Get up, Grrl

Warning: if you know me in real life please ask yourself if you really want to read this. This is a "Too Much Information" day at Corporate Mommy. Less brutal and still fresh: A cool shot of Sears Tower and another of Wacker drive and a little bit about Sunday . ******************************************

This week, Getupgrrl at Chez Miscarriage discovered that maybe being pregnant and giving birth is not the way she will become a mother. And my heart, like so many others, aches for her. Hundreds of people from around the world, who have been touched by her abundance of faith and humor as she has written about her journey to parenthood have reached out to her. In sympathy, compassion, and love. Funny to think of it. Hundreds of people. Hundreds. Posting words of encouragement and sadness, spurred by love. How do you love someone you have never met? Ask any parent. It is simple. To slip into love with the idea of someone. And then have it be overwhelmingly confirmed from the first shared breath. Getupgrrl, her self-given moniker. It gives you an idea of how she faces life. She's got grit, as my grandmother would say. Moxie. Getupgrrl, I believe that motherhood comes to every mother. Maybe not when or how we would always wish. But that's my belief, and what comfort is it to you? Does it help to know there are others? Others that have shared their stories because you shared yours? Others who gave up and then had miracles bloom in their lives? When I gave up, I was alone.  Until that day, I thought I would be a mother the moment I decided I was ready. Heh. I was a total dumbass. Back then, I counted on my talent for getting pregnant. Hadn't yet sunk in that I didn't have one for staying that way. The spring I was 27, I had a miscarriage. Not my first. Not my last. Definitely the worst. Actually, there were three of us, friends, pregnant at the same time. 2 of us miscarried. I sat alone at the doctor's office, after. The nurse came in and tried to be kind. She said, "Almost all miscarriages, the fetus wasn't viable" and she said, "there was nothing you could have done." And I nodded. The doctor came in and I asked her, "Was it because, when I was younger, I..." and she said, "No." and I said, "... but I don't think you understand. I did horrible things, I was a horrible woman. I don't deserve...." and she said "No. No, this wasn't your fault." And I nodded, and I tried not to cry as I walked back to my flat. And I didn't believe her.  I sat for days, staring at the walls. I bled for days, and felt somehow that it would never end. God was gone, and I didn't want the Church's platitudes. I was alone, in many ways. I was alone. I listened on the phone to the one friend who'd stayed pregnant. It was so hard on her. She was so sick. Everyone was worried. I hated myself for writhing inside, for screaming in my head. How I wanted her hard road for my own. I didn't speak to my other friend. At all. We didn't have anything to say to each other. We stayed wrapped in our privacy. I paid scant attention to the city around me, the people suffering much worse than I could know. There were cruel realities all over the world, but I didn't see them. I had a well of violence against nice people who told me their nice words.  They didn't understand. I felt like I'd invented pain. I was in a selfish, bitter cave. Badly decorated with images of how things were supposed to be. If you doubt it, let me reassure you. 5 minutes of impending parenthood is more than enough time to see, in your mind's eye, an entire lifetime. It is enough time to build hopes and spin fantasies. And to pin your entire heart to them. Enough people pushed, so I went back to the doctor. I was a ghost of the woman from the week before. I was lightheaded and soul-crushed. The doctor looked me over, her forehead wrinkled in concern. "You're not eating like I told you. You're not drinking enough fluids. You're not taking the vitamins." She stroked my arm. I was cold in that cotton gown. My socks were dirty. Her kindness broke me. I began to cry in great snotty wails. I heaved, like I was going to vomit. "What is it?" the doctor asked. "I want my baby back," I screamed. "Please...." I begged. She let me spill it out, waves of it, anger and mourning and self loathing and fear and longing, yes - desperate longing.  Panting for air and sick. Then the doctor squared my shoulders to her and looked me dead in the eyes. "Listen to me," she commanded. "You will be a mother. Do you hear me? Not today, and maybe not this way. But you will be a mother. This is not the end." And then I was able to breathe again. Eventually, I packed myself up and went for a long walk. Across a continent. Or two. I forgave myself. I forgave God.  Eventually, I came home. And years later, my motherhood beget a child. But if you'd have told me what was ahead the spring that I was 27, I wouldn't have believed you. The hurt went bone deep. It needed the healing.  God speed, Getupgrrl.