my body electric

It’s time. It’s spring. It’s time to plant.

I take it out of the freezer where it’s been since last June, since Tikva’s birth.

I put it in the refrigerator and after a few days it has thawed.

I take it out again, open the top of the plastic container, and pour it into a bowl.

I look down on this magnificent thing – deep, dark red blood, a mass of veins, a symbol of life.

Tikva’s placenta, a few inches of her umbilical cord, and the amniotic sac that surrounded them and my Baby Girl. Incredible.

I need to cut off a piece of the placenta and put it in a sterile container. It’s going to a doctor who is researching the possible genetic causes of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. She may be able to isolate Tikva’s DNA from her placenta and include her in the study. Maybe tell me something that might explain… something. Perhaps. Before losing that opportunity, it’s worth a try.

So I dig my fingers into its softness, marvel at every inch.

My body made that. My body made that for my Baby Girl! That which nourished her while she was inside me, helped her grow. I can’t help but wonder at how amazing that is – it is not diminished by the fact that something still went awry as she grew inside me. In this beautiful thing in my fingers, I see what my body did for Tikva – I see how hard my body worked to nourish her and keep her well.

I cut off a small piece from one side, then another piece. I take a piece of the umbilical cord, and some of the blood, and I put them all into a small sterile container. Tikva’s DNA in a plastic vial. The rest back in the big container, back in the refrigerator. My hands under the flowing water, I watch the red of the blood run down the drain.

A few days later I plant the rest of the placenta underneath a new rosebush – golden yellow and orange roses with some pink. The best kind of fertilizer to help them grow and blossom. The roses are going to smell amazing when they bloom. The colors make me think of Tikva… warm and delicious and delicate and soft. So sweet.

photo by sleepingbear

I can’t help but be amazed at what my body is capable of – both the magic and the messy stuff. I’ve struggled with illness, with being overweight and underweight, with the constant practice of learning to love my body in spite of the jiggle and flab and blemishes. I haven’t always treated my body like a temple… I certainly haven’t always loved my body unconditionally.

But the three times I was pregnant I treated it like the Taj Mahal.

I took for granted the magic when Dahlia grew perfectly inside me and was born with relative ease. I was stunned with disbelief – Me? No way! – when I miscarried at ten weeks a few years later. Miscarrying felt like small potatoes when I learned that Tikva had a potentially life threatening birth defect – My baby? How can that be?

I’m honestly not sure what to make of it all – all that my reproductive body has created. I have planted two placentas: Dahlia’s with fuchsia colored dahlia tubers and Tikva’s with orange yellow roses. I planted the remains from my miscarriage with yellow dahlias.

Lots of flowers that are now in other people’s gardens.

One radiantly healthy living child asleep in my quiet home.

My slightly deflated spirit housed in this familiar almost-38-year old body that is both charged by what it is capable of and apprehensive about all that can go wrong.

My body actually feels strong, healthier overall than I have felt in years. It also feels – and certainly looks – older. I can’t say I really thought very intensely about being in my late thirties or even really noticed my aging body until this year – until I lost Tikva. It’s like someone polished the mirror and held it up to my face and said,

See? This is you. You are older. You have been through a lot. You are now even more weathered than you thought you could be.

Remember the movie Fame from 1980, at the very end when they do their senior performance and sing and dance all together…

I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me yet to come. I toast to my own reunion when I become one with the sun.

I sing the body electric. I glory in the glow of rebirth. Creating my own tomorrow when I shall embody the earth.

And I'll look back on Venus, I'll look back on Mars and I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars. And in time, and in time we will all be stars.

That song has been in my head the past few days as I have checked in with my own body electric. As I have thought about the possibility of rebirth after loss. About the kind of tomorrow I want to create – if indeed some of the creation is up to me.

I have been talking to my body, assuring myself that trust is still there between us – that body and I still believe in each other. I have felt pangs – my eyes have moistened – thinking about how incompatible with life Tikva’s beautiful body was. I have asked so many times,

What does it all mean? Why does it work only sometimes?

I have more questions than answers, of that I am sure. Yet I still feel like I have a lot to celebrate about my body…

My body that has given life, however fragile.

