Just Do(in’) It – Running in Puke-Stained Sneakers

The other day, I unexpectedly found the opportunity to have coffee with a friend at work whom I admire greatly.  It was kismet, actually and could not have come at a better time as I was slugging it out at my desk, slouching and in need of a break.  As we huddled around a mauve formica table in the cafeteria, our talk focused on how she very recently went against the grain and took a hefty risk by accepting a job that requires a lot of travel, a decision she hardly took lightly but one that I secretly rallied for the entire time.  As she teeters on the edge of potentially entering motherhood, she knows there are a few more things she would like to accomplish or at least try first.  With the support of her husband and ultra-cute dog, she is forging ahead and taking a risk to prove something to herself.  This took serious courage and audacity, knowing that it’s not simply a specific sum of collected experiences under your belt and then, Voila! Ready for parenthood!  But something was beckoning her to travel and do.  After she successfully navigated her first two weeks abroad, she returned home feeling relieved and confident in her decision.  She told me, “Sometimes you have to give up something awesome in order to get something awesome.”  I keep hearing this in my head over and over again, and I doubt she has any idea what an impact it’s had on me.

Lately I have been trying to stretch myself, dipping my toes into all sorts of unknown waters.  In a move that was completely out of my comfort zone (and only at the urging of an amazing friend), I recently auditioned for the show Listen To Your Mother and was accepted!  So I had the opportunity to read an original piece aloud in front of an audience of about two-hundred people, which was both terrifying and immensely gratifying.  I have never been a part of a cast before, save for a starring role in my 5th grade play, and underestimated how powerful it was going to feel to be up on stage, surrounded by the likes of these incredibly gifted writers.  I still get the chills remembering how it felt to clasp hands and take our bow – a mixture of elation, pride, relief and the sense of accomplishment that can only come from taking a huge risk. 

As I inch ever closer to 40, I cannot help but dwell in introspection much of the time.  I am working very hard to help support my family, saw my husband through a huge career change, am mothering two tiny children to the best of my abilities, am active in my community and generally feel like I balance it all out pretty well.  Most days.  But there are also times that truthfully I wonder where I am headed, other than into some existential crisis.  In an age in which we are expected to do it all, and do it well, I cannot help but wonder if I am truly making a meaningful impact; am I proud of whom I’ve become and does this woman resemble who her younger self had hoped she would be.  I feel a certain sense of urgency that I cannot ignore.  It has to do with awareness, partially attributed to optimism, a bit to do with responsibility and even more a desire to take care of and improve upon myself so that I can teach my children by example what it means to value yourself and to thoughtfully contribute what you can to the world around you. 

But then there is the reality of the day to day.  The day job.  The endless laundry.  The mortgage.  And pain.  While I never thought I would be thankful for it, there is some irony in this one thing that physically nags me as it attempts to keep me in check.  I have an old injury (read fractured neck) that results in a pinched nerve that can debilitate me for days if I don’t pay attention to it, do exercises and stretch regularly – which can seemingly be too time consuming so has become something I rarely carve out a few minutes for routinely.  It’s basically like having another dependent, minus any of the joy.  I recently saw a physical therapist while in near crisis mode who gently reminded me of how you are supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can help others on the proverbial plane.  And I should meditate, he said, as if reading my mind’s checklist of the things I should be doing regularly but don’t.  I compliantly nodded in agreement, his meaning not lost on me, and thought about my choices.  Since giving birth to my son three and a half years ago and my daughter one and a half years ago, exercise is the last thing I’ve prioritized.  So what did I do this morning?  I decided it was time to go for a run.

