Cutout Heart

Walking past a jewelry store a few days before Valentine's Day, I see a window display of cutout hearts dangling on silver ribbons.

I forget, until I remember.

Hearts cut out, dangling on ribbons of memory. I see tender threads of sorrow connecting us to our losses: loved ones passed on; friends who have passed us by; lovers whose touch has faded with time. My cutout hearts: our first child, due February 10; our second child, due February 14.

I forgive, until I rage.

This time of year usually finds me deep underground, out of the chatter, holding my grief silent and sacred. But this year—the year of charmolypi—I decide to hang on and hang out, to push through and pretend. I forget how raw I can become, as though my skin has been stripped away.

I am together, until I fall apart. 

What happens is coincidence. A curse of timing. Mercury in Retrograde. At my most vulnerable, I linger in a social media forum on the cusp of a weekend, like a child in the schoolyard at recess, watching as a group knits together, their backs to me, intent on their own games, speaking their secret language. The language of sisterhood. The language of motherhood. Languages I will never speak, countries I will never visit.

I am whole, until I break. 

All the rage. All the raw hurt. It pours out in little-girl loneliness. I lose my shit. I really do. For days, a ticker-tape parade of all my faults and shortcomings replays in digital neon shoutycaps:

JULIE, NO ONE WILL EVER PICK YOU FOR THEIR TEAM BECAUSE YOU ARE

withdrawnawkwardweirduglysillyclumsyboringnotasisternotamothernotoneofus

And then it stops. Not all at once. It takes some serious self-talk and soul-searching. The gushing fire hydrant of self-hate eventually diminishes to a lawn sprinkler, and then to the last trickle from a closed water spout. It takes keeping my eyes peeled for moments of grace.

I stand in shadow, until I turn my face to the sun.

Grace comes first from the inside. A recognition that all my rational energy is fighting the good fight—the one that keeps my head above water when it sees the tsunami wave of depression bearing down. It comes in the letting go of unfair expectations—of myself, of others.

Other moments of grace follow: an article, shared by Rene Denfeld—whose powerful writing and capacity for compassion serve as inspiration for the writer and woman I strive to be—and in the reading, I accept my grief for what it is—endless and all right (Getting Grief Right); an essay by Elizabeth Gilbert that makes me realize I must reclaim the shit I've lost and own it. Own that I hurt, that I overreact in moments of acute pain and loneliness, and forgive myself for not always getting the really awful stuff just right.

Emotional healing guru Iyanla Vazant says, “When you see crazy coming, cross the street.” In this case, I meet crazy in the middle of the road. I put my arms around her and say, "You are loved. You are worthy. Now, let's celebrate."

I walk, until I dance. 

A wee package arrives in the mail from someone who has never met me, but who offers up her faith in me, her heart, her home. In the grace of a sparkling just-spring day, I melt.

"I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." I pulled this from that lovely New York Times article to which I linked above. The thing is, I'm writing about my sorrows. I'm writing a whole huge novel about the sorrows. It's the toughest work I've ever done. My character, Holly, she isn't me. The story isn't autobiographical, although some of the places are places I've been, some of the experiences are ones I've had. But it's not so much that I'm writing about what I know; rather, I'm writing what I feel.

I write, until I heal. 

That girl on the playground feels a warm hand slip into hers, pulling her away from what she doesn't have, into the embrace of what she does: the love of wonderful boy. My Valentine.

I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy. ~ Isak Dinesen

Shattering the Silence: Three Minus One

Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss by Sean Hanish My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure note: I am one of the contributors to this anthology.

In July 2009, my first pregnancy ended. In July 2012, my second pregnancy ended. There will be no others. Those experiences—as well as the years of baffling infertility that preceded the losses, the attempts at adoption, the anger and hope, resolution and relief, the sense of a life unfinished and unfulfilled—have shaped me as an adult. They have affected me as a woman, a writer, as the mother I will always believe I was meant to be, as a wife who shares forever-grief with her husband.

