Cast your mind back to 2016. If you recall, it was a pretty tough year all around; I think I can speak for almost everyone in this. By the end of the year, there were so many news stories about how unprecedentedly awful 2016 was that one would be forgiven for thinking that anything good at all could have occurred in the year that gave us terror attacks in Nice, Orlando, Brussels; Zika, Brexit, police shootings, Syria, Trump; the losses of Prince, Bowie, Ali, Cohen...you get the idea. I confess my feelings about the year were pretty much in line with this picture of loss and hopelessness.
For my part, 2016 was ushered in with a miscarriage, which darkened my sky for several long months. We had been trying to conceive again for a long while already, and to see this glimmer of hope dashed was...hard. You may know that we had already has a long journey of several years before we had Esmae - if you're no stranger to fertility problems then you know what a long, draining road this can be. My own experience, and witnessing the general state of the world in 2016, left me reeling and struggling with a sort of existential despair. When I look back in my journal over both 2015 and 2016 I spent so much of my time wrestling with the idea of hope - for myself and the world - trying to grasp at its root, its function, as well as how unhelpful it often felt to cultivate any hope at all in the face of constant disappointment. I did a lot of reading on suffering as it relates to hope - I read Thich Nhat Hanh, Simone Cambell, Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer, and Brene Brown, who writes that 'hope is a function of struggle'. I like to think that somehow my character has been refined by the hoping, the waiting, the loss, and the discipline of choosing to practice gratitude and to see beauty even under the darkest skies.
Of course, many wonderful things continued to happen last year, as they do in every year. I found that running helped pull me out of the fog - that, and therapy - and a village of wonderful people who continue to surround my family with love. Esmae continued to be a source of incredible joy and a teacher who helped me learn to live in the present. By December last year, after yet another year of trying to conceive after the miscarriage, I finally made my peace with stepping off the emotional rollercoaster of 'trying' and just embracing life as a family of three. For those of you who have been fortunate enough not to experience this rollercoaster, let me assure you - trying for a baby for any length of time is one of the singularly emotionally draining experiences I can fathom. I knew it was time to channel my energy elsewhere before it drove me into the ground, so I mentally started switching gears. Not that my heart and body didn't ache for another child, but that I came to a place of acceptance that what I had was truly enough. After all, when trying for Esmae we were told I was infertile, and so wasn't the miracle of her existence enough for me?! And so of course as it happens, it was then - almost exactly a year after we miscarried - that I got pregnant again.
And I'm still pregnant! I spent the first 5 months of this year in some sort of state of shock and anxiety - shock that this is really happening, and anxiety that we will lose this child too...but so far so good. All being well, we will meet our baby boy in September. Just writing that brings me to tears of wonder and gratitude. 8 weeks to my due date, I'm letting myself start to believe that this is really happening, that this is my story.
At the beginning of 2016, a month or so after the miscarriage, I took myself away on a retreat to one of my favourite corners of the country, a little peninsula off the south coast, to get some space to process my thoughts. I took a familiar walk up through a wooded track right on the coastline that climbs steeply and then opens up on the headland to a sweeping vista. It was a stormy, bluster morning with dark clouds and rain. I was the only person out on the track in that weather and as I walked I sobbed with pent up grief and hopelessness. Just as I emerged from the woodland, the clouds parted to reveal the sun, and a striking rainbow splashed across the sky (this is the picture above). I found myself laughing at how audacious this was - the clichéd symbol of hope and new beginnings, catching me unaware in my moment of despair. It felt like it had been placed there just for me, and I held on to that image through the year as I learned to cultivate hope and compassion for myself and others in the face of suffering and loss, and to become less fearful of both of these inevitable visitors along the journey. It is a lifetime's work.
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