I can’t remember the last time I went for a run, this thought like a record on repeat as I plodded along the tow path.  Why do people actually like to do this?  This is horrible!  It’s only been three minutes?!  F*@#!  Honestly, if I’m going to get an hour to myself early in the morning, I’d rather be drinking coffee reading the Times in peace and quiet.  The last time I seriously trained physically as an adult was because I had teammates counting on me to get up and down the soccer field for 90 minutes because we never had any subs.  The fact that I can motivate when others are depending on me but cannot seem to when it’s just my own simple health and well being to consider bothers me to the core.  And I know I am not alone in this.  Women are renowned for being and are unfortunately often expected to be self-sacrificing.  I am fully aware of the need to take good care of myself – for longevity and for a better quality of life.  But I am also famously good at making excuses. 

For starters, I am a little intimidated by the gym.  Treadmills have freaked me out ever since I had that epic fall years ago in front of a packed gym, thankfully before the advent of social media.  Secondly, I get to spend about two and a half hours a day with my kids during the week due to my work schedule and commute.  This breaks my heart and I could not possibly fathom cutting into any of that time to squeeze in a workout.  And then there is the practical excuse: “I’ll start running, just as soon as I buy new sneakers!”  The ones I have are pretty old and are still caked in puke from my daughter’s recent stomach flu.  Throw up or not, there was no way I was going to make up some lame excuse for not hitting the bricks.  I did not have child care for the day so took a vacation day to stay home with my two beauties.  I had a small window of time before my husband had to leave the house for work, so after this ridiculous amount of deliberation, I ventured out. 

Given the first half of the run was laborious, my mind did eventually begin to wander from the tedium of jogging.  And it was such a gift.  As I ran along the Delaware River, I noticed that my pace was about that of the water flowing south, so without any witnesses, we started to race one another.  We were neck and neck, the river and I!  I felt like how my son must feel when he doesn’t know anyone is watching him and, dressed in pirate garb, sets off to sail the seven seas.  I was like my kidself in the woods and I was so grateful that I put those pukey sneakers on and went outside.

What I love the most about things like running or cross-country skiing is that feeling when you don’t even notice you’ve stopped focusing on the physical skill and finally have a quiet mind.  That is until and then I would see a passerby and wonder what they were thinking.  Like, “Man, is she sucking wind!”  “What terrible form!”  But maybe, “Wow, that woman is a runner!  Good for her!”  I prefer the latter but for now, I will do my best.  I’ll give up something awesome, like an hour or two of sleep or that extra kiss from my babies before leaving the house for the day, in order to get something awesome, like good health and better quality (rather than focusing on the quantity) of time with my loved ones.  I hope you will come with me on this journey because it is strength in numbers.  Let’s together acknowledge what is tripping us up and keep going, keep trying.  Share what makes you get up and move.  Take someone with you.  Let’s prioritize and celebrate our health today.  

*Note: I have been enjoying a modicum of success since that first run about a month ago and have a decent amount of runs under my belt, many of which were even on a treadmill and it was not so bad!  I rock out to my circa 2005 Nano, do a couple of miles, and with the help of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Advil when needed, I feel stronger every time.  I do it when I can, be it in the middle of my work day or simply when I find myself ruminating over whatever it is that I frequently seem to stumble upon.  I have even downloaded some cheesey apps to help me occasionally meditate when I get up in the morning and somehow just found the guts to tell you about it while in the meantime, wearing kicks that indeed do still have puke on them.  

Lost and Found - A Friend's Guide to Surviving Miscarriage

I have a secret.  I have always wanted kids my entire life.  I didn’t know when, where or how, but I knew someday I would have a family.  I would act tough, even indifferent about it sometimes.  I grappled with the thought of it.  Would I be selling out?  Would I be any good at being a mother?  Would I enjoy it?  Would I feel like my life was over?  I still hadn’t been to Italy. Would I feel fulfilled or was I fulfilling some role that others expected of me?  After having lost an ovary and fallopian tube at 17, I never thought my chances would be outstanding so I downplayed motherhood in public and would secretly weep about the unknown in private. 

