Pregnancy

Preparing to sell my giclee prints

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

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This was my rehearsal set up today – Rose and I are preparing for a stall at the Pregnancy Loss Australia walkathon tomorrow, where for the very first time I will be offering fine art prints of my work for sale.

I am anxious and would far rather hide home in bed.

We’re both feeling a little raw, pleased to be involved, inspired, but also vulnerable. Holding each other in tears in the kitchen.

Together we are stronger. We’re both working hard to use humour and everything else we know to help stop the bad hours spiralling into awful days.
I actually slept peacefully last night, for the first time in a long time. I dreamed deep dreams the meaning of which was a gift: that what I have to give to the world has never been much in the way of financial support. It’s always been about kindness and helping people feel more alive. And that’s mostly what my household needs at the moment anyway, so let go of the other ideas and focus on that.

I can see the sky again, can breathe again, for moments. The anxiety is still a herd of wild horses running, but I can steer a little, suggest a little, and today that was enough. Today was a pretty good day.

Tomorrow, because Rose believes in me, I’m going to sit in a tent on some grass with my art, and hope that other people will be kind to me too. Wish me luck.

Blossom

/ Sarah K Reece / 7 Comments

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Tamlorn’s peach tree bloomed today. We hung the crystal from a stand with a wind chime and in the afternoon, it casts rainbows through the garden and the kitchen.

Today has been hard, flashbacks and anxiety, but full of love from people around us, and animal cuddles. We’ll get through this.

My first gilded prints

/ Sarah K Reece / 8 Comments

The sun is out, the garden is in bloom. Birds are singing and someone is running a bench saw nearby. My lovely lady is rearranging the baby clothes collection. We’ve got up early and arranged for scans and prints of a number of my artworks to display and possibly even sell at the Pregnancy Loss Australia Walkathon next Sunday.

I’m currently working on creating certificates of authenticity for my two beautiful framed, hand embellished giclee print reproductions. I’ve gilded both with 23 karat gold and they look incredibly lovely. This one is going to a new home this month. I’m planning to open an Etsy store and link it to this blog in a few weeks.

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And my love and I are trying to conceive. Adenomyosis is making things very hard for me and will only get worse the longer I’m off hormones – it’s been 9 months now. If circumstances were different we might wait a few months for things to settle here, but they are what they are and we have closing windows of opportunity, and big broken hearts full of love. August is done and left behind us and may September smile more sweetly on us.

Etching – Even the cats have graves

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

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I’ve been working on this in my print making class. The image is part of my series of works about miscarriage and grief. It’s linked to a poem, The Roar, I wrote about losing Tamlorn:
Even the cats have graves, even the little injured wild birds that die on the way to the vet.

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There’s been interest from a number of people I’ve reached out to about holding an exhibition of this series. There’s been a lot of things that haven’t gone my way lately, so this is particularly special to me. I’ll be glad to hold a space in the world, however briefly, where this isn’t a taboo.

My Artbook: Mourning the Unborn

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I have completed the Artbook I created after my miscarriage earlier this year. Inviting you to send in things to be cremated with Tamlorn was a deeply moving experience for me. Afterwards, it felt to me like the most natural, connected, public artwork imaginable, for such a private and taboo experience. I wanted to capture some of the sense of ritual and connection for others to use as inspiration in mourning their own losses. I’ve been distressed to be part of support groups and hear how isolated and hurting so many people are.

So I wrote and painted this book, hand bound it using coptic stitching, covered it with silk, and illustrated and embroidered it with velvet, silk, and seed pearls. The binding alone took me 8 hours to hand sew. It’s very precious to myself and Rose. Here are a few images from the book:

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The peach silk cover, chosen because of the peach tree we planted to remember Tam by.

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First pages

 

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I’ve gilded the print on the right with gold leaf

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To the left are some of the names of other unborn children people sent to me. On the right, three seed pearls have been sewn to the watercolour vial to represent the glass vial of tears we sent with the box to the crematorium.

 

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On the right, a silk ribbon embroidered rose has been stitched into the book.

Now that we are trying to conceive again, the time feels right to share it. I am currently talking with local services about an exhibition of this book and my other art about pregnancy and grief to raise awareness and help start conversations. I am also reaching out to other communities such as those affected by partner violence to create exhibitions that speak to their experiences also. My next big task is to reproduce it in a colour photo book edition so that I can share it with you.

Update April 2016: I have now completed this project! View my beautiful photobook of this artbook in my Etsy store.

