Everything. And Nothing.
This is a piece I wrote to share at our opening circle at the Return To Zero Finding Yourself after Loss Retreat.
What do I want you to know about my story of love and loss?
Everything. I want you to know what it feels like to be chosen to bear the most unbearable of all. I want you to know the ache,the shock, the anger. I once knew an elderly woman who, when asked what it felt like to turn 90 replied “like shit.” I want you to know that this feels like shit. I want you to know how the grief came in the beginning like stormy ocean waves picking me up and slamming me down mercilessly. I wan you to know how it feels to stand up and not even recognize yourself in the mirror.
Nothing. I never want you to know what it’s like to beg your husband to just go back to the hospital and get him—to scream out in physical soul pain for him. To be a mother, freshly postpartum…with no baby. I never want you to hear the unmistakable, guttural, terrifying wailing of the bereaved mother and then realize it’s coming from you.
Everything. I want you to know what it’s like to eventually bravely look at your shadows and your most wounded parts and not look away. I want you to know what it means to go into the depths, the darkness, the deep…to begin to digest yourself from the inside out like a caterpillar in a chrysalis—for that is the ugly part that no one talks about.
Nothing. I never want you to know what the inside of the CICU looks like. What the view from above your baby’s helpless body fighting for life with tubes and wires looks like and how helpless you feel to not be able to hold him without a team of people helping you. I never want you to see this because you wont be able to unsee it. I never want you to know what ECMO is. I never want you to know that a good day in the CICU just means nothing bad happened, no codes were called, he didn’t have a stroke. Yet. I never want you to know what it’s like to hear the words “there’s nothing else we can do” and what it’s like to nod “yes” when they ask if you’re ready. What would you do? Would you rock your baby for hours? Would you turn and look away, too afraid to have that image of his greying skin burned into your core memory? I never want you to have to decide.
Everything. I want you to know what I have seen. Then you’ll know why I weep. And why I rest. I want you to know that I am always looking for him. That when you’re talking, it’s possible that I am half listening because I am scanning the room for him and silently begging the universe for a sign.
Nothing. I never want you to know what it feels like after some times passes and the grief starts to settle into your bones. The weight of it likes backpack you can never take off.
Everything. I want you to know what it’s like to become sovereign over your loss, your love, and your life. To truly know the duality of life and death, of love and loss. I want you to know me—not the me I was—but who I am now. You see, the old me died that day too. But there was no funeral, no public goodbye. Instead she sat in the darkness, starting a the wreckage, stunned by the sign of the gaping hole in…everything. I want you to know that she didn’t look away. She went in and swam in the deep. She learned to how to exist in two worlds—breathing air and water. She is a new thing now. But not new like a butterfly or the first day of spring. New like real, raw, unedited.
What do I want you to know about my story of love and loss? Everything and once and nothing at all. Because that’s what this loss is. That’s how it feels—it’s always both, always “and.” It is love and loss. Sadness and joy. Angry and grateful. Everything and nothing. If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is.
💔