Moments of Purposeful Solitude
You need to pause at least once a day and spend a few moments breathing silently. Use these moments to think and consciously separate the past from the present and future. Responsibilities, obligations, unfinished business, family and friends can all survive without you while you take these moments for yourself. You deserve this time away. You deserve to think peacefully, free from external pressure. No problems to solve, hands to shake, or people to please. Sometimes you need to make time for yourself, away from the busy world you live in that doesn't make time for you.
I have had a handful of conversations this week around the idea of purpose. I have had this restlessness in my heart lately. This feeling that I am not doing enough, being enough, trying enough- that I am not living up to my life's purpose. I know so much of it comes from having to redirect my life from "I should be a mom right now" to who am I right now? But even when I was pregnant I knew that while being a mom is the most important role I could play in my life, it isn't the only role I am meant to play. I am a daughter and an activist and an organizer and a friend and a writer and on and on. I am meant to do and be all in one, all at once. So these last couple of weeks of really feeling like I am not living up to my life's purpose have slowly but surely sent me towards depression. I find myself retreating, not calling people back, spending lots of time alone in my room knowing the possibilities are endless but the motivation is none. Grief does not just run its course. It isn't a bad cold. It does not have an expiration date. I have to work through it and depression is part of it.
After talking out this feeling of restlessness I came to a better place with purpose and where I am in life. I let go of this gran-dios notion of how I am meant to be amazing and remembered that the only way that happens is to do amazing things every day. I give purpose to my life. What I do matters in every way that I make it so. The person that I bring to every situation and interaction, that person matters. The person I am when I am at work, the person I bring into support group meetings, the person who makes time to write this blog. I give those moments purpose therefore I give my life meaning. This transitional period in my life, this period of grief, I will honor that. I will be here with it so that eventually I can create purpose in other spaces of my life. Sometimes I resent having to take this time, feeling like I lost a year or two or however long this part of the process will take on top of losing my baby. Haven't I lost enough? And you know what? I am right. It fucking sucks. But its my life. And I will take a year or two or however long it takes to be in this part of the process. My life isn't on hold while I grieve. Grieving is a part of my life.Life is happening now. I am not losing this time, I am trying to make the most of it. This is life, welcome it.
Today is International Bereaved Mothers Day. What a shitty holiday. Quite possibly the worst remembrance day ever. I once heard the statistic that one in four pregnancies ends in child loss. Losing a child seems to be as common as having one except no one likes to talk about the loss part. No one prepares you when you are pregnant and everyone collectively sighs after the twelve week mark- all clear. Bullshit. It is never all clear. You can never collectively sigh. Life is fragile from the moment of conception until the moment you take that last breath. Health is guaranteed to no one and nature is as random in its selection as it seems to be cruel. Nature does not take into account values and ethics. It doesn't care about morals. That's why a 15 year old can have a completely healthy baby and leave it in a bathroom stall at her prom and the mothers in my group can spend their whole lives trying to bring just one healthy baby home. Nature doesn't care about fairness. It doesn't put mothers on a scale where the ones with better life circumstances all deserve children and all other moms need not apply. Nature doesn't know that I would have been a great mother to Mateo and it doesn't care. I am not owed his life anymore than the 1 out of 4 mothers whose pregnancies have ended in loss. I am not owed my child any more than any mother who has lost and loved. But God do I wish I were....
Next week is Mother's Day. What might also turn out to be another crappy remembrance day for me. It has been brought up in different groups and the question keeps coming up- Do I want to be honored that day? Am I not still a mother? Will I be hurt if no one wishes me a happy mother's day? Honestly, I don't know. I am a mother, even if I am the saddest kind of mother. So do I want people to wish me a happy mother's day? Sure. Do I want people to not wish me a happy mother's day? Ok. I'll welcome the kindness and forgive the rest.
This week for our support group we have been asked to write a letter to our children. I wrote Mateo a letter and had it places in his casket. I think sometimes of the worlds smallest skeleton lying in the world smallest casket and this long handwritten letter preserved in a way he never could be. In the letter I told him many things but mostly that I was sorry and that I love him. Boy, do I love him. In this very deep way I never knew possible and so therefore I hurt in this very deep way I never knew possible. So now I will write him another letter and share it in my support group. I am not sure what it will say, something along the lines of I love you...that's all I really have to say these days....
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