In 2005, the wife of writer-director-producer Sean Hanish gave birth to a stillborn son. In their journey through sorrow and healing, Sean wrote the screenplay for a film. That film, Return to Zero, starring Minnie Driver and Paul Adelstein, premieres worldwide on Lifetime Network, Saturday May 17, 2014, 8:00 p.m. EDT. Return to Zero. Sean's original intention was to see this film distributed on the big screen. But realizing he would reach a vastly greater audience on a solid television network, he signed on with Lifetime at the Rome Independent Film Festival in Italy earlier this year. Bravo, Sean. Congratulations for your brave and beautiful work.

In tandem with the release of the movie and in the spirit of shattering the silence surrounding neonatal death, stillbirth, and miscarriage, Sean and Brook Warner, editor of She Writes Press, conceived an anthology of prose and poetry written by women and men affected by child death. Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love & Loss is the result of their collaboration and our—the contributors'—journeys.

This collection of essays and poems speaks of pain and loss so profound, you are left breathless. Yet there is also incredible beauty, joy, and redemption. The writing is extraordinary, each voice unique in its expression of universal themes, experiences, and emotions. The relief to know one is not alone is profound.

In just a few lines Heather Bell's poem, Executioner, captures the absurdity of grief--the acknowledgement that life goes on, even as yours is falling apart, and the strange, sad ways people react—trying so hard to empathize, to understand—yet botching it all, bless their hearts:

And the baby is dead but we need lettuce in the house, maybe some bread for morning toast so

I am at the store touching the potatoes at the spin, the slim wrists of carrot. And the baby is dead so

this entitles humans to talk about their dog's death, or gerbil's. This means I am expected to sympathize at

their loss. Because all death becomes, somehow, equal

Gabriela Ibarra Kotara reveals the Masters of Disguise that grieving parents become after the loss of a child: "I am that cautionary tale. No one wants what happened to us to happen to them." In Address Book, Meagan Golec reflects on how her friendships have changed since her child was born dead at 38.5 weeks. Elizabeth Heineman's What to Do When They Bring You Your Dead Baby in the Hospital is a tender, beautiful, elegiac prose-poem that I read over and over, wanting to sink inside her words. Marina del Vecchio, Silent Miscarriage, Shoshanna Kirk, To Balance Bitter, Add Sweet, and Susan Rukeyser, Our Bloody Secret, made me realize for the first time that I was not crazy for wanting to miscarry in my body's own time, even though it took weeks—the first time—or left me writhing on the floor for hours, hyperventilating in pain—the second time—and that searching in the mass of blood and tissue for signs of your child's body is horribly, gruesomely, okay.

All this death and loss is not a thing you talk about—not in polite company. Not with strangers and rarely even with friends. But death brought me to life, as it were. The deaths of my children brought me at last to the page, to be the other thing I've always known I was meant to be: a writer. Isn't that strange and awful and wonderful? I can't fulfill one destiny, but in its denial, I am walking the road of another. My essay Their Names touches on the discovery of another way to create life.

Miscarriage affects an astonishing number of would-be parents: an estimated 30% of pregnancies ends in loss. Mercifully, many of these occur so early that the mother doesn't know she was pregnant. But many of us spend weeks and months planning for and anticipating life.

Stillbirth occurs in 1 of every 160 births in the US and neonatal death—death within the first 28 days of life—1 in every 85 births. Shocking, isn't it? It's probably happened to someone you know. If and when it does, a simple "I'm so sorry for your loss" and a hug would be a beautiful gift. Offering Three Minus One would be a precious gift, as well. Parents in mourning need to know they are not alone. This book offers all the right things to say and do and feel and not feel. It is an embrace of compassion and empathy.