Going gently from miscarriage to trying to conceive

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I’ve been sick and stressed. Going gently…

This means sleeping in. It means Rose taking a morning off work to hold me while I cry, and read me back to sleep, and coax little bits of toast and water into me while I try not to throw up. It means sobbing hysterically into my keyboard. It means my sister brings me cups of tea. It means nightmares about being homeless with a newborn baby. Blinding headaches, and body aches. Sitting on the bed with Rose and a perfectly laid out set of clothes for a 6 month old. Talking about Tam again, daily, feeling their loss keenly.

We’re trying to conceive again and my cycle is weird. Apparently this is common following a miscarriage. I thought we might bypass it – we’ve waited until all my levels are normal again, I’ve lost that little bit of weight on my tummy and feet, my body feels like a pre-pregnancy body. But no, things are still weird. I’m currently on day 8 of testing as being ‘high fertility’, when I’ve only ever had 2 days of that result, at most. I’m spotting, which is really unusual for me, and could mean anything from implanting, to not ovulating, to ovulating, to endo messing around with me. Having a weird cycle is kind of worse than having a normal cycle and just not getting pregnant. Today I’m going for a blood test for progesterone levels to see what they’re doing. It’s like being all geared up to turn a corner or fall over a cliff and having the trip extend just a little and then a little more so you stay in that tensed up state and the bottom doesn’t fall out of your world just yet.

On the plus side, we’re getting a lot better at doing insems quickly and easily. We’ve ditched our original syringe method and moved to the cup method, which is a lot more comfortable and portable.

Death is in the background constantly, again. My friend Leanne is in my mind a lot. I find myself sobbing for friends I know who are struggling, fearing they’ll kill themselves, feeling helpless in the face of loss. I find myself carrying Tamlorn’s name around with me like a scar, like a precious relic, like a secret. I remember you, love, I remember you. Some days it feels so close, the baby feels so near that all we have to do is keep the faith. Some days those dreams feel like mirages that recede as I think I’m nearing them, and all my hoping becomes an empty, gasping, darkness. I fall into it, and the world goes on brightly without me. People mouth platitudes at me and they become knives that fall from their lips and cut right through me. We can’t know anything, and anyone who pretends otherwise is turning their face from that brutal reality. Life is not fair and love is not enough and dreams are essential but often unrewarded. Those of us who choose not to know this walk on paths made of the bones of slaves.

Lastly, there is this peaceful place. Down in the bones of the world, where I can sit at the balance point between life and death. I accept my powerlessness and the risks and wounds of love. In that place I can let be. What will come, will come. I do not rule the world. I am old enough to know that dreams must be abundant, like sperm, like tiny sea turtles, like thistledown on the wind. Because most will die. This is the nature of the world, and it hurts, every time. Here, in this dark place, Rose and I sit and lay out the baby clothes. We weep and laugh and count our blessings and number our dead. We sleep and dream of children. We hold hands and we cry in our sleep. We hope, which makes our hearts and faces shine. We hope, which makes our hearts bleed. Going gently. Breathing in and out, the beauty and the nightmares. Faces pressed to the rich, rank earth, living deeply. Loving greatly and accepting the cost.

Grounding in the garden

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

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I woke up feeling sick and fragile but less swamped by anxiety than I have been. So I took the morning very gently and focused on grounding. I cleaned the bedroom, then the kitchen. Made breakfast, which I ate in the garden. Then gathered a pail of weeds.

I re read some of my own blog posts about crisis mode and recognised the past week in them, my sagging efforts to haul myself out of the deepening pit of misery, dissociation, anxiety, loss of a sense of competence or agency or hope. I stepped back from the crisis and felt the pressure ease. I tuned back in to myself and did admin tasks I most felt like doing and even found pleasure in them. Stepped out of roles and made time to personally connect. Felt like I could breathe.

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College was tough. I feel physically very ill, going hot and cold, getting moments of my heart racing. My face hurts, I think I have a sinus infection settling in. It took me forever to find a close park I could afford that would last the full duration of my class. I arrive late and flattered, only to find we were walking to the art gallery that week.

So I had to find and move my car closer to the gallery because I would not be able to walk all the way back to it in time. This took forever and cost me $11 in parking for one down the road from the gallery. I felt so sick it was hard to stay upright and I don’t think I took much in. I also felt that familiar sense of being heartsick that being around a lot of money and expensive things always gives me. I thought about how much I love art and my very favourite works by my favourite artists and I thought about whether I would save that work for the cost of a meal for a person and I knew I wouldn’t. I might go without for a couple of days, but I simply couldn’t starve someone else to hold onto it. I am often so uncomfortable in galleries. Maybe it’s not the art, so much as capitalism that’s stressing me.

