This morning, as I sat down to write, The Chief handed me my morning lemon water in a different vessel. This one:

I picked it up without recognizing it and was about to take a sip when I noticed the dust. Dust it held from hanging, waiting, undisturbed for a year. My grandmother Gam’s cup. I had avoided the cup since her death, memorialized it, for if I was drinking from it, certainly she was not and if that was the case, she truly was gone. She is gone. That simple action of handing me her cup brought that reality forward.

Sometimes, it takes someone shaking you up to see what’s right in front of you. That seems to be the theme lately. So, as I sip from my Grandmother’s now clean cup, I’ll tell you another tale of a shakeup.

A few weeks ago, I went to Town to see my new niece.

As you might remember, I had gone in last October to get my girlfriend settled and cozy in anticipation of my niece’s birth. I told you all the sweet details of preparing for the baby, the moments we shared together, the honor I felt to get to be there. What I didn’t tell you was this:

I too was pregnant.

After our lovely long weekend together, The Chief swooped me up and we switched gears towards the reason he had driven in: our first prenatal appointment. We had found out we were pregnant the day after our first wedding anniversary. This was a gift no money could buy, the best we had ever received (no offense, paper) and we were excitedly jumping into our new roles of Mom and Dad. It was finally happening.

We were going to be parents. On the way to the hospital, you could feel the excitement. Even Leto was charged by it. We arrived and bid him adieu, telling him we were off to meet his baby (I’ve never met a dog more into kids than him so, from the get go, the baby was “Leto’s Baby”. Even our friends call their kids “Leto’s baby. It’s amazing). The excitement continued as we entered the OB’s office. Everyone was smiling, congratulating us, laughing with us as I answered their questions.

“Nausea?”
“Constant”
“Tender milk jugs (OK, they called them “breasts”, obviously, but milk jugs is far funnier)?”
“Like balloons ready to pop!”
“Any other changes?”
“Well, I pee 4 times a night and can’t sleep in between. ‘Mom-somnia’ I’ve dubbed it. The other night I woke up at 3 am and organized our medical supplies then ate 7 packets of fruit snacks, which I’ve never liked and I can’t suck in my belly to save my life. So, no, nothing’s changed.”

We all laughed. Pregnancy had turned my world upside down. The day I found out I was pregnant, I laughed when I saw the test. Pregnant?! Couldn’t be. It took me 7 more tests (What if they had frozen last winter? What if they were faulty? What if I was hallucinating?) to be convinced and one walk by myself to know for sure. As I strolled along the river we were married next to that bright Fall morning, I suddenly felt as if my belly had sun rays coming straight out of it. There was a glow inside of me, a little light to let me know that I was finally a mother. My whole heart smiled. It was a tranquility I’d never known.

Every night after that, I slept my with my hand on my belly, feeling the warmth of that little light and the deep peace I felt for the first time in my life. Now, almost 10 weeks into our pregnancy, after months of bonding with our little beam, we were set to meet them.

The nurse began the not-so-fun-but-who-cares-we-are-having-a-baby-so-poke-and-prod-as-you-will process, all of our excitement building. We had all talked so much that The Chief was about to be late for a dental appointment so we did the ultrasound first. The whooshs and whirs whisked about until finally, the image became clear. The Chief excitedly said “Is that it?! Is that our baby?”. The nurse and I were silent. I squeezed his hand and hoped I was wrong. I prayed I was wrong. When next the nurse spoke, she confirmed I wasn’t. There was no heartbeat, just a sweet little being floating within me. Tears erupted but I kept my pain quiet, turning only to The Chief to tell him I needed him to skip his appointment. “Of course, baby.”

Baby.

I’ve read about miscarriage, heard stories and lore. None of it prepares you for your own or for the added insult to injury you’ll endure.

