Just before I turned 26, I miscarried our first child. I let the darkness carry me away for many months.
My husband and I weren’t in a position to pursue pregnancy. And I felt like a failure.
Tag: Grief
Wagging Goodbye
When my husband and I started dating, I was a single mother. A Yorkshire terrier puppy named Wharton had stolen my heart just two months prior.
In the midst of graduate school and multiple jobs, I think owning a dog gave me permission to be maternal. At 22, I was nowhere near ready to have children.
But I liked to think that one day it still might happen. A dog, I believed, would give me practice.
And, it’s true, I endured all of the frustrating stages required of little creatures.
Bladder control (often in the wee hours of morning).
Destruction of property.
Boundaries.
If I’m honest, I think my dog represented something even deeper: my fear of being alone.
Orbiting Grief
I made foolish mistakes in my youth. Too many involved the opposite sex.
In the last year, two of the men I gave pieces of my heart to have died. I’m at a loss.
But I’m a mother, and there is no slowing down. Only moving forward…even when I have to crawl.
It really, really hurts.
Fields of Gold
Long before I was a mother, I was a runner. On April 15, 2007, exactly nine years ago today, I completed my first 5k. It was a windy and hilly race for which I was not conditioned, and, due to low runner turnout, I actually managed to get lost in the barren fields of early Virginia spring.
I crossed the finish line with a three-minute, don’t-follow-the-sorority-girl-who-is-lost delay. My legs, already jelly, would struggle to move the next morning.
I will never forget the innocence of that day.
