Come on mothers, let's go down, down in the river to pray. ~ Alison Krauss

Only once, and then in a dream,
I watched while secretly
and with the tenderness of any caring woman,
a cow gave birth
to a red calf, tongued him dry and nursed him
in a warm corner
of the clear night
in the fragrant grass
in the wild domains
of the prairie spring, and I asked them,
in my dream I knelt down and asked them
to make room for me.

From Ghosts, by Mary Oliver

Last month, before my surgery, the nurse came in and told me it was time for one final ultrasound. The doctor wanted to be sure, because I wanted to be sure, that we were doing the right thing. I knew for certain, because I'd seen it with my own eyes and dreamed it as soon as the miscarriage started, that the baby wasn't alive. But, surgery is a scary thing and having waited two weeks in agony, hoping my body would let go of what couldn't live, I was tired, lost, and needed reassurance.

But, as she prepped my bed to wheel me upstairs where they'd run the wand along my stomach one last time, I couldn't do it. Stop, I cried. No, I pleaded. I cannot look at another screen and NOT SEE A HEARTBEAT! Please don't take me, I begged, I can't do this. Please. Just take me to surgery. I need this to be over.

Then, I was left alone. My boyfriend was sick. My parents were out of town. My dear family friend had left my bedside to pick up my daughter who, blessedly, had no idea her mother was howling and bleeding in the hospital.

Three hours of solitude unwound, filled with unfamiliar smells and rough linens, voices and stories I didn't want to hear but that slipped, eventually, from the periphery of my mind as I faded in and out of sleep. The painkiller was working. The contractions had stopped. And, from time to time, the nurse discreetly pulled back my curtain to lay a hand on my leg and change my sheet.

I was moved twice as the rooms closed and space was made for others, and then it was my turn. In they came, took hold of the bed railings, and spoke quietly to me as they rolled me away from my curtained nook and into the hallway, carefully folding over the soaked-through sheets to protect others, I suppose, from seeing my body's most public display of loss.

The doctor came in and addressed the family sitting to my left, assuring them that I was going to be okay. It was just a matter of time, he said, this was routine. They, and I, corrected him -- I was alone -- and he need talk only to me, which he did, as I cried and told him how wretched I felt but how at peace I was with the decision we'd finally made.

The rest of my team came in, wrapped my legs, checked my IV, whispered their deepest sympathies, and took me away. Moments later, I was asleep.

My aunt arrived to care for me and to guide me through the next couple of days, gently urging me to eat and picking me up off the floor when I lost consciousness. She held my elbow, helped me in and out of the car, and made me laugh with threats of further injury if I wouldn't SIT DOWN ALREADY.

Weak from the ordeal, I did little for three days. Adela went to her dad's house, my aunt brought me home and, like the tolerant family member she is, cleaned the guinea pig cage. I sat on the couch and ate toast while she drank her soda and let me cry.

The following Monday, life began again. I went back to work and within two days' time Adela started first grade. My energy was low, my patience was thin, but my love for her and all of her youthful sweetness was heart-bursting. I felt gratitude for her sleeping little body splayed pinwheel-like on her bed, and I looked into her dark brown eyes, feisty and sharp, and found a sense of wholeness and completeness.

Where, I wondered, shall I store this loss?

A few weeks later, I dropped in on my parents. It was a Saturday night and they were home, just getting ready for bed. With all the force of a volcanic eruption I exploded, surprising even myself. Standing in their doorway and feeling like a stranger, I screamed my loss into the silence of the room and into the silence of the neighborhood. I wept as my anger surged, stewing and boiling and forcing its way out. With shocked white faces, they tried to put my feelings into perspective -- lots of women have miscarriages, it's not your fault -- but I couldn't bear the easy slotting of my pain into everyday tragedy. Not just yet. And so I yelled and heaved and cursed my challenges at them and then....I walked out. Back into the night. Shaking my head and making a beeline for my car, refusing to come back.