I knew I would get to it, albeit by my own womb or someone else's, I just had so many questions and doubts.  So when I got pregnant, I was over the moon!  So was my husband.  We’re what you might call late bloomers.  He had said from the get go that he wanted children.  I would say I wasn’t sure.  After years of dating, and a handful more being married, we talked about trying to have children mostly after a few drinks when I would let my guard down.  From the moment that I took that pregnancy test (and the subsequent two, three and four more), I began planning.  Dreaming and scheming of what I would do with my little one, how we would travel the world with our kid!  Go to punk rock fests and be the parents with the toddler wearing the headphones, sitting on our shoulders.  Grow a garden together and instill the importance of being a part of and sharing a genuine appreciation for where our food comes from.  We had to start building the library right away!  And of course, collecting and getting excited about nursery decorating ideas.  I couldn’t wait!  I was so in awe of finally being pregnant that I was only mildly hesitant really to tell people. 

It’s such a weird place to be when you are newly pregnant.  No one is opening doors for you or giving up their seat on the bus because no one knows.  You are in your own secret world.  Your body is working overtime and it is seriously exhausting and you want so badly to tell people!  But you are supposed to wait until you are out of the first trimester, they say.  I was almost there!  So I couldn’t keep it in at times.  I eagerly told the woman cashier at the supermarket.  We told our families and friends.  I can even remember saying, “Well, if something does go wrong, these are all of the people I would want to know anyway!”  And that was certainly true.  What I hadn’t planned for was how much it was going to hurt if something did go wrong.  I couldn’t have prepared myself for that, nor could my husband.  We were already on to what kind of hot rod would be a good family car. 

At about 11 weeks, I started spotting which isn’t really that out of the ordinary, but the midwife suggested that I come in for an ultrasound anyway.  There we discovered on the screen a tiny little person with no heartbeat.  And that was that.  As tears streamed down our faces, I was scheduled for my D&C a few days later. We practically ran through the waiting room, horrifying other parents to be, no doubt.  I will never forget how it felt right then to hopelessly look down at my already beginning to swell belly.  From the looks of the ultrasound, I had miscarried somewhere around 8 or 9 weeks, which is when my dog suddenly wouldn’t leave me alone; she even started sleeping on the floor along my side of the bed.  I was incredulous.  I felt almost foolish.  “How did I not know this had happened instead of believing I was still pregnant if the baby died weeks prior?” I wondered.  This just fueled my feelings of failure.  Enduring the next few days of that until my procedure was brutal. Going to the hospital, getting changed into a gown and then being anesthetized was agony.  I was like a zombie.  Managing the gamut of emotions that followed in grief was so much harder than I ever thought they could be.  My parents came over a lot.  They cried with me.  I bled for weeks, things went wrong.  Multiple procedures and trips to the doctor followed.  There was some bizarre disconnect between my brain and my body.  It was as if somewhere the message got lost that there was no baby and it wasn’t until my due date that my body started normalizing, which seemed to take much longer than the time I felt afforded by most in society to have gotten over it.  What is the appropriate time to heal from a miscarriage?  Do you ever, really?  As lots of people tried to help me get through it, they said and did a lot that both helped and hindered, all of it out of golden hearts, I know this to be true.  But afterwards, I really wished I could have handed them a guide of what to say, what to do and how to act around me for the coming months.  So I wrote this article in hopes that it might help someone else.  Here are a few examples of what I would categorize under things not to say to someone who experienced a miscarriage:

 “You know, that’s really common.”

That isn’t something a woman who has just miscarried finds remotely comforting.  While it’s true, somewhere between 10-20% of known pregnancies end up in miscarriage, let’s just establish the fact that now would not be a great time to remind the woman who just suffered this blow that sure, by some standards, the odds were stacked against her.  I am struggling to think of an appropriate time in which, “You know, that’s really common,” would be helpful to hear, and I’m coming up short.  So maybe don’t say that ever, even if their loss, fear, condition or circumstances seem to be somewhat commonplace or even ordinary. Not to someone who has been or knows someone who was just diagnosed with breast cancer, not to someone who was involved in a car accident, not to someone who is going through a divorce.   All pretty “common” scenarios but compassion and discretion should triumph here.  Instead, start with a hug and say something like, “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”

“When are you going to try for another?”

