The Shaping of the Hollowness of Me

Mother Wisdom Speaks

by Christine Lore Webber

Some of you I will hollow out.

I will make you a cave.

I will make you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
You will be a bowl.
You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.

I will hollow you out with knives.

I will not do this to make you clean.
I will not do this to make you pure.
You are clean already.
You are pure already.

I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you.

I will do this for the space that you will be.
I will do this because you must be large.
A bowl.
People will eat from you and their hunger
will not weaken them unto death.
A cup to catch the sacred rain.

 My daughter, do not cry.

Do not be afraid.
Nothing you need will be lost.
I am shaping you.
I am making you ready.

Light will glow in your hollowing.

You will be filled with light.
Your bones will shine.
The round, open center of you will be radiant.

I will call you Brilliant One.

I will call you Daughter Who Is Wide.
I will call you Transformed.

 

As I travel through the tangled experience of deep grief, I’ve been trying to find the words to describe how it feels to be healing and transforming. Even as I talk to others about the experience, the words sound so trite and hollow, the words that mean nothing when the grief is still raw, the words that at one time seemed they could not be true.

Society has long attempted to marginalize and set apart the darkness of spiritual life. Grief, despair, anger, and fear are the antithesis of a good spiritual life, experiences to overcome and conquer. There is great irony within the postmodern experience that the aspects of religion we judge as harmful are also the places within our souls we hide and deny. So often we talk of a death denying culture, but really, it is a darkness denying culture. Sterilize, deodorize, and bleach out the parts we don’t want to acknowledge. Yet, no matter how much detergent we apply, it cannot eliminate the fundamental life experience. Every time I’ve peered deep into the looking glass to understand the source of my dark emotions, the same area appears. A shadow of darkness that is a subconscious certainty I am nothing, I am useless, worthless, unloveable, and unredeemable, a certainty that I deserve all the suffering in my life. There was a time that I considered this shadow to be a remnant of learned behavior and definitions of self I blamed on misogynistic harmful religion. But the thing is, this inherent sense of suffering is not unique to one religion. It is not even unique to one philosophy or culture. Across the globe and throughout time, humanity describes these same feelings of worthlessness and a sense that suffering is inevitable, deserved, even destined. I no longer am certain these are learned ideas.

Within the realm of progressive postmodern thought, so many want to skip ahead to the joy and peace and rainbows. In fact, progressive social activists will ridicule those who embrace theologies that try to explain suffering, claiming that to explain the origin of suffering, intentionally or not, causes harm. For us, suffering is something to deal with, cope with, handle and manage. The resulting emotions of grief, despair, anger and fear are byproducts of an unhealthy spirit, of not “handling” the suffering well.

This just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. It does not make sense to cut off and deny a good portion, even half, of my own human experience as pointless. What are the options, though? On one hand, I cannot really say anymore that suffering is pointless or meaningless. However, when I try to say there is a reason for my suffering and attempt to explain it, I fall flat on my face.

Ultimately, there is a mystery in the spaces of meaning making. There is a limitation to our ability to communicate and reason through the human experience. I want to pull it apart, observe and describe this space, but it so often eludes me. The attempts by others often bring me comfort, however. For over a decade the poem shared above has aided me and reflects how I desire to see the space of suffering and meaning.

 

Why back to school? grad school reflection

Since the beginning of my discernment, my call to ministry has been to ease spiritual suffering. I continue to passionately believe that the environmental, social and physical suffering in this world will never heal if we do not first address the spiritual suffering. If our sense of self and sense of community were fully realized, how could we live in voluntary ignorance and destructive apathy? After 6 years of answering that call in chaplaincy, I wish to grow as a caregiver and scholar. Participating in the cultivation of theologically and pastorally trained leaders is a natural progression of my call to ease spiritual suffering in the world. To do this, I am seeking a PhD program to study and expand my base of knowledge in pastoral theology, cultural anthropology, psychosocial theories and pedagogy. As a pastoral theologian and scholar, I want to expand the conversation in postmodern theology and to make it applicable to today’s society, especially within the realm of fertility and infertility.  The school I'm applying to has a progressive postmodern voice that is important to me and to accomplishing these goals.

The path to finding a spiritual calling can be an interesting one, but looking back, each step along my path led me with a clear and passionate purpose towards the work I now do. Even before I could name it, discovering meaning and purpose defined my life’s path. The spiritual abuse I received as a child in a fundamentalist Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church steered me towards science and as far away from religion as possible. However, by studying and working with science, I discovered that religion is not the only place cognitive dissonance lives. During that journey, I found my best conversation partners were with progressive Christians.