And this, the violent pushing away of everyone who should have HELPED, who should have STOPPED IT, who should have HELD MY HAND, began, clear-cutting a path through the pillars of my life for one stated reason or another, felling them one-by-one and leaving me alone with my pain.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

From In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver

I'm learning that it's okay to let certain fields of my life burn; to let flames blacken whole sections, curling and crisping every little thing in their path until there is nothing left. I'm learning that it's okay to let these fields lie fallow, charred as they are, in await of the rain and the goodness that the earth and sun will eventually bring -- elements that give life its first breath when it's time. I tell myself: it's okay to hurt. It's okay to be angry and to feel loss and to tread, ever so tenderly, around each new corner. It is okay.

This isn't over entirely but it is now tucked deeply within, wrapped in ribbons of peace and softening memory. And even though life has barreled forward in its blissful, bull-like way, I'm still a bit raw on the inside and ragged on the outside, grateful my decisive shoving didn't yield too much loss that hasn't been regained. I'm disappointed and I'm hurt, but I will not inflict any further loss on myself or on the people I love.

In my hand this morning, I hold a small shiny stone. It is brown, flecked with gold, and sits lightly in my palm. I bought it among other tiny treasures for Adela when I visited Bend, Oregon, this summer during the earliest weeks of my pregnancy. I've been holding the stone all morning, sliding it into my cycling glove during a ride, placing it on the bathroom counter while I showered, and tucking it into the folds of my shirt while I write.

In a few moments, I will ride my bike to the park while holding the smooth warm stone in my hand. I will find a spot by the river, bring the stone to my lips, and let it slip into the water.

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

From At Blackwater Pond, by Mary Oliver

~ Katie
All poems from New and Selected Poems, Volume One, Mary Oliver, 1992.

Epilogue: These stories aren't for everyone, and I'm not even sure why I share them. Please be gentle with me...and thank you for reading :)

Now comes the long blue cold and what shall I say but that some bird in the tree of my heart is singing. ~ Mary Oliver

This week, I am reminded how often our bodies carry secrets our lives are able to shield from the dozens of eyes upon us, and how thickly masked our grief can be, even from those who search our faces with compassion.

I never intended to have another child. In fact, I hadn't even left the hospital with Adela before I'd decided one was enough. Perhaps it was the stress of my pregnancy, or the difficulty of delivering her, but it was true and certain in my heart and mind that one child was all I'd have.

So when I found myself pregnant again, my mind instantly re-wired with a whole new set of realities and I prepared myself to love and learn about this second little being. I felt the same peace I had while carrying Adela, my worries hiding a sense that everything was going to be ok. I knew that this time, too, my body was strong and ready -- everything was in check.

I went straight into preparation mode, knowing full well the impact a baby has on a life. I told some of my closest friends and my parents so I wouldn't have to hide the daily turmoil of early pregnancy. My boyfriend and I ricocheted from one conversation to the next, looking for ways to balance our excitement with our fears.

I made doctor appointments, did the necessary blood work, began eating a variety of different foods, and shared the news with my employer. I slowly started putting the building blocks in place for this next life-changing adventure.

And at night, while I lay in the dark, I listened to my body with an ear that hears only the inaudible sounds of the universe working its magic. I felt pride in that sense of creation that comes when a life is nesting deep and sheltered within. Everything felt safe.

Mary Oliver, in her poem Sometimes, writes:

I don't know what God is.
I don't know what death is.
But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

Last week, as I embarked upon the agonizing journey of miscarriage, I settled in close to the space where life and death meet within the body. My senses, which had been so attuned to the profound process of knitting together a life, switched into helplessly monitoring the unraveling and undoing of a death.

At first I found that tender sweet spot inside of myself where I knew all would eventually be well. I knew the universe was caring for me, even while dismantling my pregnancy. And I knew that the baby, unknown to me for good, was following its own path and that its intersection with mine, though brief, was meaningful in some way. Despite the sharpness I felt inside and out, I saw the roundness of things I know to be true and I repeated to my mother in a voice message, "It's over, mom, but I am good. I am good. I am good."

