Heather’s Story
02/2020
I started bleeding 01/29/20. I was losing a pregnancy I very much wanted. Experiencing death this way is entirely unique. To have something grow and die inside you leaves a complicated wake of insecurity, distrust, anger, misery. I felt like my body betrayed me. A year later I moved to a new state, and it snowed, the first of the season and I thought of how in some alternate universe I’d have a 3-month-old right now who I’d be taking out to see their first snow.
Grief is a scab ripped open every time I see a baby bump, each stroller that I pass.
Art has never solved my problems. But it is always here with me. I can rely on it to soak up whatever I have to let out.
03/2020
When I had my miscarriage, I felt so alone- I could see the concern on my friends’ faces, but I felt encased, isolated. As my cycle returned it was a reminder that I was emptied out and each day my body healed, I felt farther and farther from this goal, desire, dream of motherhood. I’m the only person who felt this life, that experienced it’s forming and its deterioration; I don’t expect to get over this.
05/2020
I forget, as a woman yearning to be a mother, that there are so many seeds sown that never germinate, or they sprout- then die, or they grow- then wither.
Seeds are vessels of hope and hold potential for growth but no promises.
Two months after my loss, I opened a grapefruit that I had saved from when I was pregnant and trying to eat more fruits. Inside, it hadn’t rotted, merely shrunk some as its juices and energy went towards sprouting seeds. I had never seen a fruit sprout inside itself like this and I knew instantly the seeds were futile- their sinewy green was wasted if I thought of the desired outcome- to become a fruit bearing tree itself. But there they lay, curled into each other, growing just the same.
I knew that as close as I’d gotten to my own desired outcome, I was now far away from it.
01/2021
A year later and I still feel so far from becoming a mom. I know it’s not smart to compare and I struggle with not thinking mean thoughts that tell me they can have this and I can’t. I work with mothers every day. I admire them and I love their children. Somehow, when I wake up to take my temperature and chart my cycle and cry, I still have room to smile wide at my students. They still bring me joy. I will try to be as kind to myself as a mother and as understanding as a teacher whose student is growing and learning every day.
05/2022- 09/2022
We have been trying to conceive for 3 years now, all of which I have been a public-school teacher. I am surrounded by countless successful pregnancies turned into my most favorite people- kids.
Every day, I see mothers walk hand in hand with the person they carried, the one who made it. Every day, I see that motherhood, as much as I want it, is not some fantasy happy life where all my complex feelings about grief and letting go disappear. I try to remember that what I see does not tell the story of how each student arrived at our elementary school doors. When that fails, I remind myself that they made a baby, I make art, I grow a garden, I am an integral part of raising the next generation even if they didn't come out of me.
Motherhood stirs in me when I rock my students to sleep and feel their heavy little bodies relax into me. I embrace and cherish these moments. I am not pretending, I am not living vicariously through other women while I borrow their children, I am enjoying what generations of communities have done to raise children.I am teaching, I am mothering, and whether I get to be the mother of one child or more, or none, I am opening my nurturing spirit and allowing it to thrive.
Two years ago, I couldn't fathom not being a mother. I thought there was no point to a future where I wasn’t a mom. I searched and searched for some narrative I could attach to where I would be just as fulfilled as I believe I would be as a mother. All the while, I continue painting, writing poems, singing, tending my garden.
If there is no point, then I’ll make one.
~Heather Hall