N.B.: The following readings by contributors from Three Minus One are scheduled in the Seattle Area (* I will be reading):

May 9, 1:00 p.m. Pacific Northwest Writers Association Cottage, Gilman Village, Issaquah

*May 22, 7:00 p.m., Third Place Books, Roosevelt, Seattle

*June 15, 3:00 p.m. Elliott Bay Books, Capitol Hill, Seattle

View all my reviews

Between Truth and a Human Being

Fog. Days and nights of fog so thick I wonder if the artist Christo has wrapped the peninsula in cotton batting and left us to suffocate. I drive grandma speed, hunched over the steering wheel, on the lookout for deer casing neighborhood gardens during their pre-dawn perambulations. They like to appear suddenly in your headlights with that deer-in-the-headlights look. It's a hill repeat day. That's runner-speak for "run up and down hills a bunch of times like a natural-born fool." I have a few favorite hills in and around the state park north of town. Four hundred and thirty-five acres of forest, meadow and a restored 19th century military fort built on and below high bluffs overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, bordered by two miles of seashore--it's a runner's dream.

It's just past 7 a.m. Usually there are other humans about, walking dogs or clutching travel mugs of coffee, heading for a bench on the bluff to greet the sun as it crests the Cascade Mountains. But on this morning, there is no dawn. There is only fog. The air is blue-black, thick, wet, cold. I am alone. I complete my warm-up mile around the former military parade ground and head down to the beach for my first set of repeats.

A gray ghost glides down the bluff and steps onto the road in front of me. His eyes flash gold and red, catching the pulses from my lighted wrist band. I halt in mid-stride, but my momentum nearly carries me head-over-heels downhill as my knees Jello out. I back up. Coyote watches me for a few heartbeats, then trots up the way he came. Me? I turn and run.

Back at the car, behind the safety of the open door, I search in the fog for Coyote. He stands on the edge of the bluff peering down at me, so close I could toss a pine cone and hit his brown-gray flank. I'm in awe, jolted and not a little pissed.

There goes my run. Coyote 1, Julie O.

But we're both adaptable creatures. I head back into town and run the Washington and Monroe St. hills. Ever on the lookout for the damn raccoon that snarled at me last week.

It's a jungle out there.

A few days after Coyote, I'm in a local bar with some women friends--a monthly get-together. We drink a couple of pints, talk local elections and books.

As we settle up our tabs and sort out jackets and purses, one of the women turns to me and says, "Julie, you are in such great shape. But of course, you've never had kids."

Coyote stops in mid-stride and fixes his red-gold glare on me.

God DAMN it.

There goes my run. Coyote 2; Julie 0.

You'd think at some point shit like that would stop hurting. But it doesn't.

The thing is, that statement had with no more malice than Coyote had for me, floating out of the fog and crossing my path. Said in ignorance? No, this woman knows my past, knows my pain. Said without thinking? Clearly, for there are so very many things wrong with correlating someone's physical conditioning to their experiences with childbirth. And it's one of those things you just.don't.say. to someone who has suffered infertility and miscarriage.

Yet, here I am, making excuses for thoughtless people. What am I going to do--throw pinecones at Coyote and hope he'll turn tail so I can continue down that hill without looking over my shoulder? As if.

Me? I'm the deer in the headlights. I turn and run. Straight into my own words.

A few days after the Coyote and The Bar, this e-mail landed:

Dear Julie,

We are thrilled to announce that your submission has been accepted into Three Minus One. Thank you so much for your wonderful contribution. Sean and I welcome you! 

We also ask that you spread the word widely about Three Minus One. It is a labor of love for all involved! Please feel free to share on social media any and all developments regarding the book, and create links to your own websites to presell the book once it becomes available. We will do our best to keep you all in the loop as developments happen.

Here is a link so you can share your acceptance with your friends:  Three Minus One Congratulations to Contributors 

There are approximately 75 contributors.

Again, congratulations. There were over 600 submissions and it was tough competition, so this is a huge accomplishment and we are celebrating with you!

Very best,

Brooke and Sean

Three Minus One is a book project tied to the soon-to-be-released film Return To Zero, about a couple whose child dies in the womb just weeks before his due date. Brooke is Brook Warner, editor of She Writes Press. Sean is Sean Hanish, the film's writer and director. He's also the father of that little boy. Three Minus One, to be published by She Writes Press in May 2014, will contain the essays, poems and visual art of women and men who have lost children through miscarriage or stillbirth. I am honored to be a part of this project and amazed that my voice will be among those speaking for all who cannot.

