Three
The thick snow coats the trees outside our bedroom window as I lie in bed with her, gazing at her perfect face. Two years ago, I was lying in the same bed with Miles, waiting for him to die. The feeling of his body on my chest, our breath rising and falling together until his…
Complexly Simple
I saw the little banner as I walked into the room after getting dressed and ready. One of my best girlfriends had just finished hanging it beside the 3-photo collage we have of Miles on our living room wall. “Big Brother”, it read. I felt it in my gut and immediately had to start wiping…
Four Frames- A Mother’s Day Reflection
Frame 1 I always knew I’d be a mom. It was a given: a belief so taken-for-granted that I only began to question it when Kent and I weren’t getting pregnant after 10 months of trying. After 3 years of failed fertility treatments and few possibilities on the adoption front, I had to confront the…
I hope you know
When the breath left your tiny body, I didn’t know for sure that “it” had happened. I laid there, willing your chest to rise again, but it didn’t. We placed our hands over your heart as it slowed and eventually stopped just after 3:30am, still not appreciating that it was real. I held you until…
Rainbow
The first notes of the song wash over me as I lay in a hip-opening posture during an online yoga class. It’s funny, because I was already feeling tears come before the song started- but as the familiar opening lyrics begin “When it rains, it pours…”, giant tears start leaking onto my yoga mat, turning…
“Real” Job
When I left work, I was pregnant. Pelvic issues had me in pain when standing (which, as a teacher, is unavoidable), so I went off about a month before Miles arrived. I spent the weeks waiting for him to arrive nesting, resting, and counting down the days until I could meet our little man. The…
Happy Things & Empty Things
“It’s just so nice when happy things happen,” Kent tells me on our drive home from a 3-day camping trip with my cousins. During the trip, my cousin’s boyfriend proposed to her, and we had the opportunity to celebrate them- we raised our glasses against the backdrop of a peaceful, canoe-access-only lake. We rode on…
Just
I wake up on the morning of our 8th wedding anniversary to my husband Kent sitting on the bed with a medium-sized box in his hands. “I thought we agreed we weren’t doing gifts!” I say, embarrassed that I don’t have anything for him. “It’s for both of us”, he says. “Go ahead, open it.”…
Power Poles and Healing
This week, we attended a ceremony where nine themed children’s IV poles that our friends and family helped to raise money for in Miles’ memory were donated to our local hospital. We partnered with a wonderful non-profit, the Fight Like Mason Foundation, which was started by two parents who lost their 4-year-old son Mason to…
Absent/Present
I sit by the water, watching our nephews play in the lake during our family vacation, splashing around as they jump in the waves. They are nine and twelve and quintessentially “boy”- loud, dirty, and full of energy. Miles adored his cousins, especially watching them play. He would sit contended in his little chair, his…
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