And then, as if my ethereal harnessing of sorrow wasn't enough, that tender sweet spot cracked as the physical manifestation of this next phase took hold and the visceral grief began filtering in, slowly at first, and then as a rush of anger and desperation. "I didn't even have a SAY in the MATTER!" I screamed to myself as I did the dishes one night, shocked by the overwhelming force of an emotion I rarely feel. And just tonight, as I got Adela ready for bed and wished again for the bodily pain of this loss to subside, I suddenly realized that when the pain stops...it really will be over. All of this will be over. There won't be anything else to hold on to or feel. It will be gone.

And yet, in moments, I feel an odd sense of communion with the nature of things. This giant secret now ravaging the usual peace of my body, carving deep troughs through my every thought and emotion, is a devastating yet alarmingly sincere reminder that life goes on. Friends are traveling...colleagues are working...strangers are smiling...the world is turning. And whether it is life coursing through our veins or some sort of mutation of death, these very veins are meant to carry the current wherever it may lead.

I'm not ready, as Mary Oliver instructs, to put my lips to the world and live my life, but I am ready for tomorrow. I'm sorry that I won't meet this baby, and I'm sorry that my body continues to spike with the kind of pain that bears right down into the soul, and I'm sorry that this path I was excited to walk down with the people I love has disappeared into the wild. I'm sorry, too, that this grief sits deep in the center of those who have come forward to take my hand.

While Adela sleeps soundly in my bed tonight, transitioning gradually from one household to the other, I am grateful as ever that she's my daughter. And now more than before, watching her weave her way through her own young life, I am astonished by how persistent her little spirit must have been to have found its way into mine.

And so, as this next tiny life passes quickly through, pausing only long enough to bundle my affection and my commitment into a temporary home, I feel blessed to experience the range of wonders meant for me.

Thank you. Goodbye. I love you.............

~ Katie

Mary Oliver, Red Bird, Now Comes the Long Blue Cold (pg. 69); Sometimes (pg. 35); Mornings at Blackwater (pg. 57)

For a long time, she flew only when she thought no one else was watching. ~ Brian Andreas

At 22, with the engine of my profound unhappiness grinding into gear, I spent hour upon hour lost in daydreams. I imagined surviving my heavy depression by picking up trash on the streets of Berkeley, sleeping in a friend's double-door closet, and spending a year in total silence. This was at the point, of course, when my meals were rice cakes and I passed the time studying nude black and white photographs in dusty neighborhood bookshops, searching for my body in print.

I couldn't understand the world or my place in it, and knew full well that the spinning earth would not stop for me. And so I decided I would stop myself for the earth -- to breathe and be still. The streets, I figured, would offer up lessons I needed to learn; the closet would cramp and confine me, keeping me safe; and silence would allow me to decipher the thick clatter in my head before it came tumbling out, embarassing me.

It was during this time that I roamed the moonlit streets of Berkeley testing my naive yet vacuous state of being. A friend who waited tables at a local hole-in-the-wall would let me in after hours and steam milk for me, carefully pouring it into a tall clear glass and straining everything out but the foam which I'd eat with a spoon. He would offer me left-over berry pie which I'd fervently decline, choosing instead to walk back out into the night to measure my footfalls against my shallow breath.

Looking back, this was not my best time. Clearly, I was lost. Fresh out of college and reeling from a disastrous relationship, I was back in my hometown with nothing more to do but cope quite destructively. I read Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf; wrote long, never-mailed letters to friends; and meandered down wooded paths searching for just the right hillside to carve a nest in. It occurs to me now that I was more animal than girl back then. If I could have used my hands to dig myself a home, I would have disappeared into the earth.

Years later, searching for myself in yet another bookstore, I found Anne LaBastille's memoir, Woodswoman. I was in recovery at the time, fresh out of the hospital, and looking for some sort of grounding. Entranced, I read how this woman's disappointment and displacement led her to build a cabin in the Adirondack wilderness. She was lost and then found, building a life for herself in an unfamiliar place. It was she who became more animal than woman, surviving in the dense and distant woods for 10 years, persisting on the wisdom that, "the forest remains; the skies keep twinkling; and human beings keep striving."

