I STILL TRUST – The journey to hell and back

I'm not yet sure how to put the last couple of weeks, or even months into words that might make sense or make a difference for anyone, but I realize I just have to begin somewhere. In the beginning of this year I entered an amazing journey, a pregnancy, our fourth one. As I look back on the months that passed, it's kind of a dream and a blur all at the same time. To achieve a positive pregnancy test is the most longed for thing for so, so many, for us too. After three miscarriages (I hate that word more and more each day, just ponder the components of it 🤯) a positive pregnancy test is not the beginning of the journey at all, it's somewhere on the way to something, which is never promised to anyone but feels especially not promised to us. It's a checkpoint somewhere in the middle where things get really fucking real and the anxiety is sometimes unimaginable. I prayed every day, I talked to the soul of the little seed growing inside of me, everything felt so different, I was so different this time, I trusted. I still trust.

The blurry weeks passed with nausea and fatigue of an especially cruel kind, but who cares, that's just how it is or can be and so very worth it when you get a baby. I was so grateful for each and every symptom as it means the pregnancy is progressing, I caught myself pushing into the sides of my breasts several times a day just to feel them still being sore as some kind of self soothing. Just stay, I thought to myself, stay with us here.

I haven't cried for a couple of days as I'm writing this, and the tears fall down my face now as if each word is pushing through the distance that inescapably builds up with time and space. I've been thinking about grief and sadness a lot, does it ever really go away? Maybe it's just the distance that makes it bearable, but that distance can be travelled easily with the right tools and you are ever so close to what hurts and what you miss yet again. Grieving is an honoring of the magnificence that was, that still is in a way as a memory, as an imprint. I am writing this in the middle of the night, I have been looking for a way to express this and come closer again, for myself but maybe also for someone else who needs it, and it came as it did, leaving me sleepless and with words suddenly just arranging themselves in a perfect manner. I know there is something immensely important in these words, in the timing of them, in the way they arise from absolute despair and the realness that brings which is hard to not feel but maybe also hard to invite in sometimes.

The time came for an early ultrasound, 7 weeks in. 7 weeks is such a short time, at the same time it's the longest amount of time I can imagine, it was neverending and then suddenly I was there – at the doctors office, staring at the ultra sound screen, seeing a little something there but it's not a living something anymore, there is no heartbeat.

No heartbeat. How amazing is it that we, you and me and the people around us, all have a beating heart? For however long you've been alive, from those early weeks in your mothers womb, your heart has been beating and living you, doing the work. To me, that is utterly amazing, a sparkling mystery of life as it continues to beat within my chest and can't seem to find a way to keep beating within my womb.

Deep darkness followed. I still had all the symptoms of pregnancy and the knowledge of the heart not beating anymore, it was a waiting game of my body realizing what is happening and releasing what no longer is. I felt the soul so close but fleeting and I talked to him, what is going on, I asked, why is this happening? I am not ready, he said. An answer I heard before, not as straight forward but the messege have been clear. "I am not ready". I couldn't believe this, it hit me so hard and I felt anger rise up within me and I yelled "If you are not ready then you are not welcome here!!! I am no longer willing to carry your trials earthside, it is not my wish to be a home to a soul that is not ready. I am in it for the long haul, and I need the one that comes through me to be it too. I love you, and this stops here."

My body didn't begin the release on her own and about a week later we proceeded with a medical abortion. First came the emotional, mental, spiritual part of it, then the physical, as a full circle. I am writing this somewhat on the other side, on the path towards something else, some kind of healing. But this is the space where one needs to realize that it's ok to honor, to be grieving and healing and to move on at the same time. It's teaching me, yet again, about the paradox of life where, somehow, everything exists at the same time. That perfection we all strive for from time to time, that place we hope to reach in order to become this or that, in order to release or to let go, that place is already here. Among all the shit and the sadness and the hardship there is hope and joy and somehow another step forward has been taken.

Lastly, all I can say is – I still trust.