My healing did not solely happen by leaving the place of abuse or by discovering a replacement faith system. Through secular counseling, I learned how to pull apart my emotions and thoughts, how to distinguish self from group, and how to empower myself and others to live fully. Through earnest and honest seeking, I discovered the joy and peace that the spiritual experience brings. Spiritual direction, monastic retreats, and many other experiences also helped heal my connection with God.

Then, after all that, seminary helped me dismantle and deconstruct hidden precepts and assumptions not only about religion, but about life. I began seminary with a passion for biblical interpretation, seeking to dismantle not only the misconceptions I was raised with, but also to address the assumed authority and power scripture has. My past may have taught me that scripture was the key, but seminary taught me that history of church, theology and even pedagogy are just as key.

Seminary is  a place of crucial integration. By increasing contextual awareness and understanding in many subjects, a person with a call to help others turns into a beautiful  kaleidoscope of skills.  However, my time in CPE and working among professional ministers and chaplains revealed a genuine lack of theological integration with the pastoral care they give. How people view God affects how they view themselves and the world.  As pastoral care providers, I feel we are called out not only to have a clear understanding of our own theology, but also how it relates to traditionally held beliefs. Often, when people have holes or inconsistencies within their theology, it can be due to lack of language to describe their feelings and thoughts about it.  As we listen to people, we should be able to reflect back confusing thoughts with different and hopefully clear language. In order to do that, however, we must do the work of theological construction and integration long before the conversation happens.

Many who seek such understanding attend seminary and labor through CPE, hoping and anticipating some of the theological and spiritual fog will clear. I help with Mid-Year Consultations for CPE residents and each year I’m assigned to a student from an evangelical background, often with a theology that creates separatism and exclusivism. The struggle and pain this brings them is hard for me to observe. I have no desire to convert the world to my way of thinking, but I do desire to ease these spiritual leaders’ suffering. I desire to aid them in exploring the struggle that exists for a theology that may give comfort in some ways, but cause conflict in other ways.  I want to help them discover not only how to fill their own theological gaps, but also how to minister to the diverse world compassionately and competently.

Professional chaplain gatherings also revealed to me several things.   I observed that many chaplains who teach and lead come from faith traditions rife not only with visible cognitive dissonance, but also with moral conflict. In addition, I noticed that chaplain leaders from progressive faith backgrounds often redirected or avoided uncomfortable theological subjects by encouraging religious diversity and focusing on psychosocial or ethical theories.  The field would benefit from more leaders who bring integrative and constructive postmodern theology not just to the discussion table, but to the practitioners in the field. I desire to expand my knowledge of theology and how the work in pastoral care interacts with it. My passion is for the postmodern voice, one that is steeped in understanding modern logic, but acknowledges that to authentically reflect reality, the voice of experience and context must always be heard.

Currently, my ministry entails working in hospice as a chaplain and bereavement educator. The time spent as a child ministering with my grandmother in nursing homes and to elderly church members imprinted not only an awareness of, but also a comfort around physical limitations and end of life.  So, here I am, walking the path with many, a path we all will or have taken: facing our own limitations and mortality. My personal limitations currently involve fertility, conception and pregnancy. When I faced accepting infertility, I had to search deep inside myself for the balm to my spiritual suffering. I had no ready way to process it.

My Master’s thesis combines feminist and process theology, so it should be no surprise that the language of co-creator is comfortable for me. It makes sense for a woman with a biology degree and healthy suspicion of power structures to want to find a theology that not only supports but empowers the individual. Accepting that I am unlikely to conceive life felt like I was sacrificing the very foundation of my faith system as a co-creator, not because I cannot envision other ways of creative being, but because the sacred unique creation of life is no longer within my grasp.

When I studied biology and biochemistry, they fed my desire to understand and revel in the mysteries of life as a creative and distinctive process. It laid the foundation for my understanding of who we are and how we relate to God and the world. What happens when someone with such a foundation finds out that she is not part of the cycle of life?  A piece of writing or the influence I have on people's hearts or minds is not the same as creating life. We must acknowledge the unique and complex process of creating life and the sacredness of such creativity. We cannot deny that all life is sacred and that the ability to create it is sacred as well. Therefore, the loss of such a sacred identity means infertility is not just a loss of function, but a complex web of experience. Infertility is not just a disorder or a dysfunction, it is not just a loss of anticipated future, and it is not just a loss of identity. It is all of the above combined with constant ethical and moral dilemmas, decision making that determines the rest of one’s life, and continual exposure to familial as well as societal pressure and judgment.