“I’m sorry but I need to take some measurements now, if that’s OK?” the nurse said, the ultrasound probe still inside of me. “OK” I whispered. And so I lay there, The Chief and I squeezing one another’s hands, holding one another’s gaze, tears steadily streaming, until she was done and we could be alone for a moment. The door latched behind her and I broke. The Chief went into savior mode, a role we’ve traded countless times in the last three years. He told me it would be OK, we would have a baby, just not this time. I was numb. I cleaned myself up and dressed, my actions mechanical. The nurse returned, telling us she thought our babe had been 8 weeks but wanted to verify. I’d need another ultrasound. Could I go right now? I agreed, not knowing I’d agreed to spending another hour looking at our babe with its perfect arms and legs and fingers so tiny. Our dead child, embryo to be exact, if that matters to you. It doesn’t to me.

On our way out, I handed the nurse the New Mom Gift Bag they’d given me as I’d walked in. So much happened in that small gesture. Motherhood, stripped away.

We spent the rest of the day in appointments amongst pregnant mothers, pregnant phlebotomists (she was on her 3rd but her husband wants 5), everyone, pregnant. At the second ultrasound, they confirmed the baby had been dead for almost two weeks. My body, once a place of light and love, a growing garden, had become a graveyard.

At the second OB appointment that day, they explained I’d experienced a Missed Miscarriage. This is where the growing babe is no longer alive but your body fails to miscarry. Fails. I felt my body had failed me. That I had failed me. That I had failed our baby. Without me saying a word to hint of my feelings, they immediately assured me there was nothing I could have done differently, that this happens, that it’s very common for first pregnancies. That it happens to a lot of women. None of that matters. It truly doesn’t. Not to me at least. I don’t want anyone to feel what I felt and to know so many do only broke my heart more.

I felt as if I’d been playing a brutal game of Chutes and Ladders and suddenly, I found myself back at the start. All I had focused on was making it through the first trimester, making it safe, getting to home base and here we were, struck out. The worst part?

I knew.

A few weeks before our appointment, the day of the baby shower we threw for my girlfriend, in fact, I started spotting.

I panicked. I rushed inside and asked my girlfriends if they had experienced that. I’ll never forget the look on their faces. It was gone in a flash: fear. It was probably the same look on my face. They immediately assured me it was probably fine but something to keep an eye on. The next morning, I awoke, hand on belly, ready to greet my babe and I felt…nothing. The light had gone out. I rolled over to The Chief and told him and thus the mindfuck began.

Excuse my language, but pregnancy is a mindfuck. I have seriously good intuition, like intuition so good that I’ve been called a witch (thank you) on many occasions. Premonitions, gut instincts, call it what you will, I knew the light had gone out. Yet pregnancy, even the getting pregnant part of pregnancy is all about positive thought. Even the straightest arrow, least woo woo type of woman will tell you that. You have to just move forward, assuming things are fine. It never stops, or so I’ve heard. Not when you pass the first trimester, not when your baby is born, not when you baby becomes a toddler, teen or adult. I once heard someone say that having children is like having your heart living outside of your body. So, despite knowing that something was wrong, and after a day long uphill attempt to get medical care to check if I was right, I finally gave in and gave myself up to positive thought. I’d wait for the appointment and hope I was wrong, despite what I deep down knew to be true. See, pregnancy is a mindfuck.

Next on the list of Terrible Things To Do was to decide how we would have our miscarriage. Oh joy! Would we like to take a little pill? Go under the knife? Wait it out? The third option was mentioned and then immediately taken away, given our proximity to medical care were we to go home. So, two options. The pill which causes cramping so severe that you expel the baby, or surgery.

As with most choices, it wasn’t that cut and dry. The pill cost somewhere around $5. It promised pain and a 48-hour long window in which the miscarriage would occur, who knows exactly when, like a sniper laying in wait. I’d be up close and personal with the blood and byproducts of our child. The surgery was the polar opposite. So sterile, so…surgical. I’d go to sleep as a walking grave for our babe and wake up hollow. Both sounded terrible but when the quote came in for the surgery at over $2,000 (this is with insurance, mind you), the choice for me was made. Plus, I think I wanted to feel pain.

