Each 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 MoreDespite all my pleas and prayers, death invades my imagination so sharply that it becomes more potent than my reality. At any time of day, while I am driving, cooking, reading, working, just merely trying to put one foot in front of the other, death dangles the other shoe in front of me, daring me to avoid dropping it too.
Read MoreI thought another child would stitch some of my wounds closed. I thought she’d allow me to walk confidently into the next baby shower, naturally ask spontaneous questions about the pregnancies of others, not cringe when I walked past the New Baby section of a greeting card aisle. I thought I would stop crying behind closed doors when so-and-so announced she was pregnant. That none of this resolved neatly is another revelation, another betrayal.
Read MoreI begin to wonder if perhaps no one sees me. I don't utter a word, but no one says anything to me either. Maybe I am an apparition. Maybe I have died and am floating around looking at other people carrying on. Maybe I am visiting from another planet. Maybe my species cannot be identified by the human eye. No one seems to notice I exist. I am not sure if I do either.
Read MoreI look at the documents open on my computer. I need to write a story. About what I can do. How and where I fit. How much I want this. I picture myself, a broken me, as a piece in the giant machinery of an organization. Maybe my cracks will not show from a distance. Once I’m part of the bigger puzzle, maybe I will fit in and play my role in completing the picture. But for now, I need to tell my story the way it is. No, nothing positive really came from the loss. But it sucked the wind from under my wings. I am trying to get a little bit of it back. I hope I do it with you.
Read More“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” Signing up for my seminar, students don’t exactly expect to be discussing the inherent dignity and value of every human life. In that discussion, and in coming back to the quote throughout the semester, I hope to help my students develop some immunity against the very human desire to redeem the uncomfortable stories.
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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