 I want to develop a way for pastors and chaplains to approach this rapidly growing area of spiritual discernment among individuals and families. I want to make the language of fertility issues normalized and eliminate the negative repercussions of shame and guilt. Above all, I wish to find an integrative postmodern theology that not only provides comfort to the infertile, but also provides a spiritual and ethical compass during a difficult time. I have my own thoughts and experiences, of course, but I want to dig deeper as a scholar and as a chaplain to add this particular context to the training of our pastoral leaders.

My call to ease spiritual suffering continues to evolve and I greatly desire to be a postmodern theological and pastoral voice in our world. I wish to not only contribute to scholarship, but also to the transformation and growth of pastoral care providers. The PhD program at this school combines the crucial elements of respected scholarship with the spirit-filled mission to cultivate competent and compassionate pastoral leaders. I request approval for admission to the PhD program for Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care.

The Song of a Spiritual Midwife

There's a part of me that cringes at making comparisons about birth and death. I'm 34 and I am not a midwife ushering in the hopes and dreams of new life, but a midwife to a journey that reveals to us only the end of this mortal experience. Everything in my being can be convinced that the end is the beginning of something terribly wonderful and unimaginably beautiful, but I don't get to see that beginning. I do not get to witness the blossom of a person's life after death or watch how she grows into her true self. All I see is the labor of death, all I can do is hold her hand while she makes that journey on her own.

Here I sit, a spiritual midwife to hundreds of people who labored through death. I witness how precious life is, how precious love and connection are. I desperately want to be a part of this cycle of life. I want to watch a life begin, grow and blossom. I want that life to be one I helped create. But, I will not be creating a baby, a new life within my own body. However, I have so many options for fostering and adopting and watching a life grow and blossom within my care. I'm sure many wonder why I don't just push forward towards those options. I'm not sure why myself at times. I could claim it is the inherent wisdom of a hospice chaplain to honor the time of grieving an unattainable dream. However, I can only say my heart is not ready.

Meanwhile, I spend much of my time with people close to death by singing softly to them. That which calms and quiets the fears of those new to life, also creates peace for those at the end. Tonight as I was perusing books about infertility, I came across the title Unsung Lullabies and it felt like grief was stabbing my heart. Of all the images that break my heart, the worst is the dream of singing my baby to sleep. What an intimate moment of connection. So full of meaning. It is not just that image, but of singing to my baby in the park, in the car, throughout life.

Singing is more than a balm for restless nights. Singing connects an experience with our emotions, our memories and our spiritual selves. While singing Amazing Grace to a patient, not only are memories and emotions evoked, but perhaps even her experience of the sacred. Someday I may hold a baby and sing a lullaby to her and calm the fears of being new to life. Yet, I already am singing lullabies each day to someone new to dying. It is sacred, this role of midwife, whether for birth or for death.

Peace to you for Christmas

pray peace by Cheryl Lawrie

peace does not always come in the shape of a baby
in a season that abounds with fertile miracles
pray peace for those for whom every breathless, wondrous mention
of babies born
will bring only unspeakable pain.
pray peace for the Elizabeths who will not get pregnant,
for whom no miracle will occur, at any age
who know themselves only as cursed.
pray peace for the Marys who are pregnant and who do not want to be
for whom every movement inside is a reminder of fear and despair.
pray peace for the Marys whose partners say ‘no’.
pray peace for the Rachels whose babies have died
and whose cries will go unheard
in the clamour of christmas bells and carols.
and pray peace for the unnamed women
whose stories are not spoken out loud in the bible
the women who ended pregnancies
the women who miscarried
the women who will never have the chance to have children
pray peace for the women for whom this Christmas story is only a reminder
of the inadequacy
and failure,
the grief
and the guilt,
they feel every month.
peace does not always come in the shape of a baby.
peace does not always come in the shape of a baby.

A fellow spiritual caregiver in hospice shared this today...

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
by John O'Donohue

Original Language English

... When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Sacrifice, being brave, and letting go...