Home again and much more content. My day has gradually improved. Rose is starting to feel better with strong antibiotics on board and we’re both excited to be trying to get pregnant again. We feel close and connected. Our little home is full of light and books and critters and people we love. It’s very lovely.

Lighting candles

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

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My love Rose posted this today:

“We light a candle today in memory of our Tamlorn, and to mark the next part of our family’s journey.
Today we begin this month’s attempt at trying to concieve a little tribeling. If you feel so inspired, please light a candle for Sarah and I, for our angels or for the people you long to hold; be they far away, passed or yet to be. We live in hope.”

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Tonight we celebrated together with soft cheese and salami… hopefully soon I won’t be able to eat them again because I’ll be pregnant.

Everyone in my home is sick, Zoe needs another vet trip, and I’m a long way out of my comfort zone with my business. So things are great and not great at the same time, which is kind of doing my head in and making it hard to communicate! Lovely Rose, who is really very unwell with 2 middle ear infections with pus and drums at risk of bursting as well as tonsillitis and a chest infection came home early from work for a doctors appt and was flipping between feeling very miserable and wanting to curl up on the couch, and feeling like a bit of a fraud and not that ill at all – and guilty for not doing more housework! You are sick love, I told her, you’re just cheerful too because we’re trying to get pregnant again. It’s weird to be feeling such contradictory things together.

Same here. I’m struggling to write on this blog because the lows are intense, the highs are intense, there’s not a lot of sense stringing them together, and I don’t have much perspective. I feel like there’s no word in English for the everything is great, everything is awful mix I’m feeling. Everything feels messy and vulnerable and unfamiliar. Kind of like trying to get pregnant after having a miscarriage, I guess.

Everything is New

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

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My beautiful, kind, lovely sister broke up with her partner this week and urgently needed somewhere to stay. Rose and I have welcomed her with us. My family rallied and gathered to pack and move her and we now have three people, four cats, and a dog living in our 2 bedroom semi detached unit! It’s a little cramped but it’s also rather wonderful to have the chance to live together again. We all get along well and Rose and I have put a lot of time into our family culture, it’s healthy and strong and flexible, and probably just what my sister needs to recuperate.

Yesterday we overhauled the sheds, dug out our washing machine, and shifted a lot of my art supplies into drawers in the new shed. We’ve also been doing lots of caring and calming things to settle the nerves, the raw emotional pain of a breakup, and the bad memories that get unsettled. Camp-fires, games nights, online gaming, good home cooked food, music. It’s been beautiful to see in action.

Rose and I were talking about the sudden change in our circumstances and laughing that if we couldn’t deal with suddenly being a three person household we had no business trying to get pregnant, and that if we couldn’t handle sudden plan changes gracefully we were never going to cope with teenagers! 😉

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One of our new residents: this is my sister’s lovely cat. She is so sweet and relaxed and right at home already. Zoe is desperately excited, Tonks is chilled out, Bebe is sulking a bit, and Sarsaparilla hasn’t come far enough into the house to have met her yet. He loves sleeping in the lounge room by the heater in this weather. (it’s freezing in Adelaide)

Her name is Kaylee with an Irish spelling I wouldn’t attempt unless I had it written down! She’s adorable.

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We’re a family! We’re trying to get pregnant again the end of this month! And my business is blossoming! I have my first ever art prints back from the printer and they are so beautiful I cried! I have a buyer for one of my favourite paintings. I have mental health talks booking in. I have safe communities to nestle into – I’ve been getting to know the wonderful people in Community Health Onkaparinga, and I’ve just joined a trans and gender queer social activism group which was… Well it was like being in Bridges, the face to face group for people with dissociation and multiplicity I ran for a couple of years. It was magic, like being home, like being among my own kind, diverse as they are. I felt my heart open up and knew these are the places I need to be. This is where I put my energy.

College starts again today – a class on Installation Art that I’m so excited about I can hardly think straight!

I have overhauled my online home too, not as a finished product but to try and better reflect where I’m at and where things are going… Go and explore the menu, I’ve added new pages and rewritten old ones and nested a lot of my paid work information on this site with great care and caution and I’ll see how it goes. Tell me what you think?

I’m so bursting with excitement I got hardly any sleep last night. I feel like stars are burning so brightly in my chest that there’s almost no room for my heart. Someone wants to cry out with joy, loud! To weep with it. To pour it out of us like a river. My life is unbearably beautiful and I’m drunk on hope.

