Hello there, happy Sunday!
I’m writing this from a coffee shop this morning, sipping on a honey-sweetened matcha (turns out I like matcha now!). There’s a gaggle of women chatting on one side of me, an older couple in a deep conversation to the other side of me, the clinks and clatters of silverware and dishes, children laughing in the distance… and I’m over here thinking about death.
You know, just casual things for me.
A few months ago, I had a death in my life. I somewhat hesitate calling it a death — because is a miscarriage a death when your baby didn’t get a chance to live?
Right before returning to the U.S after doing rounds of egg retrievals in Thailand, we decided to transfer one of our embryos, and the circumstances were GOOD. Everything was GOOD. The embyro was good quality, my uterus had been prepped and primed by handfuls of vitamins and a protein-rich diet and moderate exercise and shots full of hormones stabbed directly into the softness of my belly again, and again, and again.
I did my mantras. I practiced positive thinking. I said my prayers.
I sat in a dark hospital room, with a smile on my face and tears down my cheeks as I watched the ultrasound screen. My doctor reverently inserted the hatched embryo with a pleased smile. The position was perfect, she said. My uterus looked good. My hormone levels were good. It was all good, good, GOOD.
Losing our baby — I don’t know how else to call her — fetus and embryo do not carry the hope and connection we felt — it felt like a betrayal of all the work and time and money and energy we had exerted. She could have been our baby, she was going to be our baby, and losing the potential of her life knocked the wind out of me.
As timing would have it, I painted my first commissioned mural as I bled out the possibility of becoming her mother.
And there was something to that for me — the birth of a business, the birth of professional opportunities amidst the profound loss of my first real attempt at motherhood.
A business opportunity doesn’t replace the premature death of a potential child. But I was astonished at the realization that life keeps going amidst grief, amidst feeling like you can’t go on. Somehow, you just… do.
To borrow a line from this novel, “Things in nature merely grow.”
After destruction, after loss, after harsh winters, things in nature merely grow. Bright green sprouts push through black soil. Life follows death, in all its forms.
I found myself at a Christian church near our new house a few Sundays ago. I stood with the congregation and sang the classic Christian worship song:
All my life You have been faithful,
All my life You have been so, so good
With every breath that I am able
Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God
As I sang it those lyrics — all my life You have been so, so good — I felt like I meant it, and I wondered how I could mean it.
And I guess that’s the thing about attempting to live a life with God. There’s a sort of stubborn hope held out for a boundless, universal mercy — it can’t be hope in an outcome, but more like hope that you will be held, and strengthened, and continue to merely grow.
Because writing this took a lot of out of me, I’m skipping my Sunday Somethings recommendations this week. But I’d like to remind you to sign up for the mail club by July 20th to get August’s zine (and beyond)! August’s theme is all about botanical metaphors in religion. I’m excited about it 🪴
30 years worth of life lessons that nobody asked for
Seeing the sacred in the ordinary
Learning to trust (because what other choice do we have, really?)
Why some things will never be the same post faith deconstruction
On wanting to hope during IVF
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