Shortly after reading Woodswoman, I became pregnant with my daughter and my wandering woodsy dreams galvanized into something else entirely.

For reasons I have yet to understand, these two distinct lifetimes keep playing over and over in my mind: months of quiet hibernation and literary trips to the forest. I must have something in common with these young, searching selves.

In the last couple of months, I have watched myself slowly slip away from friends, ideas, habits, recreation, ways of communicating, passions, even my sure-footed, hard-earned okay-ness. It's almost as though I have willingly sacrificed the walls that hold me together in order to fall completely apart. But why?

Another memory recurs -- sitting at a table with six women: four eating disorder patients and two counselors. On this day, I vascillated between the two roles, pleading with my fellow patients to let go in order to hold on. I remember saying, "Sometimes you have to say goodbye to everything in order to find the one thing that will keep you going." I went on, "I've lost my home, my relationships, my friends, everything...and I'm still okay." Their resistance was the same as mine had been once: if I lose everything, surely that will be the end of me, too. Not true, I said. Lose everything and find yourself.

Lose everything. And find yourself.

It's hard being a mom and remembering at the end of the day that I matter, too. It's almost as if I battle with my own life, fighting even the people around me just to hear myself speak. I constantly wonder: is anyone listening? Does anyone care? The good news is that the loneliness that once sliced through me like violent lightning is now nothing more than a ghost limb, itching and burning with distant sensations every once in a while. I am wounded but intact, surprised sometimes by how balanced I've become.

The feeling of being lost within my own life, though, has returned with a ruthless force, only now the paths I once imagined might deliver me back into my body and my mind are blocked. A vow of silence is no longer practical: how would I cajole Adela into bed at night if not with a frustrated tone? Disappearing into the woods is no longer an option when kindergarten Open House is this Thursday. Voluntarily collecting trash, no matter how meditative, isn't going to put food on the table. And sleeping in a closet, while womblike and warm, will -- let's face it -- alarm my daughter. Even nighttime walks, as necessary as they once were (and still are, damn it), aren't possible after bedtime if no one else is around to bear the responsibility.

What I've decided, after ample afternoons of weeping, is that my lost self isn't just going to reappear. There is no way it can. I haven't taken a wrong turn or misplaced my map. No, I've gone far beyond a simple misstep or navigational error. I'm lost, well and good. The woods are dark, I have no idea how I got here, and the sunlight that once streamed brightly through the trees, illuminating my way forward, has dimmed to a shadowless blur.

If I had any energy at all, I might cry out or send up a flare through the canopy overhead. But right now I am too tired, too broken down, too mired in discouragement to call for help. I shall wait this out instead and hope that the people who love me -- and there are many -- will still love me when I find my way back.

Tonight, after wringing my soggy self out over the phone with a friend, I wearily picked up Adela from daycare. Sensing my exhaustion she said, "Let's play the quiet game, mom." And so we did. All the way home.

~ Katie

Woodswoman, Anne LaBastille, 1976, page 276

And for no reason, I turn into a leaf that is carried so high I kiss the Sun's mouth and dissolve. ~ Hafiz

February was a month of madness, a wounding time I am nudging behind me with this big wet stretch of March pouring in and storming down. With a few weeks of distance, I can now distill those 28 days into 28 words, better than fleshing them out into skin and bone and watching them lurk around again: skunk deaths and skunk nightmares, biopsy for me, strep for her, the uprooting of things and people and friendships, a sad sort of alienation, and too many medical bills. And then February moved on.

I think I finally broke through it when I turned to a friend and said, "I am not ok."