And someone else wants to be still. To sit and watch the bees in the basil. To sit under the cold winter sun and feel the wind on our skin. There’s children playing up the street, and the wind chimes outside our window singing softly. The breeze tugs a lace curtain into a kind of dance, puffs it up as if it’s a gown over a body so translucent I cannot see her, fae and trembling she stands by my window and drinks the breeze, and dances.

I love my sister very dearly and it’s hurt my heart to watch her struggle in a home where she was not well loved. I feel a fierce, deep joy to have her home, for a little while, to hold her close and cook for her and try to help her taste and feel again – this is what being loved feels like. So she can be nourished, so she has the sense of it alive in her, guiding her. It shouldn’t take such courage or cost such pain to pull back from places where we are not loved well. She, none of us, should have to be that strong. We should be well loved by those around us so the dance we must do around each others broken places is a movement from light to light, from home to home, from warmth to warmth, never fleeing into the night and the darkness, never broken by the cost. Always free. She’ll fly on again but we have a precious time where we’ll make our home together, where I can share the home I’ve been blessed with.

I’m not the only one sharing. I have been overwhelmed with donations the last month, often little amounts that I KNOW are costly to give, are, percentage of your income wise, very big indeed. I am buying resources for the networks, and paying for prints, and husbanding every dollar with care. A Blog reader contacted me recently to offer a regular gift of money over the next nine months. I took to bed and wept, Rose holding me gently. How overwhelming it is to receive such support, to feel such… Connection… Gratitude… Such belief in what I’m doing. You share my dreams! And like my art! And read my blog… And help with my networks.

I had a dream, back when I started this. To be useful in the world, and to express myself creatively. I have come through so much and learned so much in the pursuit of that dream. And Rose changed everything! Suddenly I’m dreaming of family and a baby too, my own tiny community within my much larger community. So I started dreaming a new dream, of being useful in the world, and expressing myself creatively, in an ethical and sustainable way. Transitioning my business and networks from a charity model to one of mutuality. I give and I receive, and together, we thrive, we dream, we bring more kindness and honesty and hope into the world.

Walking with the spirits

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I’ve been missing my friend Leanne lately. Not like I did at first, with the heaving sobs and sense of disbelief. But I wake up and find her name in my heart, like a large rounded river stone. I miss her and I feel like I’ve grown so much since we were friends, and wish she could have seen that. Wish we could have talked again. She’d be so excited about what was happening in my life…

I miss Terry Pratchett too. I’ve never met him, but I find myself reeling over the loss of him, his profound gifts to the world. A finished story now. No more new books. My heart hurts and aches. It spurs me to reach out to my people, reminds me they are all mortal and will not live forever. I must tell them I love them now, must show them they matter.

I miss Tamlorn. In a couple of weeks we’ll be trying again for a baby. I’m excited and almost… Numb. It’s hard to believe it’s happening. It seems unreal and detached. I miss the little one we already had and I’m scared we’ll lose another. I’ve only just dropped the last of the weight I put on with Tam, I fit into my shoes and bras again. It’s strange to be inviting a little living thing back into my body again. Beautiful, wonderful, amazing, but strange.

I was at a wonderful community dinner this week, and as part of the getting to know each other we played a game where we moved around a hall in different groups depending on our answers to different questions. Go up that side if you were born in Adelaide and this side if you were born elsewhere… On of the questions was how many children people had. I stubbornly stood in the group who answered ‘one’, and was relieved when they didn’t ask us any more about our children.

It’s never easy to do, but every time I acknowledge Tam as my child, I feel stronger, and the grief feels… Cleaner. Sweeter somehow. Cold and clear as snow melt. My family feels whole.

The world is a strange and contradictory place, and we are likewise, so full of possibility and confusion and dreams. There’s a whole universe inside every one of us. I find myself simply marvelling at it, wanting to stop and simply be filled with wonder by the people around me. How vulnerable, petty, brilliant, deluded, and beautiful people are. How we get so tangled in the world and lose heart when our dreams die. And yet how resilient we are too, our broken hearts that hope again, almost in spite of us, our tenacity to keep living and keep dreaming and keep learning even when the lessons hurt. I’m proud to be here, glad to be alive, glad to be among people again. Life and death, love and grief, come hand in hand together.

I’m walking down to the edge again, to the sharp place in the dark where a life may be given or taken, where a child may live or die within me. I don’t walk alone. I don’t walk alone in any sense ever, the spirits of my loved ones come with me.