My body that is the only vessel I get this time around for my mighty and sometimes weary soul on this mysterious winding road.

My body that is – like Tikva’s – perfectly imperfect. Or is it imperfectly perfect?

I feel tremendous gratitude for my body electric – and the force of energy it both contains and creates.

.::.

What are you thankful for about your body? What brings you awe? What are you inspired to create when you look in your mirror?

This post is a part of The Body Shop at Glow in the Woods -- a month of themed reflections and memes that explore what we do in an effort to occupy these physical selves with grace after babyloss.

Comments

[Bon]

my relationship with my body was always fraught, from adolescence on. and it was only in the days and weeks after Finn's birth and death, swollen and broken and hating the world, that i first found genuine solace in and respect for my body, despite its failure to bring him safely into the world. because it had, nonetheless, been his home...and made him, in all his beauty. and so for the first time, i honoured my body, saw it too as beautiful, even while i cursed the spill of it over pants that no longer fit.

[Erica]

I hate the flab of my belly, but I love the belly itself. I am a nearsighted "round" person with scoliosis. When I was an infant I work a hip brace, when I was in junior high and high school I wore a back brace. I'm used to my body failing, being imperfect, and I'm grateful for modern medicine, without which, I'd be as good as blind and hunchbacked.

And yet, while Teddy was inside me he was safe, wiggly, cared for by the life support system of my uterus - a system so perfect and intricate that they couldn't replicate it for him once he was born. In the hospital, while they were coaxing him out of me, I was terrified because, much as I wanted to meet him, much as I hoped, I knew nothing they could do, no advanced medical equipment or techniques that could keep him safe, could breathe for him, as well as my body could.

My imperfect body, the body that may or may not be responsible for his hernia, was better and more effective than all of my (good) doctors and all of their (good) equipment. I'm in awe of that, still.

[Jill]

Gal, I don't know how you do it but your posts always seem so prescient. You always seem to offer your own wisdom and insights to something I've been thinking about. Thank you.

During the hours I held Emma after she died, I undressed her and poured over her beautiful, perfect chubby little body. She was gorgeous and I grew her - how can I not honour my body for that? She looked so very like her big sister and her big sister looks more like me than her big brother does (he's his daddy's mini-me!). When I look in the mirror I see little bits of Emma - a link between her and I. I have to hold onto these things because it would be so easy to focus on the negatives.

[Sally]

I am in awe of my body for growing a beautiful 8 pound baby girl, and for being able to carry her with such ease for 40 weeks and 5 days. I am still livid at my body though for allowing a tiny hole to appear in my membranes, which her safe watery home ever so slowly trickled out of on that final, fateful day in which a tiny nasty bug made its way in through, and took her precious life.
I have a love hate relationship with my body. Always battled the bulge, never been overly happy with how I looked - but when I was pregnant, I can truly say I loved myself. I loved how I looked, and I loved what my body was doing. When I look in the mirror now, despite the extra flab, sad eyes and the visibly aged face, I am inspired to do it all again, 1000 times over. I just want to keep making babies. And I will keep doing it, until my body really gets it right.

[sweetsalty kate]

Gal, I loved it all but the end of this post was incredible:

"What does it all mean? Why does it work only sometimes?
My body that has given life, however fragile.
My body that is – like Tikva’s – perfectly imperfect. Or is it imperfectly perfect?"

I'm thankful for my health. Not many people really think about this very much. You never really know how true this is - "at least you have your health" - until we don't have our health. There are endless communities of writers and bloggers and people supporting each other just as we do at Glow, but through palliative care and to their own ends. It's incredibly humbling and mind-blowing. It's hard work to nurture gratitude for our own health when our babies struggled... but we have to try, to counter the self-pity and self-loathing that lingers on so stubbornly after babyloss.

After losing Liam the simple things awe me. That my nose can smell. That when I breathe in, a whole series of coordinated, graceful things occur within my body to process the oxygen it needs. The cortex awes me, the part of the brain stem that tells us how to chew and swallow and sneeze.

