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“Come play, Miles”, she said, looking up at the sweet, smiling face of his picture on the wall. It was the first time she’s been able to verbalize wanting her brother, and it broke my heart. I know that she’ll continue to express this yearning in many ways in the years to come, and IContinue reading “Come Play”

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 hisContinue reading “Three”

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 wipingContinue reading “Complexly Simple”

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 theContinue reading “Four Frames- A Mother’s Day Reflection”

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 untilContinue reading “I hope you know”

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, turningContinue reading “Rainbow”

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. TheContinue reading ““Real” Job”

“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 onContinue reading “Happy Things & Empty Things”

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.”Continue reading “Just”