471

I've written 470 posts on this blog. This one is 471. I think it will be my last for a while. Maybe it will actually be my last on this blog. I'm afraid to write that, because now that I live far away from all my friends and family - except, of course, my core family, my husband and daughter - I am already feeling isolated enough. But I am needing to withdraw, similar to the need I had back in September, which clearly I didn't do a very good job of sticking to.

Let me see if I can explain...

I started this blog to chronicle my second pregnancy. It was going to be for my future child to read when s/he got old enough. It was going to help our families and friends stay connected to us as we moved abroad and were pregnant far away. It was going to help me stay connected too. 10 weeks later I wasn't pregnant anymore, but occasionally I kept writing. And I wrote on my other blog, the one I'd started much before this one, which wasn't about pregnancy or babies or babyloss, just about life. Then I got pregnant again, and I started writing here again. I stopped writing on my other blog the night of Tikva's ultrasound. And I kept writing here, more and more.

This place has been a refuge. A place I've gone to to share, for support, to support. Here I have felt less alone. Here I discovered how deeply people can love. Here I have chronicled my journey loving Tikva. Here I have honored my daughter, marveled at her, remembered her, longed for her. Here I have made friends I would never have known if I hadn't lost Tikva. Here I found a community when I felt lost at sea.

But it's gotten hard to be here.

Lately it makes me sad here. Both my own story, and others'. Lately I don't feel joy when I hear that another babylost mama is pregnant. Lately I feel like the last woman standing. And I am resistant to share that, because I don't want the comments that assure me that it will happen to me too, really it will, that so many people want that for me too. I don't want the pity, the Poor Gal... and she is so deserving.

And I find myself questioning everything I've written here and on Glow in the Woods for the past year+ since losing Tikva. All those words of hope and trust and faith and wonder; of belief that I am, it is all a part of something bigger; of believing that my body is healthy when day to day it is acting up; that I am not too old to have more children, that it will happen. I'm tired of being inspiring, reassuring, supportive, there for others. I'm tired of receiving emails asking me to make something for another babylost mama as she approaches her babyloss anniversary. I'm tired of being part of this.

And I am beginning to doubt all my lovely ways of looking at the world and experiencing this messy business, because in the end it still hasn't gotten me pregnant, and I still miss my girl, and I still cry every day, and from what I've chosen to share here, I'm not so sure anyone really knows that.

I think I've wanted to write this for a long time, maybe it's what I wanted to say in September. But I've been hesitant to for obvious reasons: not wanting to offend anyone, not wanting to seem bitter, not wanting to disappoint, not wanting to let go of a community that has held me and loved me - and find myself adrift, alone when I already feel really alone.

I've hesitated to write this because of family members who love me and whom I know have been wanting me to do this for a long time. I've hesitated to admit that my husband has been right all along, that this place - for me now - can be toxic (my word, not his), the opposite of healing. That it doesn't help me anymore to read other people's blogs about loss, in the same way that it probably wouldn't have been incredibly healthy if I'd gotten the job in the prenatal department at the children's hospital, focused on research around all the ways in which babies struggle and die.

I'm not sure what it is that I DO need, besides, maybe, three months on a beach in Mexico. It's scary to leave home not knowing where you're headed. But it doesn't feel good here for me anymore. It's a sad place, and while I have always been fearless about crying as many tears as my soul needs to release, I am tired of feeling sad. I am tired of hearing each day that another family has lost a child. I am tired of being a receptacle for sorrow, for fear, for loss of hope and its regaining - my own and others'. I am tired of being inspiring when I don't feel inspired.

I just want to be a regular woman again, loving my husband and daughter, trying to get pregnant without so much riding on it, looking for meaningful work, figuring out the logistics of going back to school at 38, and making a new home in a new place.

Thank you for being here with me, for paying attention to my journey. It means a lot. I already miss this place.