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all that we carry

4 Comments

I put off packing the hospital bag as long as I could. I didn’t want to jinx it. I didn’t want to think about the last time I packed it.

Mostly I didn’t know what to put inside.

The usual necessities, of course. Pajamas. Hairbrush. Baby clothes.

But I was bringing so much more with me to this birth. Fear. Anxiety. Grief.

How could I carry all this with me?

Our twins died nearly 18 months ago in the same hospital where I was preparing to birth our new baby. I knew I needed to bring our daughters with me in some way. So I tucked these sweet dolls inside my bag. A rosary bracelet from a dear friend. The same shirt I wore when I held my girls last. Prayers to anchor me when I wanted to quit.

I had to carry more this time. I wasn’t sure how to do it – or if I would be strong enough.

But I knew I had to try.

I remember every early-morning ultrasound we took of our twins in those final weeks.

We’d throw the hospital bag in the backseat (again), pull out of the driveway before dawn (again), and creep through traffic in the cold winter dark (again). We never knew what the day would bring. Would the doctors decide we had to do the in-utero surgery that afternoon? Or would the scan show enough stability that we could go home and hope for tomorrow?

Every night we pulled the bag back out of the car.  Every morning we put it back in.

Until the day we carried it into the hospital for surgery.

And left days later, empty-handed.

. . .

Next week will mark eighteen months since Maggie and Abby died.

As I write, their baby brother sleeps curled on my chest, milk-drunk dozing, warm as love.

The past year and a half have churned us through every emotion. Grief, shock, anger, sorrow. Jealousy, fear, anxiety, despair. Hope, peace, awe, and joy.

Sometimes my head spins to think of all we have lived through in such a short span of months. I have grown and changed in ways I never imagined. I see the whole world differently because of all that I now know.

Because of what I carry with me.

. . .

In the weeks since the new baby arrived, I’ve been surprised by how easy my recovery has been. I’m not as exhausted as in other postpartum days. I have more patience with my other kids – and more happiness at being home with them – than I remember having in past maternity leaves.

Which made no sense to me. (How could more kids be easier?)

Until I remember how I’d been stretched.

My heart had to widen to make space for twins. And then it shattered when they were gone.

Once you’ve been pulled apart like this, you can’t shrink back to the size you were before.

So I can carry more now. Because my life has been opened. Because I’ve loosened my grip on hard views I once held. Because once my heart broke, more of the world’s needs could fall in.

Which meant that when I went to birth this new baby, I brought you with me – your intentions, your yearning hearts, your infertility, your losses, your own children buried and gone, your diagnoses, your struggles, your wandering, your doubt, your anger, your fear.

Every time I made myself vulnerable and let you in, so many of you reached out with your own stories and said yes, me too.

I’ve carried all of your stories with me. And you’ve made my heart stronger by what it’s learned to hold.

. . .

Sometimes I envy the mom I used to be. When life was simpler and everyday exasperations cluttered my hours. I didn’t know it was easy – the sleepless nights, the toddler tantrums, the growing pains of raising more children – until I came crashing into the Really Hard of death and grief.

Now I’d give anything to go back to ordinary time.

Now even the brightest days are crossed by shadows that cloud the sun.

But I learn how to keep going. How to keep carrying all that I have been given to hold.

This is the work of growing up and growing wiser – which also happens to be the path of parenting. To help my children learn how to handle what happens. To decide what to let go and what to hold fast. To stretch into deeper love and wider compassion.

I didn’t get to pick what I was given. But I do get to choose how to move forward. 

And today I choose to hold beauty. Today I choose to carry hope.

. . .

The amazing folks at Lily Jade sent me this beautiful Madeline diaper bag as a gift. I absolutely love it! Big enough to haul around cloth diapers, perfect for drinks & snacks for multiple kids, and stylish enough to double as a work bag. (I especially love the genius insert that holds all the baby gear so that you can easily pull it out to transition from diaper bag to purse.) And in a small but important way, it’s helped me make the transition from hospital to home, from my old life to our new baby…

Check out Lily Jade’s website to learn more – I can’t recommend it highly enough!

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Comments

  1. Jane says

    25 August 2017 at 7:26 am

    Big congrats on the birth of Benjamin and great to hear you are recovering well.

    Another beautifully written and powerful post! I was really moved when you said you brought us with you…it actually had me in tears 🙂 It can be such a hard journey sometimes but I find your posts always inspire more faith and more belief that our hearts desires will be realised, we just don’t get to decide when.

    Enjoy every second of you mat leave. xoxo

    Reply
  2. Melanie Castillo says

    25 August 2017 at 10:37 am

    ❤️

    Reply
  3. Nicole says

    25 August 2017 at 12:41 pm

    You’re amazing. I can’t thank you enough for letting me in and sharing your wisdom. You’ve been through tough trials and your strength and resilience is breathtaking. I have so much admiration for you. May God bless and protect your family. Sending you so much love.

    Nicole

    Reply
  4. Jenni Ho-Huan says

    27 August 2017 at 8:16 am

    O Laura, like you, I am amazed at how I have stretched (though for me it’s about bumping into my womanhood and being a wife- believe i gave you a copy of my book). And you just pinned it there: some days, I envy when my life was simpler too.
    But for now, I envy the Madeline bag! Haha. Hugs dear!

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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