One month ago, I was in the hospital. The same hospital where my baby girls were born four years earlier. The same hospital where they each died in my arms, days later. One month ago, I was holding our newborn son. The same baby I pleaded to God to keep safe as I spent day after day, week after week, in the hospital with preeclampsia. The same baby who wasn't due to be born until this week. By the time I left the hospital for good, my world had been turned upside down. We had a premature baby in the back seat. We had spent the anniversaries of our daughters' deaths in grief's ground zero. We had left our lives uprooted, torn away from home and work without warning. I couldn't make sense of how birth and death had broken me open all over again. It felt like too much to process, on top of a scary delivery and a slow recovery that left my heart literally sick. But even then, I had no idea what was coming next. None of us did. . . . What seems like a lifetime ago, … [Read more...] about a month that changed the world
writing
ten years
Exactly ten years ago this month, I started a blog. I told exactly no one. Not even my husband. My first baby was six months old. I was working part-time, overwhelmed and tired. I craved connection and community. I wanted breadth of thought and depth of prayer. I couldn't find anything like what I wanted to read. So I decided to write it. I started writing quietly, typing one-handed in the dark, plodding out post after post that no one read. I didn't care; I loved it. My brain started spinning again. After a few weeks I did tell my beloved. After a few months I got brave and shared the blog with a handful of friends and family. I never expected it to amount to anything. Just a place for me to practice writing, to ponder spirituality and parenting, part of my transition from theological studies to new motherhood. Then a funny thing happened along the way. Writing turned into a calling that changed my life. . . . Readers will ask me now how to get started. … [Read more...] about ten years
Grieving Together: a book on miscarriage for couples
Before we lost our twin daughters after birth two years ago - suddenly, tragically, publicly - there was another loss. Smaller. Earlier. Quieter. Five years ago we lost a baby to miscarriage. I wrote about this loss here and in my book Everyday Sacrament. Miscarriage was devastating. It upheaved what we knew about parenting. How we expected things would (naturally) go according to (our) plans. How much more we've learned since then. Today is the due date of the baby we never got to hold. April 7th comes and goes silently each year, a ghost of an anniversary. But this year we get to fill today with hope. An announcement of new life all its own. At the end of 2016, Our Sunday Visitor approached me and my husband about writing a book on miscarriage. After all that I'd written about grief, would we consider writing a book on loss for couples - as a couple? Few Catholic resources exist on miscarriage, and the literature on loss is almost all written for women. … [Read more...] about Grieving Together: a book on miscarriage for couples
the grit and the glamour
Before I had children, I had a hazy image of life with kids. I don't think I idealized it as pure ease and smooth delight, but the montage of pictures that would flash through my mind looked much more like parenting's "best of" reel. Taking them to the playground on sunlit afternoons. Chasing them laughing before bath time. Cuddling up on the couch with favorite books. Watching them learn to ride a bike. Spinning them around the dance floor at family weddings. My movie montage still sneaks into my head in nostalgic moments. I know exactly why our memories choose to cement the best-of as hard truth. Because the grit which grinds through most of our days is not what keeps us going. It's the glamour. I saw this desire in spades on social media in the days leading up to Christmas and New Year's. Pictures of grinning cherubs in matching Sunday best. Families gathered beneath twinkling trees. Perfect holiday dinner spreads and champagne toasts. No one shows the screaming toddler … [Read more...] about the grit and the glamour