The Chief kept asking about the surgery, in fact, he was the only one asking questions. I was in a haze, a daze of disbelief. The nurse suggested ice cream. OK. Ice cream, for being such a good girl. We got ice cream and went to the dog park, two surefire fixes for a bad mood (for me). I cried the whole time.

I went home with the pill that night and took the dose. The bottle warned of horror stories, of the slight chance of irreparable damage. I swallowed bitterly.

The cramps started 15 minutes later. I put on my game face and prepared for the worst and all through the night, I writhed in pain but still, nothing. 20 hours later, I realized they had never given me pain meds for the true pain that was set to arrive any minute. 5 hours later, after countless phone calls, The Chief was finally able to pick them up. I waited at home, a shadow of myself. Unable to read or write or watch TV, fielding phone calls like a secretary for my body. I just stared into nothingness. The following day, back at the doctor again to discuss next steps, I decided I wanted the surgery. My body was holding onto this baby and I knew it would never let go unless it was ripped from its grasp. We scheduled my COVID test and pre-op appointment and put down the down payment of $1000 with the warning that our quoted price of $2000 didn’t include anesthesia and they had no ballpark figure to give us. “It just depends on the person.”

That night, after two days of cramping and anticipation and fear for what was to transpire, I prayed for my body to wait until the surgery. I was beaten down and exhausted from lack of sleep, from building myself up to handle the pain each time I thought the time had come. I couldn’t summon the strength to miscarry. I slept for the first time in a long time, through the night. The next day, as I signed the forms stating I knew the risks and to whom to distribute my assets should the risks become reality, I held back tears. The staff were all so kind, so gentle. They wrapped me in a blanket that pumped warm air and slowly I counted back from 10. It felt like I had just been on 7 when I woke up again.

The tears I had held back before came pouring out as the nurse asked me how I was. Her next question was a saving grace. “Would you like a hug?” Despite COVID, despite what might be considered appropriate, that woman saw my pain and offered all she could to help me. I’ll always be grateful for her. She told me later, after The Chief had arrived that the first thing I had said after coming out of surgery had been that “At least the place we are staying has a bed on the ground floor so our dog can cuddle with us. He really loves that. So that’s good.”

So, that’s good.

The next day, in pain and exhausted again, I had my post-op appointment. We had scheduled it in person the day before at our pre-op but the computers had been down and it got lost in the technological swap between the handwritten analog and the digital brain. We waited. Finally, a nurse came up to me and asked if I really wanted a vaginal ultrasound because she didn’t think it necessary, in front of the entire room, full again with happy couples ready to burst and babes newly born into this world. Want? Hell no. I’m here because I have to be. It only got worse from there as she escorted us into the farthest room in the office, the room I dubbed The Crying Room because it seemed to be the room bad new was dealt. Safely within the privacy of The Crying Room she told me point blank she was “Sorry that our appointment had gotten confused. You see, the appointment was marked as a prenatal appointment, but you aren’t pregnant anymore, so we canceled it.” I broke again the moment she left the room. Our doctor came in soon after and we wrapped up the story of our short time together. She promised me again it was nothing I did that caused this and that, contrary to what I’d always heard, we “could start trying again as soon as I felt ready”. Those words have floated around my head ever since. So have these.

Ruin.
Failure.
Breakdown.
Miscarriage.

Mis-carriage. I was the carriage for my baby, the safe vessel. Adding mis-, meaning “mistakenly, wrongly or badly” to this word, how do we not somehow, even subconsciously assign blame? I think it’s time to call it something different.

The day of and after surgery, we shopped like mad, gathering supplies for months on end, since we would no longer be coming in for monthly doctor’s visits as we had planned. In between aisles I would rest on the cart, faint, bleeding into a pad the size of an adult diaper, cramping and dizzy. Despite my need for rest, I didn’t want to be alone and so I slowly followed The Chief through our chores.