My husband and I went to watch the Disney movie Brave. The story triggered a moment of grief. When I saw the mom defend her daughter no matter the cost, even at the risk of her own death, I had this sudden realization. I would never get the chance to prove that kind of love for my own birth child. Why can’t I have that chance? I would willingly sacrifice myself for my own children. I would fight, kill, and use the last breath in my body to make sure they are safe. The sorrow is so profound at those moments. One more thing about being childless that limits my world experience. The question here is not about whether I can have children by means other than through my own body. It is about mourning the possibilities, the future that held my birth children in it, the future that says I will sacrifice everything for them. I cannot conceive. In the car on the way home, as I'm silently crying my heart out, I thought," Did I really do everything in my power to conceive and carry my child?"

 I chose to stop after 2 years of fertility treatments. That is not a long time compared to some. We chose to stop with IUI, artificial insemination, instead of continuing on with IVF, in vitro insemination. It was extremely scary for us to make such a decision. I had desperate moments where I even considered moving to a state that requires health insurance to cover IVF. I thought about weight loss options that I NEVER considered to be healthy options. The truth I took so long to process is that I was compromising my own ethics and morals. In fact, I was already uncomfortable with the amount of resources I spent trying to force my body to do something it did not want or was not able to do.  It’s not about God’s will or fate or destiny. It is about the simple fact my body can’t do something.

 I do have choices and options, many more than the majority of people suffering with infertility. Am I cheating the lives of my future children by not pursuing these options regardless the consequences? The decision I made for myself, the choice my husband and I chose for our family, is that not only am I not cheating them, I am choosing to protect them. The drugs and procedures I used on my body have consequences on my own body. Besides the risks involved in prolonged fertility treatments, there is also the issue of my overall health affecting my pregnancy and the health of my child. Granted, all the potential issues I may have can be managed well most of time with advances in science. However, NOTHING about my situation is "most of the time."  I no longer assume the statistics are in my favor.

 So, while I started out tearing up my soul with thoughts I didn't do enough, I eventually came to the conclusion that I committed the ultimate sacrifice a future mother can make… I chose to stop. The genetic makeup of my children is not significant enough of an issue to torture my body, risk the future health of me, my children, and our family. I realized that I did limitless amounts of research, that I spoke with at least a dozen health professionals, addressed every obstacle and health issue that blocked our road ( and what a relief to finally KNOW  and be able to treat what chronic illnesses I have), I went to counselors, specialists, dieticians. I realized  that I did do everything in my power to conceive and give all that I had to those future children. And when faced with a choice of how far I would go, out of love, I chose to let go.

 Bravery isn't just about facing an obstacle and conquering it. Sometimes bravery is about choosing another path. Sacrifice isn't just for  something  or someone you already have in your life, but sometimes, it is for something or someone you may never meet.  So, thank you, Disney, for helping me realize that I'm not a coward, that I'm not weak, and that I chose a path that causes me more immediate pain, but has great potential for a wonderful future.

My ruminations did not end there, however.  But, enough writing for now.

Heavy hearts exist in chaplains too

My heart is heavy today. It has been a week of loss at hospice this week. That sounds redundant, but honestly, hospice is about living, not dying. It is about quality of life and comfort, of course, but it is also about acceptance, normalization of something that can be scary, isolating, and miserable, something that is a part of every living being's existence and yet we as a culture and as individuals try to deny its power over us... death, ending, beginning, loss, change, transition, absence, limitations, waiting and more waiting, anticipation, regret, the list is endless, just as endless as our experiences.
My heart is not just heavy over the loss of the person, but for the heartache left behind, for the misery leading up to the death. I have been in hospice for 5 years now. I have met hundreds of people who have died and even more of families who remain to grieve for them. I miss them all. I'd be lying if I said that I don't miss them. The laughter I share, the tears, the songs and whispers, the hugs, hand holding, prayer sharing, tear-wiping, humble-inducing meaning of life, what wisdom and what courage, what inspiration these wonderful people give me.

My heart is also heavy with the burden so many caregiving professionals carry... the burden that there will always be more that I could have done.. It sounds so trite, but honestly, I was not present at any one of these deaths and it weighs on my heart. Five years is a long time in hospice. I'm considered a veteran of hospice, how funny is that? I would not have made it this far if I hadn't learned boundaries, if I didn't have faith that no one is ever alone in this world, that not only my team look after these patients and families, but also the workers at the facilities they live in. I watch those new to hospice struggle with where to place those boundaries, with the burden of "just one more thing, or just one more visit, or just a few more minutes" and my heart aches for them... while at the same time struggling with guilt and wondering if I'm burnt out just because I set boundaries and stick to them most of the time.

