We are stronger than we think...

I remember first getting a call from my doctor when I was about four months pregnant telling me that some blood tests I had done showed high levels indicating Micah might have Spina Bifida.  I thought, "I am not strong enough to handle this..." Little did I know what the next month would bring.

When we first found out Micah had died, I was crushed.  I felt a weight so heavy pushing me down, I thought I would never be able to lift it.  Like any workout (physical or emotional), it was so tempting to give up, to say I am not strong enough and let myself be crushed.  It would have been so much easier to give in to the blackening world around me and sleep and sleep and sleep.

Nine weeks ago I started a workout program called Body Back.  The owner (Breanne) offered me the class for free (a huge, sweet gift).  Like many other things that had come my way at the time, I just wanted to say no.  There were huge risks involved: It was a workout program for moms, what if I met other women with babies? I didn't want to know happy families. What if I made friends?  I didn't want more friends. What if I found out I actually was not strong enough to do this?

I rallied and said yes any way and I am so glad I did.  Looking at my physical before and after pictures, I wish that I could have taken mental before and after.  When I first started going to the biweekly workouts, I would cry every time the quiet cool down part would come.  The other women in class would offer support, having no idea why the strange blonde one cried every day.  By the end of the program, cool downs became a time to reflect on my growth and progress and hope.  The weight was easier to lift, the load got lighter, I got stronger.

Here are the physical pictures.... before is on the left and after on the right.

Testing

It is funny how things come up once and then right away, there they are again.  Yesterday morning I was at breakfast with two dear friends (and Zach, my 1.5 year old) and we (well, the girls and I, Zach was not really involved in the conversation) were talking about our blogs.  We all want to blog more and were sort of analyzing the things that deter us from doing so.  One thing I have been hesitant about is sharing my real name and information on my blog-what if someone I know reads it and is offended?!  Maybe I will just keep everything anonymous that way no one will be offended.  The problem with that is that getting to know people and working through emotions together as humans journeying down a path is the exact reason I started I Measure Every Grief.  So, it was decided: I will post my real name just as I will post my real thoughts in hope that others will do the same.  Offense be damned.

Then, last night something was said that I really want to blog about.  The problem? Blogging it will put my real feelings out there.  It is not really that I am afraid to show those feelings: they are real and mine and I am not ashamed of them.  What I am afraid of it hurting the feelings of the person who said something that I want to blog about.  What if she reads it and is crushed that she hurt me in the way she did?  Do I even have the right to blog it if I didn't say anything to her at the time?  Is it like a train that left the station: it is too late now to get on, so keep quiet and move on.

Well, all that to say that I don't think it is any small coincidence that the girls and I were just talking about this very thing and then the opportunity presented itself that very day.  I know I need to let my thoughts be known because I want to be real and, in real life, people say things without thinking and sometimes those things hurt.  And sometimes we can decide how to react. And sometimes we can't.  This is a time I could and I think it shows progress.

So, here it goes.  In order to understand what happened, you have to know more of my story than you currently do from my one beginning post.  You may remember I was five months pregnant this past April (2011) and, at a 20 week routine ultrasound, we found out our dear baby Micah had died.  There is so much more to the story, but what you need to know now is that we had two choices: deliver Micah in the hospital (on the maternity ward with all the living babies) or go to Planned Parenthood and have a dilation and evacuation (basically it is what a later term abortion is only our baby was already dead).  Neither choice seemed real.  Neither was pleasant or good or beautiful.  We made the choice to go to Planned Parenthood and we traveled a path neither my husband or I ever thought we'd go down.  We saw and heard and learned things that will never leave our minds, things that changed us forever.  Sometimes I look at our choice and think we chose wrong, but then I realize there is no right in the situation we were in and I think we choice the least wrong possible for us.

I won't go into more details than that for now, but it was the most difficult experiences of my life.  Even now I sometimes can't stop my mind from thinking about that choice: What happened to Micah when they "evacuated" him?  What happened to his little body after? How is it even possible a sane woman would choose to do something like that to her living child? Did I make the wrong choice even though my child was dead?  Did I honor his memory or take the easy way out?

Any way, last night I was together with some dear friends celebrating a birthday.  These ladies have been amazing-they have journeyed beside me through my grief and insanity, they have laughed with me, cried with me, listened to me and supported me no matter what is going on in their lives (including one gal who is pregnant with her first baby-how hard to e traveling that path while your friend travels the one of loss).

Somehow the topic of Planned Parenthood protesters came up and one friend went into graphic detail about a sign a protester held of an aborted baby, describing the horror of what happened to the dear angel's body as he (or she) was pulled from the womb too soon.  It felt like time froze and I could see the two roads that Robert Frost refers to diverging in the woods: I could let my mind be sucked into the sadness and unhealthiness of thinking about poor Micah and his little body and what must have happened to him or I could be strong and I know I made the choice I made with the information at the time, I did what I thought was best for me and my family and that he was not with me any more-his body was just the shell he inhabited for all too short a time.

I could feel myself drifting away from the group of women, my mind disengaging with the present and going into the past, into a world imagining what might have been.  I am not sure how long I let myself go into the unhealthy place, but I know it was not as long as it used to be.  I chose to come back.  I chose to reengage with my friends, to be present and enjoy their company.  And I am glad I did.

A place to start...

This is my first posting and I think most blogs start with now, but in order to understand this blog and its purpose and mission, we have to begin a little more than three months ago.  On April 15, 2011 I was five months pregnant with my second child, Micah.  I went in for a routine 20 week ultrasound.  When the technician asked me to return to see the doctor later that day, I knew something was wrong (actually, I had known something was wrong the whole pregnancy, but that is a different post for a different day).

Later, when the doctor looked at me with a look I would become very familiar with and said the baby had no heartbeat, I thought I would die.  Literally.  How do you even walk out of the ultrasound room knowing the child inside of you has died?  The life you are carrying in your womb is no more.  The hope you had is gone.  Not only has your child been taken from you, but so has your innocence, your faith, your joyful understanding of life itself.  All gone.

This blog is not about that moment.  It is not about what has been taken from me, or millions of other women, men and children out there.  This blog is about connecting with others-trying to understand their grief while I share the story of working through mine.  I hope you will leave a comment after visiting here.  I believe seeing each other's pain AND joy is what connects us all and helps us feel both more deeply.  I believe walking down life's paths is a dangerous journey and to do so alone is more than anyone can handle.

I named this blog after the Emily Dickinson poem, "I Measure Every Grief," because that is what I now find myself doing.  I don't think I am comparing my grief to others' to win a grief prize or hope there are sorrows that will make mine seem not so bad, but rather I compare with the hope that the person I am talking to or reading about will, in some small way, know and understand my grief because they have been there.  The key to healing is connection with others.  I hope we can find there here.