Since we’d been gone for a week longer than planned, our friends had to keep our house from freezing in the deepening cold of October. The drive home was lonely and solemn, minus the time where somehow Leto’s window started to open, nearly catapulting him out of the car into oncoming traffic as we careened down a deep decline.

The Chief pulled over and I wailed. Everything felt so precarious, like all things I loved were in danger. I felt I was losing my grasp on sanity and a part of me felt like just letting go, surrendering.

We returned to a house in disarray, quiet and austere. The Chief had installed flooring and painted the living room while I was away, since we hadn’t wanted me around the fumes (something we didn’t have to worry about now) and thus, the house was in boxes. My plants, a pure luxury in Winter and now over a year old, were holding on by a thread, despite a neighbor’s attempt to rescue them.

Everything felt dead. Nothing on the walls, no books, television for distraction, no comfy setup and all of the reminders of what was. Prenatals. The foods I had been craving. The pregnancy test I kept in my underwear drawer to pull out and smile at from time to time. The names we had brainstormed, the plans we had made. Everywhere, everything reminded me of what wasn’t.

And so, we set to distract. From the moment we landed, it was work. Work to put the home back together, work to unload and assemble and organize all the newness we had brought home. Work to ignore what had just happened.

And that was that.

After all we’d already been through, losing our Cinda, The Chief’s Mother, Grandmother and Father, my Godmother, and Grandmother and our friend, Jason (less than a week after our wedding), I wasn’t going to let this take me down. I wouldn’t be “that” woman who couldn’t get past it. Oh the disdain we have for her. So, after all the housework was done, fully unrested, back to work I went. Case closed. Start again.

“You can start trying as soon as you feel ready.”

We started right away. I was fine. We were fine. Everything was fine. I ran through the stages of grief, collecting badges along the way. Denial? Check! Anger? Check! Acceptance? Fuck yes! I gave myself an A+ in grief and a gold star to boot. Done. After two weeks of prescribed abstinence due to the risk of infection, we were back in the game. Square one. Home base and up to bat.

So far, our stats are 0 for 4. We aren’t exactly getting called up to the Big Leagues and for once in my life, at least in retrospect, I’m glad to have failed because a few weeks ago, I broke. For real this time. Like I said in the beginning of this entry, sometimes, it takes someone shaking you up to see what’s right in front of you. That clarity came by way of a trip to meet my new niece.

Leona is her name, born exactly one month to the day after my surgery (we’ve had a lot of painful parallels like that) and she’s perfect.

The last night I visited her, we held a ceremony for my girlfriend to honor the journey she’d been through.

After describing the massage we’d give her to recalibrate her body my friends turned to me and offered to do the same. Honor what my body had been through and help to recalibrate. Me? I said, as if we didn’t all know why they were offering. I accepted, hoping this would be the saving grace to make the creeping up sadness vanish. The moment they started, I let out a wail I could no longer contain. I wanted so badly to just fall apart. I promptly stopped myself.

The reality is, rather than put me back together again, that massage, that sitting in the house we both had been pregnant in together, holding my sweet neice who was to be my babe’s buddy, that focus on my body, my womb that never came to be, broke me instead of mended me. I needed that.

I couldn’t be put back together until I had fully fallen apart and finally, I fell the hell apart. Fully. Awkwardly. It was messy and bitter and angry and it’s not over but I am so grateful for it. That visit made me realize I was not OK and the only way to get closer to OK again was to go through it. The girlfriend I had traveled to Town with saw right through my veneer and before we knew it, we were both sobbing over Pop Rocks Jell-o shots (because we are amazing like that). “I see your pain. It’s right there, Julia. Ready to bubble over. You have to let it out.”

For the first time in months, I could breathe. I didn’t have to pretend I was OK.
I wasn’t.
I’m not.
I will be.