I put in a long day yesterday, 7 visits... including explaining hospice to a man going on service and to a son putting his actively dying mom on service, and 3 people I visited can no longer speak to me and the other 2 have declined significantly. I'm not using that as an excuse, but as an example of when, even with good boundaries, the sorrow seeps into my bones. Tomorrow I will sit with a woman who wins blackout at bingo or smiles for the first time in months to the hymn I'm singing her and I will be healed.

Those Simple Questions Are Always the Hardest

I have been reflecting on the most painful part of my journey of not being able to get pregnant. I've filtered it down to a kind of chicken or egg question, or even a nature or nurture question. What is most important in the creation of a human being? Is it the DNA, the conception,  the environment a fetus/child develops in (the womb experience)... or is it the exposure to life experiences as the child grows into an adult? Of course, the real question in my heart is WHO is most important in the creation of a human being, the birth mother or the one who mothers outside of the womb?

I realize the answer is both/and, not either/or. However, here I stand on a precipice, attempting to make sense of my metaphysical and theological foundation, one of being an active part in creation and creating, and I cannot create new life nor grow it inside my body. From the outside looking in, there are plenty of ways to work around this, ways that include recognizing there are other types of creating. But no one can tell me that creating life is not the most basic and primal expression of such a metaphysical purpose.

I recognize not everyone is as focused on esoteric questions as I am. From the age of 12, I have been focused, obsessed even, with what the purpose of life is, what my purpose is, and how I am going to influence change in the world. For me, the struggle is not making me face the fundamental questions, it's making sure I stay grounded in the present experience. Knowing this, it makes sense that I am a chaplain. I've learned the art and skills of getting to the nitty-gritty of those questions while also nurturing a present mindfulness. I spend my professional time finding ways to help people get to the bottom of their grief, despair, anxiety, by answering these very spiritual and philosophical questions of meaning and purpose, then reframing their perspective... if for you, the world is xyz, then does the rest really matter? If you believe that God decides when you live and when you die, does it matter what the doctors think? If the true purpose of life is to love and be loved, then while your body and mind may have new limitations, by loving and being loved, you still are fulfilling your ultimate purpose... your life matters.

My goals are similar but also very different from a therapist. I believe this stems from a strong sense that spiritual revelation about self and world can alter a person's perception and thought process faster and deeper than anything else. Of course, it is also true that spiritual abuse and trauma can damage a person the quickest and deepest as well. Without hope, meaning or purpose, we are truly lost. We admire the perseverance of those who survive crisis and trauma because they cling to these things when the world feels like it is ending.

Our society is convinced that thinking will fix everything. We override our feelings at every opportunity. I may be exaggerating, but after years in chaplaincy, it seems like this is more true than not. The irony is that our feelings always affect our thoughts, just as our thoughts affect our feelings. And the glue that puts it all together is our spirit. To disconnect the spirit from the mind or body is futile.

So, my personal struggle lately has been an assumption that I never worked through or made sure it could stand up to scrutiny. I never looked too closely at whether this joy of being part of the creative universe would work for one who is not just barren, but also sitting in an ambiguous state- having the working parts but never knowing why one cannot conceive, never truly knowing if all those risk factors for baby and me really would have happened. I assumed as woman my body made me part of creating life, and I took pride in this. Without more than a passing glance of what it meant for men or those who never carry life, I created a theology with gaping holes in it. While my premise that we all are uniquely created and creating beings that are part of a changing universe is a great foundation, I thought like one of the privileged, not as one who might be considered marginalized.

Marginalization is a strange thing. I am considered by the BMI to be morbidly obese. I consider this a "scientific" way to marginalize me and put me in a box. This box inundates me with constant reminders that I'm not good enough for society. I am judged continuously, to the point that I did fear my weight would affect my ability to sustain pregnancy. I also lived in fear that my health problems, the same ones that contribute to my weight, meant I may not be part of the elite (conceivers) I so desperately wanted to claim as my own. Like a middle school child wanting to be popular, I focused on being someone else so hard that while the knowledge I may be different hovered in the background, I ignored it. I spent YEARS trying to change myself to fit in, to force my body to conform by dumping horrific drugs in me and manipulating hormones. I made life miserable for myself and anyone around me. While I may have said being healthy was my goal, it wasn't. Ultimately, I don't think I cared about my health as long as I could conceive and be pregnant successfully. I wanted drugs to force my body to do something it couldn't, something it may never be able to do. While I did set some ethical boundaries for myself, they were FAR from what I felt comfortable with. So here I sit, not even 6 months after I was told it was time to stop trying to get pregnant. I sit here and wonder what happened to me.

