There is a saying that falling in love with potential can potentially be dangerous because it can lead you to heartbreak. But what if that potential that you fell in love with was the child you didn’t get the chance to meet? Would it then be safe to feel that a loss was a higher calling to challenge you to do something more with your grief?
These are the questions that swirled around my head as I sat in the throes of a recent miscarriage. The ultimate “life flashing before my eyes” moments where I methodically flipped through my mental polaroids to figure out how I got here. How quickly we transitioned from the gleeful, “Milan’s going to be a Big Sister!” announcement on Christmas Day, to me being alone in the ER (due to COVID) praying that the answer to the sudden onset of spotting was not what was behind door number two.
On the verge of my 45th birthday, I was slowly beginning to wrap my head around the reality that my pregnancy was coming to an end, that no amount of visualizing the birth experience or choosing the perfect “meet the family” onesie was going to reverse what was already well underway. Somewhere deep inside, at the heart of my center, a voice said, “It’s okay to focus on you now.”
Without realizing it, when I found out I was pregnant, my world stopped. After previously enduring a difficult pregnancy, when the news of my latest miracle was firmly confirmed on no less than eight sticks, it immediately became operation get ahead of hyperemesis gravidarum, the culprit that rendered me virtually incapacitated while I was carrying Milan. Everything else got pushed to the backburner, never mind that I was in the middle of launching Mocha Lifestyle and had a zillion and one action items pending on my Trello board.
I was so caught off guard by pregnancy that I literally had no idea when we conceived, when the date of my last period was, or anything pertaining to reproduction for that matter. I was completely checked out, basically awaiting menopause and focusing on adoption as the path to growing our family. Therefore, to have something exciting happen to me that I was not expecting, to then be ripped away from me unexpectedly, was initially a bit disheartening.
But that voice that told me that it was okay to focus on me now, also served as a reminder that God wasn’t done with me yet. Just because I was going through the motions of my everyday routine without any expectations for the possibility of carrying life, didn’t mean that I didn’t have life in me. Whether I would be content with mothering my one miracle or be blessed to traverse the winding roads of motherhood twice more, I still had a bigger purpose and I needed to be healthy and whole so that I could fully embrace it.
It was then that I made a promise, a commitment of sorts, to my angel. By residing inside of me for however long, the gift of hope was firmly planted and that beautiful gift remained, even when the pregnancy did not. I vowed to make my overall health a priority and to purposefully catch every dream I’ve chased in the depths of my heart.
This dedication of life, from one to another, immediately transformed how I viewed everything. I understood from the outside looking in that it might have seemed strange that I was talking to a nutritionist, meeting with a personal trainer and making plans to move to an entirely new state, when on paper I was still miscarrying. However, in those moments I felt that I had been given a lifeline. One thing I know for sure is that you try to find something you can hold onto because the one thing you desperately wanted to hold, you lost.
Yet in the midst of loss, I found myself. I got reacquainted with my purpose. I understood that there are ideas, causes and advocacy plans that over time I will give birth to, that I will be called to support women along various stages of their life’s journey and that the seed of hope that my little angel implanted inside of me has firmly prepared me for such a time as this.