I must learn to live with Coyote, to know when it is time to raise my hands and shout to frighten him away or when I should back off and find someplace else to run. I can't fight every battle, but I can add my words to the peace treaty.

“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.” ― Anthony de Mello

Ghosts That We Knew

The Universe gently letting me know it is still watching, listening, remembering...  

A group of eight women discovering each other over salmon and fruit salad. Strangers becoming fast friends as women do - sharing intimacies of childbirth and marriage, our deepest fears and silliest thoughts - and then having to ask your first name again, because you look just like the woman who used to teach Hot Yoga at the rec center.

Some of us are mothers; some of us are not. Some are married as many years as we were old when we met our husbands; some have remained single. Some wonder if they had more cash, would they have they courage to walk away from failure?

Some drive up in Mercedes; others have no idea when the oil was last changed in the rusting Toyota pickup.

We come together through a love of books and a desire for fellowship. Perhaps we are new to town and keen to make friends. Perhaps we need an excuse to escape a too-familiar routine. Perhaps we crave conversation that does not center around Sponge Bob Square Pants and refusals to eat the spaghetti that was our child's favorite meal last week.

We discuss the book: a rare meeting of minds as eight women revile the month's read in equal measure. We marvel at our host's mad chef skills as she cracks open the baked thick crust of salt, revealing an entire salmon, steaming and tender: Pesce alla Sale à la Olympic Peninsula. Three of us run out to our cars in search of corkscrews we know are shoved into dashboard boxes or picnic tote bags. When we come up empty and are forced to drink ginger beer without a cheap Pinot noir chaser, we decide it's an excuse for another bacon-jalapeño scone. We eat tapioca pudding made with milk from the goats we milk on our farm.

Which leads to a discussion of breast-feeding. As discussions about ruminants do. Who is, who wishes they weren't, who misses it. Pockets of the table fall into silence as those who are secretly glad their breasts remain high and firm even as they ache with dreams of unborn children and those who simply cannot imagine the logistics of nursing a three-year-old try to find something to do with their thoughts.

A side conversation begins. Did you start Terry Tempest Williams's When We Were Birds?

It's waiting on the nightstand; I had to finish tonight's book first. I can't wait.

Another voice joins in, breaking away from the conversation about pitocin-induced labor. "Ooh, Terry Tempest Williams, I love her! What's this one about? What's it called?

"When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice. It's a series of essays she wrote after her mom died. You'd love it. It's amazing."

One of us curls up inside. One of us remembers a summer's night a year ago, a crowd streaming into a high school auditorium, an audience hushed as an author reads from her elegiac, elegant book of essays inspired by the journals her mother bequeathed her. Journals the author discovered, after her mother's death, were empty.

One of us remembers that it was a year ago tonight her womb emptied.

One of us marvels at the way the Universe wraps seductively around chance and feigns to be Fate.

One of us mourns. Mourns that she had forgotten until this night what this night is.

One of us sees the beauty in spending this evening in the company of women who don't know her sorrow, not yet. But if we did, she knows we would care. We sweet mothers soothe her with our stories, we childless ones smile and allow the others to reminisce, commiserate, to delight in the bounty of their creation.

A phone beeps with an incoming text. One of our sisters, in a neighboring state, has just given birth to her second child. She texts us from the hospital bed, proud and exhausted. She attaches a photo. It is a son.

One of us reads aloud the opening page to When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations On Voice.

One of us returns home to reread the words she wrote a year ago. These words, here: The Scariest Thing

So lead me back Turn south from that place And close my eyes to my recent disgrace Cause you know my call And we'll share my all And our children come, they will hear me roar So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light Cause oh they gave me such a fright But I will hold as long as you like Just promise me that we'll be alright

Ghosts That We Knew ~ Mumford and Sons

These Are The Days

The first warm days of May set me thinking about the promise of summer. The season gets shorter as I age and each year my sense of urgency grows. I plan small adventures, vowing that this summer will be unforgettable, this summer I will feel like a child again. I look for quiet magic:  Shakespeare in the park, concerts at the zoo, swims in the lake, picnics at Shilshole. Once the gloom of June has passed, Seattle sparkles blue and green, wrapping an easy warmth around long, bright days. From the summer's true arrival in the Pacific Northwest in early July well into golden October, there are few lovelier places.  I never live up to my own expectations of summer. What becomes of those simple hopes, those picnics, concerts, Sundays at the market? What exactly did I do with my weeks that I have so few of them left and only a fog of memory behind me?