The simple answer is grief happened. Rage, despair, hopelessness happened. I became so swamped with strong emotions and reactions that it's no wonder I could not think straight. I would try to disconnect from my body's experience only to be forced to live with the consequences of biological forces manipulating my emotions and thoughts.  What a war with myself. If the spirit is the space between mind and body, the mortart that connects it all, then my mortar crumbled and fell apart in many, many places. Grief never leaves, but perhaps some healing can happen now and the mortar that is my spirit will mend.

The answer to my initial question about who's more important, birth moms or moms who raise the kids, is a mute point. I'm trying to create a hierarchy of value based on what society expects from us... instead of acknowledging that we all live in tension between many points. While I will continue to grieve for not having some of those points (conceiving, pregnancy), I live with many other points of tension, many other possibilities for future outcomes. It is no easy and I'm sure I will come up with many more questions like this one, ones that will hopefully bring me back to those simple questions of meaning and purpose.

Grief and My Soul Sucking Alien

So tonight my husband and I went on a date for Valentine's Day. We watched the movie "The Vow". The premise is that a woman wakes up after a car accident and has forgotten the last 5 years of her life, including meeting and marrying her husband, losing and meeting friends, fights with family, switching towns,  career paths, and life goals.  So much happened to change her life and she has to start all over again, discovering the same beliefs and convictions that led to the changes in the first place. She had to rediscover who she was and is.

Life transformations and transitions are interesting things. They seem to always sneak up on us, as if we haven't gone through them before or as if we don't know that life at 50 will be different than life at 20. So we stumble along, whine a little "Not AGAIN! How many times do I have to change?!", and ultimately feel lost, over and over and over. Some of us, if we're lucky, are found for a while. We have those periods of clarity, of who we are and why we're here. So many ways to talk about it, depending on your belief system. The planets aligned or everything came together or even God worked through me.

The past 3 years or so, especially the last 2, feel surreal to me, as if my memories are from another lifetime. The constant pressure, stress and side effects of fertility treatments and challenging health tainted everything I did or thought or felt. I'm not saying it was all bad or all good. It was both, just like life usually is, but somewhere along the way I lost myself. I tried not to. I tried really really hard not to. However, if you know me, you probably realize being around me often was kind of like listening to someone sing just slightly off key.

Since we decided to halt the fertility treatments for now (and most likely for good), a weight has been lifted off me. I kind of feel like a giant soul sucking alien parasite has been detached from my back. When it was detached, my life- body, heart and mind- went out of whack. I had to detox from the alien nasties or something. And now, at times, I can finally see more clearly, before the nasty returns.

The trouble is, this alien nasty is grief. And grief never leaves us. Not really. Funny how I've become a grief educator just as I experience some of the most heart wrenching grief I've ever experienced. It's not as if I haven't felt the loss of a dream before, the loss of a potential future being erased. But the dreams of babies who have my husband's eyes and my freckles are somehow different than the dreams I've had before. They feel more tangible, even though they are still ideas. When I was younger and I lost my faith in "The System", when I realized I could not really "Save the World", I never thought I'd get over that heartbreak and be able to hope again, to trust in a better future.  It was so very real to me at the time, that grief for intangible things. But with time, I did dream again, I did imagine a future where I can change the world... just not how I thought I would when I was an invincible teenager.

So right now, my faith is pretty low. I'm being honest. There are moments however I remember other times when I thought my heart would break. And guess what? I got through them. The grief is still there. A memory of a heartbreak, but those wounds no longer cut so deep. There are times I'm not sure I'm going to emerge from this abyss, but then I remember and I can at least have hope for a day where the pain is not so sharp, not so mind/heart/body twisted up.

