Rainbows and Healing Wounds
CW: Pregnancy loss, body things, mentions of depression
I knew it was happening. It was the kind of “knowing” that spreads through your body like an invisible cloak of dread. It rode in on thick, dark clouds emanating from somewhere in my core, unfurling tentacles throughout every muscle, every sinew, every last blood cell. It’s the kind of “knowing” that is a boulder in your throat, daring you to try and process anything outside of it, teasing you as the world around you keeps spinning, and you sink deeper and deeper under its weight. It was as though I could feel life detaching from me in every moment, little neurons flickering on-off-on-off, until finally shutting off all together, and falling away. My mind - day and night-constantly filled with strange images of drowning, gasping, and choking.
There was no escaping it, and yet - life had to go on. The moment I knew - without a shadow of a doubt - that the tiny, barely-there life that I had been growing in my body, was gone - I sat facing a room of 23 first graders, and we were talking about what “sad” feels like in our bodies. Their eyes darted up expectantly, as their bodies - begging to escape “criss-cross apple sauce” position shifted around ever-so slightly. I had just asked, who can tell me about a time they felt sad, and what that might have felt like in your body? when my very own body answered the question in the most un-funny irony that could ever be written.
Somewhere outside of myself, I called on a girl with felt flowers embroidered on her skirt, who talked about the loss of a grandparent -
“my heart felt really heavy, like I had to hold it.”
Then a boy, who was so visibly jittering with energy, that even his hair stood up in spikes, talked about a disappointment -
“My sad felt angry - I just wanted to cry and hit things.”
One by one, we went around the circle, and each child described the gut-wrenching realization of sadness - of loss - of rage mixed in with longing. The air in the room felt progressively thicker, heavier, out of place with the colorful - wide open - spaces of this school.
The “sadness” lesson is one of the more poignant. Sadness is heavy in the body - it slows down the heart rate, it lowers body temperature, and it turns the limbs into barbells - heavy, basically useless, and burdensome. In a class-setting where I only have 17 solid minutes to show - not tell - how emotions move through the body, and how we can help ourselves ride that wave - the turn around from I am weighed down by sadness to I can move through this and manage has to be pretty quick. After 15 years of this, you’d think I’d have it down to a formula, but with any solid methodology - it evolves over time, as do the young people learning it. What doesn’t change, however, is that in every session, in every class, with any age group - I have to be a solid sounding board. Their emotions are safe with me.
On this day, however, my internal world was a black hole - and I felt their sadness ebbing and flowing through me. We had to turn it around - now- for all of our sakes. I took a deep breath in, and let it out - audibly, hilariously, incongruently. First graders love exaggerated exhales. I did it again. Then, I invited them to do it along with me. Within a couple of minutes, we were all in giggles - crackling through the heaviness, letting rays of sunlight shine through and bathe us all in warmth. After a few more loud, tickle-y exhales - we focused our breathing, balling it up tight in our fists, and letting it go with noodle- arms. We got up, stomped our feet as we breathed in, and let it all out.
In our closing circle, the kids remarked, I loved how first I felt sad, but then even though I remembered what made me sad, I could feel okay again. The miracle of landing the plane at the end of each lesson, of the kids getting it by feeling it in their bodies, hearts, minds - never ceases to bring me awe. On this day, however, my smile masked the loss in progress, the sensations in my body of dreams shattering, fears emerging, and that never-too-far-away feeling of complete and utter failure taking over every. single. sense.
I write this today, one year and seven months later, marveling at how quickly life can throw us into pits of despair, and how - even with the most sharpened tools, and willing support network - we can sit, trapped by our own feelings of desperation. I went into a hole that no one knew about - it was all internal, and all too familiar - as though almost two decades of recovery hadn’t encouraged me to clean out that space- as though I was keeping the furniture in it, just in case. The velvet couch of depression was ready to welcome me back, to trap me within its cushions, and envelop me like a well-meaning, but useless mothball.
I became two people in the way that only those who have known life-altering pain know how to be. One person smiled through the day, parented her kids, had just run another marathon, and gave classes on emotional wellness. The other - sank deeper into sadness, despair, worry - and that all too familiar refrain of you are not good enough - and didn’t know how she’d surface again. When we feel like our insides are failing us, sometimes we over-do it on the outside to compensate. I was doing just that - proving to no one in particular that losing a pregnancy no one knew about, that then being told “hmmm…maybe we should get some extra scans on that - I don’t like what it looks like” - was something I could beat on my own. I could out-run this too. I’m fast now, the scary things can’t catch me.
As we do when we are looking for anonymous internet validation, I scoured stories of loss and illness - and prayed before reaching it - that it would end in hope and survival. I spent many nights up, tears streaming, wondering - what is this all for, anyway? Some stories end in heartbreak - but they don’t all have to. Sometimes, the heartbreak can open space for more love to grow, even if we don’t know how long for. For everyone of us that fights publicly, there are handfuls that fight in silence.
It took time. It took a lot of reflection, opening up, and very determined attendance of medical appointments (eventually with support), to move through - to welcome the new path of "check ins”, to align myself back into one being - and to welcome a new life?
Yes, eventually that too.
As I write this now, my two week old little miracle has her head resting in the crook of my elbow, her little sleepy face ready to wake up the second I try to move her off of me. I marvel at her - and the fight she fought to be here (for another post…). A baby born after loss is colloquially called a “rainbow baby” - to elicit the Biblical promise from God to Noach not to flood the world again. (Genesis 9:13). The rainbow signifies hope, renewal, and droplets of sunshine mixing in with the rain. Still - after every life born, or every loss - there is bleeding. A life detaching from the mother’s body in either case leaves behind a wound that can take months to heal.
The rainbow in the picture above is from one month before her little soul declared she would join us - and I remember thinking, as I took it - okay - maybe things can turn around. Maybe I could finally get rid of that old couch, clean out that space, and return to the path I’d been carving. So maybe it wasn’t just the rainbow, but also a lot of hard work, determination, and honestly looking at what made sense to pursue, and what didn’t anymore.
The world since I took that picture in July 2023, after a particularly bad rainstorm upstate tore the bottom off our car - hasn’t exactly been unilaterally filled with joy. Humanity is constantly healing wounds as new ones appear - we are bleeding on one side, while growing life on the other. Yet, there are still rainbows after it rains. There are still promises of this is actually worth it. It might mean getting back on a path, picking up a new fight, or realizing that maybe - we’ve done enough for others. For some of us, these promises are very hard to swallow - living our lives in fear and unrest. For others, they are the only promises that keep us going.
Keep going.