Rose’s Great Adventures

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

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Rose is brilliant at adventures. She’s renowned locally for her ability to find fun, wonderful, cheap things to do with kids (and the young at heart). Her bus adventures around Adelaide are the stuff of legend. I got to hear a bunch of now grown up kids reminiscing about trips they’d taken once and it was beautiful.

Today I’ve done some admin and now we’re off with our neices for a cubby building afternoon at a national forest. It will be muddy and fun and wonderful. I can’t wait. This woman is amazing and I love her to bits!

In other news, we have a donor back on board and will be trying to get pregnant again this cycle. We are both incredibly excited about it! Our family is a wonderful place. 🙂

Painting mandala stones

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Rose and I have started having craft nights some evenings, now that my intense work phase has eased up. We’re really enjoying it! Recently we’ve been painting stones, inspired by this YouTube video and this one too.

I brought these stoned home from the beach where I stayed overnight in my van on Mothers Day this year. It was a very liberating, very moving experience, and I wanted to bring tokens home. One we’ve kept for ourselves and put under Tamlorn’s tree in the backyard. The other has been given to my Mum, who would have been Tamlorn’s grandmother, to honour her grief and relationship. Each has a little gecko, which was our name for Tamlorn while they were trying to stay ‘sticky’ (alive).

For more amazing stone paintings, see here and this fantastic artist.

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Sculpture: She’s a Mother on the Inside

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

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Mixed media sculpture: Pine, brass, silver, freshwater pearls, AB Swarovski crystals, bone colouredcotton, Noodler’s Tianamen ink, various glass beads.

Made in honor of my beautiful partner Rose, who with my miscarriage of Tamlorn recently, has now lost 7 babies unborn. As we have no living children yet, she is frequently overlooked on Mother’s Day and rarely considered to be a ‘real’ mother by friends or during events. Added to the cultural pressure not to tell anyone about early pregnancy and not to mourn such losses as ‘real’ children, she has grieved and suffered silently for most of her life.

The title is borrowed from the Whovian/Palmer phrase bigger on the inside, referring to the TARDIS and the human capacity. The doll mother closes completely and locks shut. Once opened, 7 stranded pearls tumble from her broken heart, red rich, precious, and painful. They must be untangled to fall neatly.

To close her again, you have to touch the strands, to tuck them back into her heart. You must interact with and acknowledge them, and handle them carefully, or she will be ruined.

I love Rose deeply. She is still in profound, compounded, silenced, complicated grief. It is my passion and my joy to use my art to bring a voice to a topic so silenced, and so show her as I see her: however childless she appears on the outside, she is, like me, a mother on the inside.

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Looking for a donor – part 2.

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

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We’re looking for a donor again. We’re ready to try again for a bub, but the donor who helped us get pregnant with Tamlorn has had a change in circumstances. We were very lucky to get pregnant very quickly with Tamlorn – in just three cycles (months) of trying. Unfortunately they died in utero at only 9 weeks.

My body has had some time to recover, as has our hearts, and we’re ready to try again and just need to find someone willing.

In our original ideas about donors (which has a lot more information about us and the process) we were keen for a known donor if possible – someone with an ongoing friendship with our family. We’re more open now to a range of preferences, really the most important to thing to us is that you are free of STI’s, major genetic issues, and can be honest and communicate clearly with us. Bringing a child into the world is a journey – sometimes an ordeal – and it can take you places you never expected emotionally.

Sex will not be involved under any circumstances, but apart from that we’re happy to talk with you about what would suit best – discussions ranging from totally anonymous through to very involved are welcome. Each family defines the donor relationship differently. We don’t mind what nationality, sexuality, or gender identity you are, but you do need to be between 25 and 40.

So, if you’ve ever thought about being a donor, or know someone who might be appropriate – please share this and get in touch.

skreece1@gmail.com or facebook: sarah.k.reece

Mother’s Day

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

 

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Love to all mothers, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those mothers who can’t or won’t use the word mother, who fall through the holes of our language into a silence, those who love dead unborn children, who mourn children lost, who love children they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all women who love and give life to and grow something more than themselves.

Love to all children, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those children who can’t or won’t use the term mother for a woman who once bore them but did not love them well, who fall through the holes of our understanding into a silence, those who love dead mothers, who mourn mothers lost, who love women they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all children and once children who love and are brought alive by and grow because of or in spite of a mother.

(thanks to Ellie Hodges thoughtful facebook post for the image)

 

Carpe Diem

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Sometimes life kicks you in the face and you fall over and have to curl up and lick your wounds. Sometimes it just keeps kicking you and at some point you get up and kick back. That’s where I’m at now.