That night we purchased an armload each of candles and went home, lit them and laid on the floor melting along with them to music. The next day, we both bought flowers on our way out of Town. Homeward bound. When we reached home, after driving 300 miles and braving road glaciers, we parted ways with a promise.

A release, we would help me find a release. As I walked in the house, The Chief could tell all was not right and I confessed it was true. I couldn’t pretend I was alright anymore. I spent the next few days comatose, unable to make the simplest decisions. Tea or coffee? I don’t know. I don’t care. Grief makes you numb, dumb to your needs.

A week ago today, as I write this, my girlfriend and I had the release. A ceremony. In preparation, I had reached out to all the women (plus my Pops) in my life who knew about the miscarriage and asked them to light a candle between during our ceremony and then, to blow it out afterwards, a letting go. As the clock struck two we packed up our witchy goodness, candles, sage, crystals, the flowers we had purchased, into a sled and made our way down to The River. The river that has held so much happiness and so much pain for me here. I wore a flower crown my girlfriend had made me and a flower jumpsuit under my winter bibs. She wore a flowered dress over her warm clothes. We were bringing rebirth to the darkness.

For the first time ever, Leto didn’t follow his Dad when he left that day on the snowmachine. He instead stayed right with us. He knew where he was needed.

We found the perfect spot, out in the middle of The River and set to it, our brains working in tandem without words, laying the flower petals in a huge circle, facing the West.

As the sun set that night, we bid farewell to the little being. The babe who had kept me up all night partying in the womb, who had surprised the hell out of us by arriving just when we had decided to stop trying so hard for a baby, who had been such a bright light and then, so dark.

“Goodbye, sweet soul.” I whispered and then, as we looked up, the sky broke into light. Beams shone through in a dance only the Earth knows how to perform. Leto snuggled into both of us as a single bird flew overhead and chirped a goodbye.

Goodbye.

That night, we made a necklace and looked at beautiful pictures friends from all over had sent of their candles, their love. When my friend was preparing to give birth, she had asked everyone to bring a bead and from it, she had strung her birth necklace. This was my miscarriage necklace, to honor the journey. It was built of healing stones. Quartz for the heart, a piece she had tried to use many times before and always felt that the person who needed it hadn’t yet come into her life. Serpentine to ground me and Tiger’s Eye to release fear and anxiety. The moment I put it on, I felt a warmth in the coolness of the stones. A comfort.

Since that day, I hear that sweet soul in the whispers of the trees, the songs of the birds and the dances in the skies.

As I write this, one week later, I’m fully healed. Call it a wrap.

No. Not this time. One week later, I am moving through grief, a grief nearing four months old that I’ve only just admitted to myself exists, that I’ve only just now let myself feel. I tell you this story, not so you’ll feel pity or sadness for me. I tell you this not as a rulebook to follow, some universal truth explaining what all women feel. No, it is my own, individual experience. Instead, I tell you this in case you need to hear it, in case someone in your life needs you to hear it. I tell you this to bring to light a bit of the secrecy, guilt and shame around miscarriage and to help us, together, recognize that they are not helpful.

I should be over this by now.
It was only two months.
Maybe it was my fault.
Don’t be hysteric.
Don’t be jealous.
Don’t be an asshole.
Will I ever be a mother?

We have all heard about miscarriage. I had steeled myself against it, hoping we’d skip past its grasp. I didn’t make it and so many before me didn’t either. So many more will follow. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard
every
single
time.

We know about miscarriage, but we don’t know the depths and the shallows of it, not until we’ve swum its waters. We don’t think of the small injustices that pull you back to your grief when you’re fighting so hard to stay ahead of it.

We don’t talk about how you’ll need to update your pregnancy app to say “No longer pregnant” and how because of that, you’ll be bombarded with miscarriage articles, despite your letters to the app developer.

Or how your next shipment of prenatals will arrive a few days after you get home, reminding you that you don’t need them in the same way anymore.