When I look in the mirror - honestly - I'm inspired to create my own sense of femaleness and strength and sex. It got torn down completely and I hated myself. And so now I look in the mirror and I think 1) Wow, cool. A sneeze is an incredible thing; and 2) I need to decide to pour the goddamned concrete and nail down the floor joists and build up the walls of the woman I want to be. Cause it all has to be new, and it's going to take some effort, but I'm sick of wandering around in the rain, feeling cold and miserable.

This was so visceral, too, the placenta and the roses. Gal, this was just an amazing post on so many levels. thank you.
xo

[gal]

"It's hard work to nurture gratitude for our own health when our babies struggled..." Indeed it is, Kate - and all the more reason to appreciate the things I never really thought twice about before, like BREATH!

Some adage says there is opportunity in struggle, in hardship, in loss, or something like that. Perhaps the opportunity for us is to become even BETTER people than we were before knowing our little ones. It certainly is the greatest honor I feel I can give Tikva.

[Lani]

I never appreciated my body for what it could do until I wasn't able to do it anymore while I was pregnant. As I got bigger, I was more and more in awe of what it was doing inside, as much as I was hating what I couldn't do anymore. I was struggling to move in ways I was so used to moving so easily. Now I am dreaming of being in that place again.

Silas was a big boy- 9lbs 2oz, wow, I grew that? He was perfect and beautiful. It was us failing together which caused this to happen.

Gal, this post was amazing, it made me put down my lunch as the lump in my throat grew and the tears began to well up. I LOVE the movie Fame and love that song. It has taken on a new meaning for me now. I am going to listen to it over and over again and just feel it.

I too feel like my almost 38 yr old body has been ravaged and burdened by this loss, yet I do know its capable of starting this process all over again. I think its just about ready. I too, like Sally would like to keep trying as many times as I need to to get this thing right.

thank you Gal for your powerful words.

[Ezra's Mommy]

Gal this post is extraordinary. I am in awe of what my body can do, but in positive and negative ways. Yes this body grew my amazing perfect son Ezra. But it also killed him. I'm still angry at my body and have a hard time being grateful for it.

[Carly]

Extraordinary indeed. I felt like I was reading my own story here Gal. I have planted Scarlett and River's life cords underneath Christian's orange and yellow rose tree.

I created I big 8 pound baby girl. My body made her very ill and she almost died. Christian did die. I created a perfectly healthy 7 pound baby who is now pulling at my dress. I have had a few miscarriages too. In all I don't hate my body - I love her. Weathered and all. My body tells a story and with no clothes on its true I look much older than what I actually am. I too have struggled with being overweight and underweight. There are days when I look at me and wish I didn't have all the stretch marks but if that were true... I wouldn't have such a beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring story of my own.

When I look in the mirror I am inspired to keep doing what I am doing as I love the way I look x

[Catherine]

Gal, you are so very wise. Thank you so much for this post. I wish I knew why our bodies only work sometimes. Like Sally, I mainly feel inspired to do it all again. To take that chance on my own flawed body. It is the only chance I've got and I need to keep trying.

Tikva's rose is beautiful, such lovely warm colors, so full of life. I'm sure the flowers will look and smell amazing.

[Sophie]

I'm kind of with Ezra's Mommy on this. My body grew Jordan and she was beautiful and perfect in so many ways. But my body also caused her injury somehow. I was supposed to keep her safe and I failed. Sometimes I think that my body failed her so badly it couldn't even kill her properly and instead caused her prolonged suffering before she died.

I have many mixed feelings about it all. I guess somewhere along the line I must have some faith or hope in my body, otherwise I wouldn't be pregnant now.

Beautiful post Gal.

[melka]

this is a tough one for me. there's the stubborn, persistent cancer that's likely still lurking somewhere. and was the flawed placenta, the failure we recently learned about, the fault of my body? in the last several years, i feel like my trust in my body has been profoundly undermined. it's something i struggle with, feeding the uncertainty and anxiety in my current pregnancy.

it's weird, though, i realize i catch myself accidentally in a kind of awe with my body despite my misgivings. maybe in more indirect ways then when i was younger. blinking at bright light, deep breaths of cold air that make my lungs ache - aware of physically living in the world, experiencing it all. it is amazing.

but i can't say i feel strength. i don't feel power. i don't think i can really feel beauty in this body.

just awe - one that these days is too often close to fear.