Since then I have wrapped myself in work and in tea parties and in the lovely little musings of my daughter who starts and ends each day earnestly singing to herself in the mirror. To look out into the world through her loving and trusting eyes is my secret weapon when morning bears heavily down. And sometimes, in cavernous moments still echo-y from sleep, I see myself as she does and I breathe. And begin my day.

This month, with this latest batch of oddities disappearing behind me, I am grateful for the rain and the wind and the hail that stings my face. And for the great combustion of storm-blackened clouds and the adrenaline sheeting down in slick slivers from the sky. I am alive, the weather reminds me. I am here.

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
(Hafiz)

I read recently that the onset of adulthood brings with it the unfurling of a permanent sort of ambiguity. In my mind, this indefiniteness is a thickening layer of maturity spread grout-like between the tiles of life's untouching squares, binding them together while keeping them apart. It plagues me now, this sensation that I can't find space within myself to store these bits of my past for good, airtight and out of sight. Have I run out of room already? I have learned not to sweat the small stuff, but the big stuff gleams from my skin, obvious and loud. There is no settling into this growing and raucous uncertainty, it seems, when life folds into itself.

I wonder why I choose to feel so responsible, then, positioning myself directly on one side of this indivisible expanse and leaving the other side blank and clean. Why am I so quick to forgive my favorite friends their mishaps and my sweetpea her tiny yet pitched indiscretions, but not myself these bumbling decisions year in and year out? I wonder when I will be free of this when it is already so free of me. And there, in that question, lies the burden of my own responsibility staring quite frankly back.

And yet, life goes on, no matter what I pause to consider or improve. In an instant, March will be April and April will be May and May will deliver us into summer. Tomorrow there will be work to do, and I will feel relieved for it. Adela will awaken with her feisty fire stoked and burning and I will fasten my mood to her spirit. I will cut strawberries for her lunch and pour cheerios into a bowl. I will search my calendar for breaks in the day and plan my ride around lunch. I will drive us up the hill; she will sing and I will smile and sip my tea. I will work, shift into reverse as the day reaches its tipping point, and do it all again.

If I am glad for anything -- and I am glad for a lot -- it is the simple, stunning wonder of a day lived in the best way I know how to live it. I may not know my heart from my mind or from my soul, and I may spend too much time chasing away my circular sadness, but I know how to love. And that is something I do marvelously well, in spite of it all, day after day.

~ Katie

Title quote from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, 1999

Life is eternal, Love is immortal, and Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of our sight. ~ from the collection, Apples of Gold

While writing my grandma's eulogy last month, I marveled at how this woman, who had for years been a fixed entity of grandma-ness in my mind, was now coming alive and taking on sights and sounds and colors and resonances I'd never associated with her. She was, right before my very eyes, becoming somebody's mother, somebody's long-lost lover, somebody's life-long friend...someone who would find a way to give her family the gift of her life even after her death.

My grandfathers, all three of them, passed away several years ago. When I leaned over to kiss my last grandfather goodbye, my unborn child kicked and squirmed within me, reminding me that life has a shape - and it is round. I've lost an uncle, friends, neighbors, a childhood crush. I've said goodbye to some and why to others. And sometimes, when the clouds part and join above me, I look up into the windy sky and say hello.

Losing my grandma was different. Sharing pictures of my daughter's birthday party with her, passing chocolate truffles around her hospital bed, and finally, blowing kisses into her darkened room from the hallway, my family and I weren't shepherding her toward the end of her life but letting her know that her life would go on. And in writing our memories and public goodbye, selecting just the right psalm to print on her memory card, and sifting through her neatly hung clothes to find the outfit she would rest in at last, I found a woman I wished I'd known all along.

After her funeral, as we sorted through her things, removing them carefully from places they'd belonged for years but would never be again, I found a book of poems and quotes sitting on a shelf in the corner. I opened it and read, "A mistake is evidence that someone has tried to do something." I closed my eyes, hugged the book to my chest, and told my family I'd be taking it home because I realized, in that moment, grandma wasn't done speaking to me.

