The moment my eyes zeroed in on “This Is Not the Life I Ordered” during a rummage sale at Third Place Books, I knew I would buy it. My heart responded with an immediate and emphatic damn straight! I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover (or title), but in this case, I needn’t have worried. “This Is Not the Life I Ordered” is written by four middle-aged women who, over […]
I have found it surprisingly easy to both talk about and write about my first miscarriage. Maybe because it was the beginning of everything. It’s easy for me to start things, to set the scene, to introduce the characters, to begin. When I was in school, I always wrote great introductions for my papers. Finishing things was harder. I have a lot of half-finished projects, a lot of unrealized aspirations. Finding a clear path through […]
I discovered RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2017. I realize I was late to the party, but I have since made up for my delinquency by watching every season… multiple times. This was in the immediate aftermath of my fourth miscarriage, so I felt utterly broken and was not sure I wanted to go on trying to have a baby (or doing much else). Remarkably, RuPaul helped curb my depression. Apart from realizing that Drag Race […]
Several years ago my mom’s friend recommended I read “The Untethered Soul: A Journey Beyond Yourself.” It’s a beautiful book about the relationship between your thoughts and emotions and your true self. I read it after each of my last three losses, and it helped me experience my grief without being consumed by it. I pulled it out again this week, because the Covid-19 crisis has challenged my sense my control and triggered old anxieties. […]
This week marks the anniversary of my sixth and most recent miscarriage. The pregnancy was realized through a round of IVF using a genetically pre-screened embryo. When I learned the implantation took, I was so excited and nervous that I put myself on voluntary lock-down (not unlike the social distancing I’m currently practicing). I refused to travel for work or do anything strenuous. My levels looked great, and I began experiencing the wonderful bouts of […]
My sister’s friend lost her father two weeks after I lost my fourth pregnancy. He developed a relatively rare cancer, and though he fought valiantly, died much too young. I felt so sorry for her. I am close to my father, as was she, so I could easily imagine her heartbreak. I also felt like she was more entitled to grief than I was. Afterall, she was grieving 30-some years of memories of her father. […]
Many women struggle to talk about their experience of miscarriage, in part because many women don’t share the news of their pregnancy before the loss. But I also think it’s because as humans, admitting we’re in pain puts us in a position of vulnerability, and that feels uncomfortable and threatening. I felt isolated and ashamed. Nobody within my immediate circle had lost a pregnancy so I constantly wondered if I’d done something wrong. My close […]
My husband and I have been together a long time. We met in college and got married when we were 26. We were ambitious young professionals who enjoyed our independence. We traveled a lot on the weekends and socialized a lot in the evenings. We didn’t want to be young parents. Besides, people in our generation were having kids later these days anyhow, right? Right??? Sometimes I wonder if I had known then, what […]
I had dinner with a cousin of mine some months after my second loss. She was incredibly compassionate towards me, having lost her first pregnancy at 11 weeks, essentially right after she told the whole family about it. But in addition to having a high emotional intelligence quotient, she also has a dark humor which I greatly appreciate. She told me to watch the Garfunkel and Oates music video “Pregnant Women are Smug.” The first […]
I showed this image to my husband and it triggered a completely different set of feelings for him than it had for me when I drew it. He thought about times like our second pregnancy when, over the course of a week, we were told that my hormones were too low and things didn’t look good, then, after seeing a heartbeat on the ultrasound, told to progress as if things were normal, and ultimately told […]
Adventures of a Misbehaving Uterus 