Two days ago, we sent Tamlorn for cremation. We took all your beautiful sendings with us in a box.

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This is how mothers say goodbye – on their knees.

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Yesterday we learned that our donor’s circumstances have changed and he’s no longer going to be part of our process.

Today I picked up Tamlorn’s ashes from the funeral company.

Tomorrow I’m going back in to the local welfare centre again to beg for help with these ongoing debt issues that no one ever returns calls about.

And I’m fighting back.

I’m sleeping. I’m cooking meals. I’m energised and throwing myself into life. I’ve started the new term of art college. I used the holiday to catch up on all the homework so I’m ready and focused. Things are different now I’m in second year subjects. This week I’ve actually felt like this isn’t a crazy waste of time. I’m getting some support for the kind of art that is meaningful to me, learning useful things about the history of art where I can place my own stress and ambivalence into context. I have a new sense of hope that there is a place for me and what I do in the art world, somewhere.

I am currently doing prep work for a gathering tomorrow of the potential board for the HVNSA and DI networks I’ve been care taking through my business. And I am excited! I’ve been reading a couple of books; Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie, and Be a Changemaker by Laurie Ann Thompson. Social entrepreneur… it’s not a word I’m familiar with. I have painstakingly gathered business skills in my face painting business over the last couple of years. I am not good at marketing myself. I am good at giving things away for free to vulnerable people. But now at least, I can manage invoicing, tax, record keeping, and the basic admin of a business. And I am finding words for my passion for people, and models for what I’ve been trying to do. I feel less alone and bewildered and overwhelmed. The other board members are good people, conversations with them imbue me with hope about what we can do together. I am realising that what I most need at the moment is not to be doing this alone.

So, I’m burning with passion and my mind is clear and alert. I’m confident and imaginative and enthusiastic. I know this energy can’t last. No matter the cause, at some point the body needs to rest, the mind to recharge. That’s okay, I can do that. I’m astonished by my current state, grateful and relieved. I did not expect this. This has been an incredibly hard year. I’m determined to live fully, to embrace what I have and do what I can. I’m reaching out to country and interstate people about going and giving my talks – I’ve decided to offer some for free and ask for help to cover travel costs. I want to be out there, I want to be doing what I love, helping people. I don’t have a little baby in my arms, I may not even be able to try and get pregnant again this year while we look for and build a relationship with another donor. So I have a lot of love in my heart and there’s a lot of people out there who need a bit of love.

And when the night falls on my heart again and that flame of hope goes out… I want you to remember that one is not good and the other bad, one is not real and the other a lie. Pain, sorrow, anguish. They are as real and necessary and sane a response to my life as my current zeal. I am reminded of something I wrote a long time ago in Traumatic replay:

When awful things are happening I feel awful. I feel numb. I feel furious. I fight like hell. I feel strong. I feel helpless. I feel vindicated. And other people say things to me like “How are you still going?”, with respect.

When nothing awful is happening I still feel awful, numb, furious, but I have nothing to fight. I feel weak, helpless, stupid, pathetic, and full of self loathing. And other people say things to me like “What is wrong with you?”, with contempt.

Remember this day, tomorrow when I am broken again. They go together, the flying and the falling. This is the fire – I am forged strong, but I am also consumed and devoured by it. This is my life, ending one minute at a time. Carpe diem.

Poem – The Roar

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

We cremated Tamlorn yesterday. It was very hard to go to the funeral home, to face this painful thing. And yet, it was transformative. Unexpectedly, something shifted in me.

The scream behind my silence becomes a roar
I can breathe again, the weight lifts.
Perhaps it was not grief, but silence.

The silencing, the weight of a culture that says ‘do not grieve’
for fear of being accused of wallowing, or worse, 
public wallowing. 

Like cresting a steep hill, I inhale the view, deeply.
You were part of our family, dearly loved.
and we mourned you as we mourn our own.
Even the cats have graves – even little injured 
wild birds that die on the way to the vet.  

Something came and took you from us
into the night and I thought I’d never get you back.
There was just the void and a great silence.
A deep numbness. In that place, you did not exist, neither did I. 

But somehow, in this defiance – naming you
mourning you, cremating you, in some way we drew you back
from formlessness, you took on shape
became a part of our family, honored by our rituals, inducted as a member.
Part of a legacy.  

We are your home, love.
You are not a body washed up nameless on foreign soil
you are not a stray dog dying alone out in the bush
you are ours. We took you back. 
You lived and died in our body
we have sung you to life and back to death again
we have burned you with lavender and rosemary
the drum of my heart calls your name
you are here, you are here, you are here. 

