A whole year

Reflections on grief and love

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A song I’ve been enjoying:

Drake’s Beach on 35mm film, 2010.

My daughter turns one on the 26th. In many ways, so do I — both of us becoming new at 12:34pm on that rainy day last year, both of us figuring out how to be in the world after our bodies and cells rearranged to become themselves on the surgery table, both of us breathing in a new way, separate yet synced, on our own yet innately connected.

I thought I’d have something more eloquent and meaningful to share on the edge of her birthday. Like I’d have it all wrapped up into a beautiful piece of writing to publish today. Part of what she has taught me, though, is the beauty of honoring what is true. And what’s true is that I’m finding it really hard to name the bigness of it all, to find the words. It feels impossible. Tears stream down as I type this just thinking about the bigness of it all, about the weight of the grief and the elegance of the love, about all I’ve had to let go of, only to finally start feeling like my true self for the first time, about how she was the one who taught me.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling tender about my own birth — about being left and thinking of my infant self alone in that field, waiting to be saved, not knowing where my birth mother went and desperate for someone to find me. I think about what it must have been like to have a home in a person for nine months, to be so innately connected to someone who then walked away, leaving me with nothing but a blue blanket wrapped around my fresh body, and the profound loss that was stamped into my nervous system, imprinted into my bones. I think about all the days I longed for her, looked for her. I think about all the ways I tried to hide my own longings, even from myself. I think about my infant self and her needs. I think about how her first few hours were spent looking up at the sky. I think about my newborn skin being warmed by the sun, being enveloped by the land around me, somehow being protected just long enough for a birdwatching couple to hear me cry.

And I think about hearing my daughter’s cry for the first time a year ago at 12:34pm, and feeling a swell of relief, alongside a tinge of grief — hearing my own self in her, hearing my newborn longing for protection and love, hearing the sorrow I’ve carried my whole life. I think about the felt sense of hearing her — of feeling her cry reverberate in my bones that once held only loss, and feeling her cries sooth the same cries I needed someone to sooth when I was her age, fresh from the womb. I think about holding her for the first time and seeing her look up at me, nothing but curiosity and knowingness filling the room, filling my heart, seeing her in me and me in her, whispering to her “I’m here, I’m right here, I’ve got you, I love you sweet girl, you made it, I’ve been waiting for you.” I whispered it to her and I whispered it to me.

I think about the impossible feeling of getting to love her, of her being at home in me and then with me, of her looking at me and seeing herself. I think about the beauty of giving her what I needed and how, in some small way, it feels like I’m tending to myself every time I tend to her. I think about what a relief it is to honor the sadness woven into the goodness, what a relief it is to let all of it be there. I think about my story being part of her story, and about her getting her own story entirely, my healing imprinted in her as it fills me.

Mostly, I think about what a painful and extraordinary gift it is to get to love her more fully than I ever knew was possible, and in a way, to get to give myself the same, even if it won’t ever truly be the same. I think about what a gift it is to get to move through what was once only pain and see it turn into gold. I think about how we can all find more than what hurts, often in ways we’d never expect — and how we can discover we have enough room to hold all of it.

Both of us breathing in a new way, separate yet synced, on our own yet innately connected. We made it a whole year.

The first hours, October 26th, 2021.

For Josephine
Before you were born, when I was
heavy with the weight of you,
with the weight of the unknown,
I imagined this. I imagined
us giggling on a messy floor,
the world outside becoming a blur.
I imagined watching you grasp
and climb and laugh, taking it all in
for the first time, getting to know
your own aliveness.
I imagined slowly learning how
to hold my heart outside of my body –
how to hold the weight and the joy
and all of it at once.
What I didn’t imagine was noticing
colors become brighter, feeling the wind
as if it were new, looking up to watch with awe
as a skein of geese fly past clouds above,
both of us making the exact same expression
at the wonder of it all.
I didn’t imagine that I, too, would be living
for the first time all over again,
seeing beauty in what was
once unnoticeable, finding joy
in the most mundane and small
of moments, learning how
to truly be here while
watching you do it effortlessly.
We are both unfolding, apart
and together, separate and
forever woven, moving toward
a future neither of us can yet imagine.
The sky becomes sherbet
as I watch you reach for a book –
as I feel myself become more me
because of you.

△ “I’m addicted to my phone. How can I cut back?”

△ Watching people make their art as meditation

△ “Don’t beat yourself up. Make your goals tiny. And I really am saying, write three hundred words a day. Fill up ONE index card a day with chicken scratch. That’s all it takes. Retype the things that pile up. All of a sudden you have something. Have no hierarchy of importance when it comes to your work. Make whatever. Be at play, always. Get comfortable doing sloppy work, malformed, phoned in, wonky work—believe you can fix it later. Because you can.”

△ Half the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It?

△ Grateful for this touching and tender conversation about grief .

△ I think about this poem a lot (image from Read a Little Poetry):

△ Pop music

△ Solve just one problem

△ Part of the altar table I created for my baby’s first birthday party:

△ Are you ready to vote?

With care,
Lisa

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