This year summer had an agenda that diverged so far from mine, we may as well have been in different hemispheres. I wake in mid-season, wishing I could press rewind on the remote control - not wanting to replay the weeks I'd lost, but to erase them and begin again, to insert a new story into the machine.

For seven weeks I've bled. From miscarriage to surgery to the first menstrual cycle since April, I live with a daily reminder of my helplessness over my body. A small fortune spent in the feminine hygiene aisle. A flood of hormones that sets my edge on edge, never certain what might set off the tears or the rage.

But now I emerge from the haze of heartbreak into the blue summer that is as soft as a worn pair of Levis. I tally the hurts, but also the triumphs. Days after my loss, I turned my heart to the page, filling the hollow space with words and finding joy in the act of creating characters and watching as their lives unfold on the page or screen before me. I may not have had the emotional energy to prepare those picnics or plan for those concerts, but I've made certain that every day I turn my face to the sun and move my limbs in the breeze. My running has never been stronger, my freestyle stroke never more fierce. Yes, I've retreated - it's my nature to pull away when I most need the comfort of others - but with a few deep breaths I'm able to reach out until it no longer feels like a chore.

And now it is August. The days of waking in the wee hours to the first dove-gray light of dawn have ended. I rise to the blue-black that will darken my early mornings until April. The afternoons are hot, but the brilliance has dimmed - our small section of Earth is tired from weeks without rain. The trees billow, but their bright leaves have faded to sun-baked green mottled with brown.

My favorite season is before me: Autumn, a time of renewal, when my energy rebounds in the cooling air. But the sky won't deepen to Grecian blue or glow with a Tuscan aura for a few weeks, yet. The evenings aren't ready to yield their velvety warmth to the freshness that heralds the season's change. Summer is resting, languid. The ice cubes in her sun tea have melted, the lemon wedge is limp, but she still tastes sweet. Let her stay, linger, for a while. I'm not quite finished - there is a little girl who wants to come outside to play.

These Are The Days ~ Van Morrison

These are the days of the endless summer These are the days, the time is now There is no past, there’s only future There’s only here, there’s only now

These are days of the endless dancing and the Long walks on the summer night These are the days of the true romancing When I’m holding you oh, so tight

These are the days now that we must savour

And we must enjoy as we can

These are the days that will last forever

You’ve got to hold them in your heart.

These Are The Days lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The Scariest Thing

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open."  - Muriel Rukeyser, as quoted by Terry Tempest Williams in her book "When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations On Voice" A reading given June 21, 2012, Bellingham, WA "Writers must share the scariest things about their lives." Sherman Alexie, Opening address, Chuckanut Writers Conference, Bellingham, WA, June 22-23, 2012

I will share something very scary with you. I will tell you a truth about my life.

But not just yet.

I attended my first writers' conference this past weekend. I entered trembling, wondering if there was a secret handshake, if I was too young or too old, if I had too few works published to be credible, if it was written all over my face that I did not have that all-important WIP or MS to offer up (writer jargon for Work-In-Progress and ManuScript). Famous Writers wandered about, as well as a Poet Laureate or two; Literary Agents took 5-minute pitch appointments; aspiring and published writers clutched notebooks and tablet computers - a life's work on college-ruled or flash-drive - hoping to be discovered.

Oh but no, it wasn't at all precious. The Chuckanut Writers Conference - held in the earnest, evergreen-and-blue city of Bellingham, perched on a bay just south of the Canadian border - was a welcoming gathering of writers of prose and poetry of every level of experience and ambition. I soaked up insights in sessions on the seduction of a sentence and packing premise into your novel; I scribbled pages of notes on the practice of story-boarding; I held my breath as a panel held court on Breathing Life Into Characters. I came away from each workshop and plenary with concrete ideas to put into practice. I was inspired, motivated, encouraged, overwhelmed and determined.