Poem – Saying Goodbye

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

We are going to arrange Tamlorn‘s cremation tomorrow. I have been gathering the poems and sharings from other people, but finding myself wordless. It was very hard to find some way to say what I needed to. In the end, I wrote this poem. All will be burned to ashes with Tamlorn’s tiny body.

Whenever I try to find
A way to say goodbye
There’s no words in me
No poems or flowers that can speak for me
Just a scream rising up inside
If I let it loose, the sound would break the world. 

I don’t know how to say goodbye.
I can’t bear this.
I can’t bear to face you
And I can’t bear that life goes on without you
Everything is wreathed in pain. 

Are you there?
I don’t know if you are there.
I don’t know where you came from
I don’t know if there is any spirit left
After your heart wound down.
I can’t, with all my agony, pierce the veil
I can’t find absolution
I can’t find certainty
I can’t find hope. 

My abdomen has deflated like a soft balloon
My breasts sag gently onto my chest
My body remembers you, little one.
I loved you so very much and
I’m not sure that you knew that. 

There’s a pain in me that nothing stops.
There’s a terror in me that nothing eases.
I feel like running, screaming through the streets
Naked, tearing out my hair, like a madwoman
Screeching “We’re all dying! We’ve so little time!”
The end is coming for us all. 

I felt you once, so near, flesh of my flesh
Now I do not feel you at all.
I cannot hear anything over the harsh sound of my breath
Over the frantic beating of my heart
Life is brief and it is taken from us
I can’t find meaning in this. 

Who were we, I think, to love you so dearly?
Unknown, unmet, undeserving
When the world is full of loneliness and death
When so many children grow without love
My hypocrisy chokes me
I am ashamed. 

I wish I knew you and I’m glad I didn’t know you.
I think about babies dead at birth, or 3 months, or 2 years
Dead at 8, or 16, or 27 – it’s unbearable.
I keep dreaming my mother dies.
I keep dreaming of losing everyone.
And in the meantime, try not to tear my life apart
Cutting strings with my sharp pain
The brutal arithmetic of loss, the restlessness
The need to run, to make a mark, to change something
Here in this little life.
To make it mean something
That I lived, when you did not.
To atone. 

I loved you, and it was not enough.
I do not deserve life, as you did not deserve to die.
I can’t make it right.
I’m just here, wordless, choked
Terror, and loss, and love
Empty hands and heart screaming
This is what is left of love, little one
This silence that has a scream beneath it
These empty hands, this empty womb, my breast folded soft against my skin.
This is love seen at night, love on the cliff at the edge of the void and it’s unrecognisable
It’s sharp as knives and burns like poison and there’s no comforting me
It tears my dress and pulls out my hair and runs blood down the inside of my legs
This is love in the shadow of your loss, Tamlorn
It’s a mad and terrible thing
It’s a death, of a kind, a kind of despair
The keening howl of a wolf returning, who finds the den destroyed
There are no words here, no peace
This is love, my love
This is how mothers say goodbye. 

Running away

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

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Rose has arranged a few days away for us both as a birthday gift. We’re running away from home, but we’re packing all our vulnerabilities, the broken bits of heart into our suitcase. Bringing all the demons along, the way it feels like I can’t quite catch my breath all the time. Bringing the nightmares, the portal into darkness and loss, waking with the memory of rope tight on my wrists, the burning lights of his touch in my skin. Bringing the dreams where I try to make things work out, dreaming the same dream a hundred times and no matter what I try it all ends in loss. Bringing the pain in the lines around my mouth and the futility in my hands at rest. I’m running away from the days that flip from good to dangerously bad without warning, from nights where I only go to sleep after checking with my love if she’ll be safe in the darkness. I’m running from the split in my world: it’s a beautiful day/I’m dying inside: because they’re both deeply true and tearing my heart apart. I’m running away from feeling so good, so loved, so blessed that I’m holding myself back from lying my head in friends laps and crying with joy. I’m running away from biting down on the scream in my chest because there’s nowhere in my world that could bear that kind of pain without catching fire. Running from the house full of tender soft baby things. I’m taking the self hate with me, sewn into every inch of my skin. Running somewhere with wide open skies and deep black nights, somewhere my heart can swell to its true size, feel all the love and all the pain without waking the street.

Grief and the book

/ Sarah K Reece / 9 Comments

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I’ve been very sad today. It’s three weeks after the miscarriage surgery today. I feel heavy and tired and dazed. Plodding along in my own little world at my own tired pace while life moves on around me.