Just tonight, ready to write a bit about her life and our loss, I picked up the book again. The inside front cover reads, "Wishing you every special joy, today and every day," and just below these words, "From:" followed by a blank space. She didn't have to sign her name to let me know that this collection of life's lessons on love and loss and faith and goodness is from her. She knows I have a lot to learn.

And so, grateful for the quiet moments this little volume of wisdom and pencil scribbles will bring me as my life goes on without her, I thank my grandma for showing me that grace is a choice, faith is a gift you give to yourself, and chocolate is as necessary as breathing.

~ Katie
Quotes from "Apples of Gold," compiled by Jo Petty, 1962

The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more than I could handle; the moment I jumped off of it, was the moment I touched down ~ A. Morissette

Here is something no one tells you about divorce: you will be on your hands and knees, forehead to the floor, nearly two years after you and your husband decide to separate, overcome by the enormous riptide of loss it took you both of those years to comprehend.

Here is something else no one tells you: you will feel so vulnerable and so afraid that you will change who you are just to be close to someone...and you will spend the next year filled with confusion and regret and rage at how much you sacrificed for that one sliver of peace.

Once you are alone, you will, at times, question your sanity. You will move through moments of estrangement from your own life, and you will lay face-down in your endlessly streaming tears, well past midnight, desperate for help with your child who won't sleep or listen or give you 5 seconds to think, and still manage to get up when the alarm goes off the next morning to do it all again.

Two years into your "new" life, you will crumple in front of a friend when you tell her it might be time to move on. You will sob on your couch at night, and while your child is in the bath, and when your dreams take you to places you'd rather never revisit.

And you will, without question, arrive at that tender place where you finally realize you are tired of crying, tired of placing cold packs on your eyes so that they're not so swollen in the morning, and tired of putting your hand up whenever someone tries to love you, even though this feels like your only protection at times.

You will talk to your divorced friends and find out that the grief never really goes away, it just changes into something you can live with most of the time. You will hear that there is always a little bit of guilt, always a sensation of failure, especially around the holidays, when it comes to your children. You will adapt, and you will move on, but you will always feel like a little bit less of a good enough mother when you recall the things you couldn't repair.

Waking up on Christmas morning without your child will never get easier. You will spend a lot of time coordinating holiday schedules and trying to read between the lines while focusing on the positive. You will communicate with your ex-spouse better than you did when you were married in order to siphon out the challenges and filter in the love you both share for your child. You will have to forgive and you will have to forget in order to cope. And you will have to extend more faith than you did when you brushed your teeth together every night.

In the early months, you will feel more like strangers than you did before your very first date, and upon seeing your in-laws for the first time after you separate, you will understand that the circle of people with whom you celebrate the miracle of your child's life has just gotten smaller.

You will exhaust yourself holding open doors that simply want to close, and sometimes you'll be the only thing bracing the walls when they want to come tumbling down. You will teach yourself how to fix your shower drain, repair a crack in your windshield, and troubleshoot your computer problems. You will sleep with the windows open during summer's hottest nights because you can't find the time to properly install your swamp coolers.

Good friends will become your saviors, and you will look to them for guidance during your darkest hours. Without a partner, you will have the space and time to let people in who will protect you from the scorching flames of your guilt and regret; and you will learn, eventually, how to ask for help. Forgiving indiscretions will be difficult since you are now your own gatekeeper, but your life will be cleaner and safer in the end.

There will come a point, maybe sooner, maybe later, when life will threaten to topple the delicate balance you have worked so hard to achieve in the aftermath. Knocking on your door will be opportunities you've always dreamed of, but require a loosening of your vice grip on the type of parenting that allows for little else. And it will break your heart to love again because the doors left open by the sheer force of your unrelenting hope will close.

Surprisingly, you will find that the final heartbreak that divides two people is not the last, but the first of many to come. You won't know how much you treasured laughing about your child's antics together until you're suddenly laughing alone. And you won't fully understand the enormity of raising a child by yourself until you're the only adult in the house at night and no one else is coming home.