So, thank you, Chuckanut Writers Conference. I hope to see you next year. And perhaps I will have something ready to pitch. You know, the premise of My Great American Novel in fifty words or less.

But the weekend did begin and end with tears. And there's that scary thing I said I would share.

The evening before the conference began, Terry Tempest Williams - the celebrated writer of environmental literature, women's rights activist and conservationist - gave a reading in downtown Bellingham from her new book When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations On Voice. This is a lovely collection of meditative essays on motherhood, nature, faith and love, inspired by the journals her mother bequeathed to her shortly before her death at 54. Three bookshelves of journals, which the author opened a month after her mother died. Each journal was blank. When Women Were Birds is Ms. Tempest Williams's attempt to understand what her mother had written in those empty books.

One of the several chapters the author read was XXVII. It is, on the surface, an essay on the importance of women's reproductive rights. But the muscle of her words, what sent the tears streaming, is what she writes about the meaning of menstruation:

"Because what every woman knows each month when she bleeds is, I am not pregnant. Because what every woman understands each time she makes love is, Life could be in the making now. Because until she bleeds, she imagines every possibility from pleasure to pain to birth to death and how she will do what she needs to do, and until she bleeds, she will worry endlessly, until she bleeds. Because until she bleeds, repeat it again, she will check her womb every day for the stirrings of life. Because until she bleeds, she wonders if her life will be one or two or three."

The author writes of women who wait for the reassurance of their monthly cycles. Yet for those of us who have faced infertility, who know the devastation of miscarriage, her words resonate as deeply. For us, who have experienced such loss, this bleeding is an ending of all hope, not a sigh of relief. And so her words, they made me cry.

"Because until she bleeds she will check her womb every day for the stirrings of life."

Two days later, late Saturday afternoon, just before the final session of the conference, I dashed into the bathroom for a quick pee. I pulled down my panties and saw what I hadn't felt.

A streak of bright red blood.

I sat on the toilet with my head between my legs as the world went gray.

When I walked into that bathroom, I was ten weeks pregnant. When I walked out, I was

Empty.

The cramps began after I returned home Saturday evening. They were bad. Then they got worse. By Sunday afternoon I was writhing on the living room carpet, crying and gasping as my uterus ripped itself apart. I have never experienced such agony for so long. I refused to let Brendan take me to the hospital. Women have been giving birth to life and to death on their own since the beginning. These were the only labor pains I would ever know and it was pain I would own, pain I would remember, because I had nothing else. At 10 p.m. Sunday evening, I finally crawled into bed, my body no longer sharing space with another.

Though shocked to learn we were pregnant - we'd long since given up hope after years of trying, years of exploring alternatives, years spent healing from loss - it was impossible not to give in to joy, not to allow our hearts to swell in anticipation of meeting the life we had created. Yet we tried to prepare ourselves for heartbreak; the wounds from our miscarriage in 2009 reopened as we admitted our deepest fears.

In a moment of twisting around to look at a less-dark side I said to Brendan, "When we lost the first baby, I wasn't writing. I wasn't creating anything, I had nowhere to voice my grief and rage. But now, if the worst happens, I have a voice. I have a place to go that gives me hope and joy and meaning. At least, if the worst happens, I have that."

And the worst happened. At the same time that my intellect was pulsing with life, my body was casting off death.

I am very very angry.

I am so very sad.

There is no sense to be made of nor any higher purpose served by our losses; there is no "That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger" bullshit platitude that I can bear hearing without wanting to slap silly the mouth which delivers it.

There will be no next chance. I am 43. I am done with this now. My heart cannot take the pain. My body cannot take the turmoil.

Brendan took me in his arms when I returned home Saturday night. My first words to him were, "It's going to be just the two of us."

"That's fine by me," he replied.

And we cried, because nothing was fine.

But it will be again, someday.

So I work, because it gives me dignity.

I run, because it helps me make peace with my body.

And I write, because writing is how I will create life.