Something about times of need heighten my awareness of music and song. Two songs speak to my dark place. One is a hymn from the 1880s, Uncloudy Day. Here is an excerpt:

Oh, they tell me of a home Far beyond the skies
Oh, they tell me of a home So far away
Yes, they tell me of a home Where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me Yes, they tell me Of an uncloudy day

And another from  Florence and the Machines new single "Shake it Out"

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn

The ratty familiar blanket of grief

Grief is like an old blanket surrounding me. Its comfort isn't from softness, but from familiarity. Actually, it kind of chafes and often suffocates, but its an old friend by now. No matter what, it never leaves me. A constant in an ever-changing world. Through the weave of my blanket, I see the world distorted. When I should see the happiness in others, all I can see is what is not mine. I distantly recall others talking about how selfish grief made them feel, but I didn't truly understand. Now with every pregnant belly and smiling pictures of young families I see, I feel bitter, bitter feelings. Envy. Rage. Jealousy. Vicious and Cruel, it beats up my heart and soul.

No matter how hard my life was, I never wanted to be someone else. I never regretted my past. When I was flat on my back, looking up from where I fell, I would wipe the tears, smile, and get back up, looking forward to a better time. But in this dark place, I have begged and pleaded within my heart, that somehow, someway, I could be delivered, replaced, released from where I am now. There have been moments of despair so strong, I see what makes one bargain with the devil.  My heart is not allowed to make decisions for me these days. I cannot trust my usually sharp intuition about people, places, and emotions.

It is not in every moment that I feel like this. In fact, I have some very amazing, sun-drenched, soul-healing days. And moments that I see so clearly, even through the fabric of grief, that I can feel the acceptance and love of the universe deep within my bones. But the dark times are more terrfying than they ever were. They well up from within, like a geyser of black oil.

I'm not sure where to go, now that I've found this violently cruel place in myself. How does a mystic, a seeker of truth and beauty, turn so dark inside? Where is redemption, where is solace, where is forgiveness? I am not short-sighted or blind. I know my suffering is almost trite and so utterly common. There is  limitless amounts of suffering in this world.   But, it is now my turn to struggle with the experience. The grievances in my past, though some are terrible, seem so petty now.

The truth, ah yes, if I'm honest with myself, is in my anger. How can I feel connected to a universe I feel so betrayed by? Because I CANNOT accept that my infertility, my broken body, isn't someone's fault. Either it must be mine, or it must be the universe's. This is not some fluke, some accident of converging factors. This is my life. This is my future. There is NO freaking mystery here. It's not sacred or divine. It is pain and suffering. Out of the trillion and one threads of the future that lie before me in this moment, none of them are really in my control. The LURE that is supposed to encourage me to make positive choices is not present in this moment, because the choice is taken away from me.  And, yet, the universe is not something I can just ignore. It is all around me. I am made of it, body and soul. So I rant and rave at it, like a petulant teenager who wants to be free, but can't leave home.

Let me tell you the irrational and crazy thoughts that wrap around my strangled heart. One, I'm unworthy. Somehow the universe sensed this darkness in me, even when I didn't.  Two, I really am meant to be a vessel, a tool, for the universe to use. Therefore, I am allowed only so much happiness to distract me. Or perhaps, to be a better tool, I needed to be worn down with a bit of my own suffering. Three, from what the doctors told me, I really did have a choice when I was younger. I could have easily gotten pregnant at 20. I made my choice, now I have to live with it. And of course, this leads to thinking of infertility as a punishment for wrong choices, doesn't it? Four, I am a burden to my husband, I am broken and barren. What kind of partner makes him suffer for my problems? Five, I was made for this... to be a hospice chaplain, a preparer for the journey of death. Life and creation don't belong with someone like me. That is for other people. Six... well, the list is endless and ever changing.

I found myself thinking thoughts that would give up all my ethics and ideals just to be given the chance of conceiving. And with those thoughts, my anger, hurt, and despair now mingles with guilt and shame. I do not believe we are meant to be selfish creatures. We are meant for more than that.

The balm to my soul? The place I've found that allows me to keep moving forward? It's not a pretty happy place with rainbows and flowers. It's the rough, burlap blanket of grief that comforts me. An acceptance that pain and suffering is just part of me now. It's not bravery or courage, not really. Just the hard reality that this is who I am now. If by some fluke I became pregnant tomorrow and had a life with several of my own birth children, this pain would not disappear. It would still be a part of me. I may find a future that has more happiness than there is in this moment. I may adopt and surround myself with people to give my love to, but this blanket will never leave.

Where is my hope now? It is that this blanket may someday be a mantel, a cloak I wear with pride and love, as a place that I have been, a place I visit occasionally, but never have to linger as long as I am now.