And yet, what emerges from the unspooling of a family is more than devastation...and just as inexplicable. Grief eventually becomes a setting sun that will always rise again, bringing with it a newness terrifying in its unfamiliarity but necessary in its illumination of everything beautiful and whole and unchanged by your tragedy. You will lose yourself in moments of despair, and tire of chasing your sanity around the labyrinth of your life, but you will learn - because you have to - how to love even the most despicable pieces of yourself so that you can present to your child the person you've always wanted to be.

On difficult days, you will raise the clear, glass sharpness of yourself to the light and find a way to smooth the edges, and you will know that the person you see in the mirror each night has the strength to get through tomorrow because she just survived today. And as simple as it sounds, you will power yourself through impossible moments by powering yourself through all the preceding impossible moments. No matter what, you will put one foot in front of the other because that's the only way forward even when you're lost.

I wish I knew two years ago what this separation would do to my family and what it would ultimately do to me. When the decision was made, I saw divorce through a pinhole, and as the days have gone by and that tiny hole has split, widened, gaped, and finally opened completely to expose the whole of single-parenthood, I finally understand its impact.

For me, divorce meant jumping into a new existence and finding, once submerged, that nothing was any easier...only different and, in some ways, harder that it had been when it seemed impossible. But, eventually, I learned how to swim and, in most cases, protect myself from the sharks that circle every once in a while. And, in finding ways to keep my head above water, I have created an island for my child: safe, dry, and sometimes magical.

My life is no longer contracting but expanding to include new people, ideas, and a kind of serenity I never imagined. Sure the peace sometimes feels like isolation, and the silence in my house sometimes leaves too much room for sadness, and calling my daughter at night rather than tucking her in feels like the worst kind of pain, but this is all part of the life I am blessed to lead. I don't always understand it, I don't always like it, and sometimes I cry for days, but there is always something at the end of the day to hold on to. Always. Even if it's just a glimmer of hope that tomorrow will be a little bit better or a little bit easier than today.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love." I can say with absolute certainty that the last two years have brought with them the darkest, most frightful moments I have known in my life thus far. But, they have also brought with them the opportunity to survive. And with that survival comes an appreciation for the forces in me that refuse to be overcome, and sometimes, in brief moments of clarity, a genuine appreciation for the struggles themselves.

~ Katie

This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true. ~ Wally Lamb

This morning, feeling aimless and heavy with thoughts, I pulled my rose-patterned box out from under my bed and started to read, hoping to find an inroad to my writing voice. What I found instead surprised me: a deep and clear understanding that I'm done processing those years, done communing with the girl I once was, done with that chapter of my life. It is time to close the door.

The thing is, I'm not ending the journey out of frustration or exasperation, but out of the calm serenity of closure I've nurtured here. I have honored those years and the people in them and, in doing so, discovered myself standing tall atop the darkness of my twenties. I wasn't sure what I'd find looking back into my troubled and recovering mind, but I'm leaving the process behind knowing that I not only survived anorexia, I learned and changed and grew into someone with a full and challenging and beautiful inner life. I am, quite simply, not a sick young girl anymore.

I contacted a friend while in the midst of making this discovery. I can't write, I said, and explained that I'd gone back to re-read my journals and couldn't connect to or channel the young writer anymore. And then I understood: I feel like I've grown up, I said, it's time to move on.

I realize now I've been combing through those years, really feeling them again, so that I'd eventually reach the day when I could finally lay them to rest. Attracting and embracing change over the last couple of years while shedding the tight, cracking skin of my twenties, and experiencing the vast and frightening overhaul of a new life lived in a new place, has been nothing short of metamorphic. My skin is still raw and fresh.

It is true, though, that in looking back to see the heavy door of my past click shut, I am unsure where to turn. I know that I am well into a new chapter of my life, but it doesn't have roots deep enough to stabilize me during times of extreme doubt. I still awaken to quick moments of haziness and plan my day as if I lived elsewhere. I still fumble through feelings of displacement which seem exciting during bursts of exploration but terrifying and exhausting during stretches of loneliness and despair.

