learning to live again

I vowed to give up the fertility charting and I did.  In May we traveled home (I still call it that) to visit my mom and sister and attend our third of four weddings in 2 months.  My mom has this super cozy, yet spacious ranch that she moved into while I was beginning college.  That’s been my home away from home for over 10 years now, and I always love going home for a visit.  She has this amazing pool that has always been a place of profound life planning, from relationships, to college majors, to friendships, to trip planning.  The pool has also been a place of margarita drinking, water gun wars, and thoughtless floating. It has been a peaceful, joyful place to retreat to a few times each year and I was blessed to be able to go there in May.  It had been incredibly rainy in the week leading up to our visit, but the sun came out when I arrived to town.

One of my first memories of this pool was studying for an exam in my early college years.  I had my study guide in hand, floating away while working on my tan.  A few years after that I began to wear sunscreen and debated what my life would look like once I was finished with nursing school.  At this point, I had been through a devastating breakup, traveled to Honduras on a medical missions trip and found my passion for NICU nursing within the walls of Children’s Mercy Hospital.  A year or so later, I floated with my mom and told her all about this boy named Tony who I had met in a wedding.  The next year I whined about how I couldn’t stand the long distance between Tony and I and decided that I would apply for a job in Chicago.  A year after that I was wedding planning, newly engaged with my mom as we floated away, drinks in hand.

This pool has heard its share of life choices and debates.  And here I was brokenhearted after my first miscarriage, trying to remember what it meant to just LET GO and LIVE.  A few watermelon margaritas on the most perfect sunny Sunday afternoon, and I felt happier than I’d been in months.  I remember worrying briefly that day that I was going to miss my fertile window.  But I stayed true to the giving up control that month and just enjoyed living.  That was such a happy day that I will remember forever.  Tony cannon-balled as my mom and I floated peacefully and before we knew it, we were wearing our margaritas.  And we just laughed.  Pippa learned to swim that day too.   The weather, the company, the vibes were perfect.

I wrote in an earlier post about how I struggled with feeling like life wasn’t good enough after the miscarriage.   Life seemed “less” than what it was when I was pregnant. May and June were better months for me in that I decided to acknowledge my loss by seeking JOY. Tony and I made a “Summer 2016” bucket list and we started to chip away at it and focus on enjoying each other’s company as much as we could.  A spouse who is there for you, gets you, sees your pain each day and is there to cheer you on is not something to take for granted.  But in this time of feeling like life was “less,” that was harder to remember. My therapist actually held a session for us together in May which was so beneficial for us.   We talked about the loss, the changes that will take place when Tony is finished with school, financial stresses and more.

And in the midst of that session, I broke down crying as I looked at Tony and told him that I couldn’t have gotten through the last few months without him.  He helped get me through the dark days, weeks and months leading up to that moment.  I will forever be grateful for him.  Attending the wedding with him that week in Dallas felt different.  I felt the pain of our loss, but I also felt a sense that we had overcome something huge and were stronger, and better for it.  We danced the night away and it felt so good to feel so happy.