If you are asking that, chances are that you will now be placed in the “last to know” category.  It really isn’t any of your business and she could be thinking a thousand different things like, “What’s wrong with me?”  “Was this my fault somehow?”  “I don’t want to go through this pain ever again.”  Things will improve for her in time, and you are lucky enough to know that because that can only mean one thing: you are not in her shoes at this very moment in time.  Maybe you have gone though this kind of loss.  For now, let her figure out what her next best steps will be.  She may get back in the saddle promptly.  She also may opt to not try again.  You love her so you must support all of the possibilities openly, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

“That happened like two months ago.  Don’t you think it’s time you start to get over it?”

There is no amount of time you can measure healing after this loss.  She may seem upbeat after two weeks.  She many seem run down after 5 months.  She can take as long as she needs.  Please don’t stop acknowledging her pain.  For me, I much preferred that people didn’t walk on eggshells.  It made it worse for me when people wouldn’t say anything about my miscarriage.  After a while, I felt as though I wasn’t supposed to talk about it.  Believe me, it wasn’t like I wanted to talk about it 24/7.  Just be careful in your messaging.  Leave it open and ask how she is doing.

“Everything happens for a reason, it is what it is, this was God’s way…”

Nope.  Not even remotely comforting.  At least it wasn't for me.  Whenever we experience a loss, we seek to find the explanations as to why it happened, although the hard truth is that often times, we will never get the answer.  We must contend with the fact that it happened.  Even if you are/she is religious or not, if it is a slogan that comes on a mug in the Hallmark store, maybe just omit those cliches and give her a hug instead.  Promise, those conversations about what a higher power may have intended can happen.  Just...later.

If you are thinking, “I am worried she will be uncomfortable around me and my baby.”

I know this one is close to your heart if you are the one asking, and it is kind and compassionate of you to wonder.  In my case, I couldn't figure out if that discomfort was being projected on me or not, but rest assured, I definitely was not pining for other people's babies like they do in the movies.  I did have a tough time with firsts.  To be honest, I did cry after attending my first baby shower for a friend after I had miscarried, but I felt I had to go through it.  It is possible to be a little sad for yourself and truly happy and joyful for the mom-to-be.

If you are thinking, “I really want to comfort her but I’m really not sure what to say.”

Good for you!  You are already using a filter and demonstrating that you are a good listener, which is what I longed for the most.  You don’t have to say anything at all.  You don't have to have the answers.  Instead, bring her food.  Food is the outstretched hand.  Food feeds the soul.  Food means not having to go out to the store.  Wine was always extremely welcomed at my house, too.  As were visits, jokes and offers to go out.  Don’t worry about trying to find the right words to comfort her.  Hug her.  She might feel like a failure.  Help her to take care of herself.  Bring food and wine but leave out the remarks like, "Hey, well at least you can drink now!"  Seriously.  Check in on her often and then again much later in the game than you’d think.  You are a true blue friend.  Keep up the good work.  She will never forget the empathy you have shown.  Winners all around!

A note for anyone going through it:  I’m sorry.  Welcome to the resourceful, elite and exclusive club that you joined, willingly or not.  Child or childless.  You became a mother.  You know things and can comfort someone going through the loss of a baby like no other.  I want to share with you two things.  One - I will totally grab a beer with you if and when at all possible.  And two – I will never forget the one and only thing that someone said to me that truly brought me comfort.  She said that it is a Yogi belief (and I am paraphrasing here) that not every soul is meant to stay here, on this earth, at this particular time.  They perhaps just needed a place to touch down before moving on.  This wasn’t a complete loss in that sense and the pregnancy was not in vain.  In my case, I provided that opportunity.  This aligned with my adoration of science and the fact that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.  It brought me peace.  I hope that you are able to share what does eventually bring you peace, too.  You have a voice and I would love to listen.