And yet...I've fallen in love with this place and that in and of itself is a soft place to land.

I've learned, in imparting these years of my story, that we all share the same soulful unrest that plagues me at times -- we've all got bundles of life tied to our backs that feel either heavy or weightless depending upon the slope of the ground beneath our feet. We all get tangled up in the minutia of daily life, creating a narrative that makes sense and feels safe in its re-telling, while days tick by and etch their presence onto our hands and memories, reminding us, when we dare look ourselves full in the face, that time is marching on.

Walking Adela to kindergarten the other day and feeling her quick kiss on my cheek and tiny hand slip out of mine as we reached the playground, I realized that there is nothing I can do or change or think or say to fix these moments in time. No amount of intelligent, responsible life-construction or determination will make time stand still. My daughter's childhood is like a beautiful limitless sky, and though I've come to understand that clouds and wind and rain blow through every once in a while marring the blue, I was never so aware of the sun traveling in its own finite arc until now. This one perfect, glorious day won't last forever.

And so, as if braiding my life, I pick up another strand of change and weave it in.

A few weeks ago, on the eve of this wrenching set of discoveries, I found myself blisteringly angry. Sitting alone in my room late one night I told the universe exactly what I thought of it through heaving sobs and shallow breath, hoping to make sense of my confusion. I didn't realize at the time that grief was erupting noisily around me and I was trying to muffle it with fury. Everything was changing right before my very eyes and what I knew to be solid and true was mere shadow in the light: my daughter's youth, my sense of self...

Change is extremely painful, especially change that ruptures within, and I tend to follow a very distinct pattern when a particular journey such as a relationship or job is ending: shock, blame, anger, withdrawal, grief, and, finally, acceptance. Completely unaware of my position within the continuum of change, I have spent some time balancing on each of these stepping stones over the last couple of months, sometimes going backward then forward again. As the days blur hastily by, blame simply feels like blame rather than the bookend of shock or the precursor to anger. Grief just feel like grief, not the resting place of withdrawl nor the tunnel through to acceptance. Real change doesn't happen overnight, but rather through this series of transitions, the next step presenting itself only when it is truly time to move on. Acceptance doesn't come until anger has crashed, foamed and bubbled in silence, and receded with grief.

Emerging from my own confusion and finding a bit of reflection, I am happy I spent this past year sifting and sorting through the contents of my rose-patterned box. I am proud that I surrendered to those wretched and shameful memories for a time, understanding their nuances and how they affect my life. Honestly, I am astonished to discover that the wayward soul I once was still has the strength to power me through challenging times. And, I am relieved to discover that I don't have to cast out the lost little girl who starved herself in order to shed her shame...I'm privileged to love and live with both.

This year, as I navigated through one kind of grief, I said goodbye to a friend whose life was cut far too short. In one of our last conversations, she shared with me some of the challenges she saw before her and how she planned to deal with them. After her death, I reeled for weeks trying to understand how a woman and mother whose work seemed so unfinished could be gone. It seemed an ugly injustice to lose someone with plans and hope...until I accepted that our lives are present and vital while we're here and that death doesn't diminish the importance of the love and lessons we leave behind. My friend will not live through the challenges and blessings she foresaw, but that doesn't mean I should stop looking ahead.

I know in leaving this subject behind for now that I have mountains and oceans of work left to do. If I'm lucky, I'll still be climbing and sailing throughout all the days of my life. I have lists and lists of unfinished business and unanswered questions tucked away in my mind, ready for the next phase of exploration. The brilliance of being alive is getting an infinite number of chances to crack open life's little riddles while the sun still travels through the sky.

Georgia O'Keefe once wrote to a friend, "I see my little world as something that I am in - something that I play in. It is inevitable to me. But I never get over being surprised that it means something to anyone else."

Thank you for making it safe to share this tender piece of my story with you.

~ Katie

Quote from Georgia O'Keefe by Roxana Robinson, 1989, p. 454