There’s been a lot of things to manage and arranging Tamlorn’s cremation keeps getting pushed back. I have a folder of beautiful and touching contributions by other people. I’m still wordless myself. I turn towards it and look at it and there’s just nothing in me. No poetry, no artwork, no words at all. Just a sadness, unfathomably deep.

I seem to have spent today weeping in cars after very nice visits with lovely people. As soon as I walk away there’s a terrible emptiness, a loneliness in me.

I keep working on the book. It’s something I can do. It’s an anchor when I feel lost. I don’t know that it will be worth anything, useful to anyone, worth all this time and love. I don’t know that anyone will read something so obscure by someone so unknown with so few credentials. Self published at that. I feel very small. There’s a weight of self hate like a blanket over me. I need to be doing homework, chasing up money issues because departments that were supposed to call me haven’t. But the words are flowing. My mind is teasing out the knots and puzzles of multiplicity and my life and my approach, constantly. Between emptiness, nightmares, moments of connection with others like candles being lit in a windy place, there’s the riddle to be solved. There’s just grief and the book at the moment for me.

Our greatest adventure…

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

imageRose and I went off to a baby expo on the weekend. We already bought tickets, back before we were pregnant. After the miscarriage we weren’t sure if we would go or not. In the end we decided to turn up and had a backup plan if staying didn’t feel like a good idea. We did stay, we walked through the whole expo and looked at everything. I bought a pregnancy protein supplement. There was nothing there about miscarriage or loss. There was a miracle babies group for premmies. They had painfully tiny dolls in humicribs with eye masks on. It was hard to look and hard to look away.

We held hands everywhere. People assume you are sisters or friends otherwise. You can feel really invisible. Holding hands got us a few stares and whispers. It’s always nice when people figure it out and take it in their stride. I found myself telling a lot of people about Tamlorn when it came up. Nearly everyone asked if we had kids or were trying. It felt really weird to talk about it and really awful not to. It felt really false to be talking about it without feeling or showing any pain, but I couldn’t let any of that out or I wouldn’t be able to breathe. By the end I was feeling really fragmented and tangled up.

We saw these tiny shirts with the lovely messages and went back for them at the end. They read “You are my greatest adventure” and “A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor”. Pretty appropriate. The lady at the store was really kind, didn’t offer any advice or tell us about her cousin/sister/friend’s losses, was just sympathetic and sweet. She ran after us and found us after we bought the tops and gave us the little dog. It was really touching. This is what being open does, you get the weird and horrible but you also get care.

I feel pretty mixed about going. It was nice to feel that we’re still trying to conceive, still planning and going to make this happen. But it also hurt and I still don’t know how to speak about it without feeling so disconnected and weird.

Today I didn’t know I was being brave, and that’s kind of worse. I went off to a henna gathering and it turned out everyone else there was a Mum and had brought their kids or baby. I came home in tears and found a post on facebook by someone who was upset that their efforts to cheer someone else up had not gone down well and “some people just need to be negative”.

Then I had a panic attack and went back to bed.

Apart from getting up, I’d say my biggest achievement today was buying a plant for Rose. It was a nice plant.

You know one of the most helpful things so far? Our GP being totally unsurprised that Rose and I are having rough days when we’re feeling suicidal. She wasn’t flippant but she was also unfazed – “of course you are! Your baby only died 2 weeks ago.” Weirdest thing but neither of us have had a day like that since. Oh I mean, there’s nightmares, and there’s panic attacks, and there’s hiding under a sheet on the couch. But yeah. Having permission to be really impacted without trying to get over it, recover, look like we’re coping. “Grieve all you need,” she said, “delayed grief is hard and messy. Let me know if you’re in danger but I expect you guys to be really hurting and that’s okay”. She called us mothers.

Just trying to breathe. I’m so tired.

 

 

How to tell it’s getting cold at night

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

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Our three cats. Sarsaparilla hates sleeping indoors about as much as he hates Bebe. Sars is the black chap on the left, Bebe has the laser eyes.

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Tonks is helping me write my book.

College is over for the term! I’m on a two week break. I have a fair bit of homework to do but I’m taking a couple of days off first. Saw my doctor today who was not fazed by depression or suicidal feelings, considered them all to be perfectly normal grief and trauma reactions, and that the fact that Rose and I are getting dressed and leaving the house most days and talking about Tamlorn are all really good signs. Her biggest concern was for us not to rush through it all but go at our own pace, as delayed grief is complicated. She didn’t mind calling them a baby either, and made it clear she considers Rose and I to be mothers. Good doctors are a blessing.