We don’t talk about how you’ll have to explain over and over and over again, phone call, after phone call to medical providers you don’t know, what happened and still, despite your grief, summon the strength to advocate for yourself to get the doctor on the line to get the help you need.

We don’t talk about how your social media will still be all baby ads, all the time or that your body will still think you are pregnant for weeks afterwards. How your boobs will still be swollen but now, without reason. That you’ll have the weight gain, the symptoms and none of the reward. How you’ll still be nauseous. How you’ll feel hollow and full, all at once, like a coffin.

We don’t talk about how unbelievably expensive a miscarriage can be. How the bills will roll in for months, coming in on just the days you were starting to feel solid. All said and done, our miscarriage cost $4000 and we have insurance. How is it that one must have privilege, be it on one’s own or with the generous offer of a parent as in our situation, in order to be able to have surgery when the other options don’t work?

We don’t talk about how convoluted sex becomes, from something that brought life to something that could again bring death.

We don’t talk about how, suddenly, you’re able to eat anything, drink anything and if you’re anything like me, you drank because you could, and you got drunk because you didn’t want this paltry consolation prize in the first place.

We don’t talk about how some days, all you want to do is talk about what you went through and other days, you can’t even admit it happened.

We don’t talk about how being around children, no matter how much you love them, can make you feel like you’re dying inside, falling behind and how at the same time, you want to prove to everyone that you’re OK with kids for fear of being outcast or avoided. How you’re simultaneously so genuinely happy for them and so sad for yourself and how that’s hard to manage at times.

We don’t always talk about these things, and like I said, not everyone experiences these things the way I have, but I did and I think we should talk about them.

I hope as you read this it’s your first time being so close to miscarriage but chances are, it’s not. I hope that wherever you are in life, you can take a moment to pause and realize that we never truly know where someone is in life which is why we should do our damndest to be kind. I hope you never have to go through something like this but that if you do, you know that I see you and I’m here for you, always, whoever you are. And I promise you, you will smile again.

To everyone who has been there for me, reminding me it’s OK to not be OK, thank you. Thank you from the deepest part of me. I will always be grateful. To my husband, my moon, thank you. It has not been easy, I have not been easy. Thank you for your steadfast love and support. I love you.

For those of you who are reading this, learning of it for the first time, know that I didn’t hold it from you because I don’t trust or need you, rather that for the time we talked, I got to just be me. The old me.

Not Julia who has had a miscarriage. Just me. Thank you for that, always.

And so, after all that, I leave you with this: be kind to one another. You never know where someone is in life, what they are struggling against. Hell, as in my case, they may not even know. Sometimes that kindness will break someone open, sometimes it will help them heal their wounded heart. Either way, we are all a part of one another’s process. May you have peace in yours.

With love,

from Alaska

P.S. If you want to share your thoughts, experiences, anything, please do so. Leave a comment or send me an email (beneaththeborealis@gmail.com). I’m an open door, an open book. That being said, please be gentle. If reading this was hard or uncomfortable, I get it. Writing it was hard. I hope that in doing so, in sharing this, I can help shed a little light on this historically hidden, uncomfortable subject. Like her. And her. And I’m sure countless others I’ve yet to stumble upon. I’d love suggestions.

P.P.S I’ve written this post dozens of times in my head before taking pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. There are things I’ve missed, resources I haven’t used, groups I’ve not yet joined. I’m at the beginning. I’m sure there are things I’ll come back and add but if you take away one thing, take this: your pain is your own. You don’t have to justify it, rush through it, bury it. It’s incomparable to someone else’s. Be gentle with yourself in your pain, be gentle with others in theirs. I’m learning this, slowly. I think we’d all be better for it.

P.P.P.S Here’s a playlist I made on Spotify, same title, Carriage Ride, because this miscarriage has been just that. A ride. It’s filled with everything from serious to silly, all the songs that have helped me through, held me down and brought me back up again. Enjoy.