage as the only way to anchor my feet to solid ground.
Read MoreI can’t hide it anymore. There is something in there. Sixteen weeks. Time to turn my frayed emotions on, whether I want to or not. Even if it will hurt me in the end—even if piercing disappointment, crippling trauma, and irreparable loss is all that I have come to expect from pregnancy and motherhood.
Read MoreAt times, people may think me depressed: I wear my tears with pride, my pain a badge of honor for having known love. At times, people may think me jealous of others: I am no longer naive. I know horrible things can strike us at any moment, and this I do not take for granted. At times, people may think me weak: Yet I rise from the wounds of my past, while they utter that they cannot imagine.
Read MoreEach title carefully lined up over the years— wife, career-oriented woman, home owner, expectant mother—is stripped from me, and I am left in the aftermath, as naked and afraid as a child, with nothing to show for it but my own bewildered mind, and the question that repeats itself relentlessly in my head: Who am I?
Read MorePerhaps there is another reality out there, across some vast time-space divide, some wormhole that had been breached when the nurse could not find his heartbeat. Another place, where I meet my son alive. Where I can watch his chubby little fingers curl around my husband's hand. Where I watch him enter into fatherhood, where I am properly reconciled into motherhood.
Read MoreI struggle. I find myself mirroring the jovial spirits of my peers, returning their utterances of “Happy Holidays.” As I say this, I wander inside myself, an unwiilling participant of this merry time of year. Instead, I turn inwards—the Ghost of Christmas Past, trapped far back in time.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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