I am feeling grateful tonight. Steve is home, there is money in the bank, and work on the horizon. I have beautiful friends, supportive family, and a small army of warriors of the heart helping me walk this path. I am writing daily, shedding pounds slowly, getting my health and my energy back, and last night as fear turned to terror and threatened to pull me under, I took my own words to heart and I danced. In my living room. In my nightgown. And I understood that dancing, like writing, will save my life.

Years ago, my therapist at the time shook his head with a self-satisfied smile and announced, You need to dance. I nodded and made up excuses. I tried a couple of times to find a class I liked. I gave up. I hated looking in the mirror, comparing the thirty-something out of shape me to the twenty-one year old who danced for a living, or the sixteen year old who danced because it was oxygen and kept her alive. Last night I remembered how to breathe and while it didn’t take the terror away, it made it bearable.

Tonight I stare back at my life in wonder. How did I get so angry that I not only shut the door on my most fundamental needs, I padlocked it, swallowed the key and walked away? I don’t think the answer matters. Somehow, the perfect storm of grief and love is tearing me apart and putting me back together again, closer to whole than I’ve ever been.

I read the other night an excerpt from a book that stated the souls of children who die while still in their mama’s bellies are so evolved that they simply needed to touch life for a moment to complete their journey. It’s a nice thought. Maybe, just maybe, I helped Benjamin as much as he is helping me.

A wise woman reminded me today that Ada witnessing my process is part of her journey and I can stop feeling guilty about it. Of course Abraham would say feeling guilty is better than feeling fear. I don’t want either of them.

There’s a story in Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart about a young warrior whose teacher told her she had to battle fear. She didn’t want to, but the day dawned and there she was, looking at fear on the other side of the battlefield, totally intimidated.

The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear. (p. 41-42)

Another wise woman mentioned several months ago that fear is tricky. Sometimes it uses us against ourselves and we get wrapped tightly into a knot of paralysis. I am working to accept that this fear is part of my reality right now, part of my grief process. The resistance to it, the not-wanting of it makes it worse. I am challenged to really love the parts of myself I want to change. I am realizing that I give good talk, my lip service is excellent, but that acceptance is often beyond my reach. This is part of my lesson, part of what needs to happen in order for me to heal, to believe that I do deserve what I have – a solid marriage, a live child, a healthy body – not some tragedy.

The calendar above my kitchen sink has a message for me every day, written in brightly colored inks. Today’s is Dance with your Shadow. I could, if the sun decided to shine, go outside and invite my shadow to our daily dance party. I could also stay right here, deep inside, and sway slowly with those dark parts of myself I find hard to embrace. I could turn on some rockin’ tunes and boogie down with my cluttered self, leaving judgment behind. Maybe I’ll even bring out my jazz hands and tap shoes, long ago put on a high shelf, and Bob Fosse my way to self-love. Maybe that’s how I defeat fear – my warrior-self needs to remember how to dance.

After missing 8 months of my book club due to the broken leg and pregnancy bleeding/bedrest/loss, we met at my house recently. I started the club six years ago because I didn’t read enough books or have enough time with my girlfriends. We have seen each other through births, deaths, new businesses and lost jobs over the years. One of our members, the incomparable Jamie, died suddenly in May of 2009 and since then, things have been rough for many of us. I was thrilled to be seeing them all and didn’t even give a thought to my grief being a problem.

I enjoyed myself until we began discussing the books. My first mistake was to pick two. I was excited to share both Half the Sky and Hand Wash Cold with these incredible women, not thinking that differing opinions might send me reeling into dangerous territory.  Unable to piece coherent thoughts together with my emotions whirling out of control, I found myself melting down in the face of snap judgments and a lack of willingness to listen to and hear each other.

Compassion is always born of understanding, and understanding is the result of looking deeply. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Both books have vitally important messages  – the first to accept the reality of our lives, the second to change what is unacceptable in the world. In my heart, those go hand in hand. A comment was made about our culture being obsessed with “happiness” and how it was more important to take action that resulted in feeling fulfilled. Unfortunately semantics – and grief – got in the way of conversation and I have been sitting with my feelings around it for the last week.

I think our culture has an obsession with “easy” and “more”. In general, we want things to be easier than they are, and we think that more – money, sex, clothes, influence –  will make us happier. The problem comes when we believe that being happy means we won’t have ugliness or darkness to deal with. Google “law of attraction” and  you’ll see how many hundreds of people are selling the easy way to everything your heart desires. The real spiritual teachers – no matter which path they choose to follow – will tell you that you can’t escape the realities of life, but you can understand them differently.

Personally I think seeking happiness or the end of suffering (or peace, fulfillment, contentment, joy) is a worthy cause, whether in ourselves or in the world. In fact, most people who are working on one, are also contributing to the other. Which is why I felt my two book choices were like two sides of the same coin. Some people find their fulfillment in trying to rid the world of sex trafficking, some in educating girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in building hospitals to repair fistulas and some in looking deeply inside and shining what they find out into the world, whether that’s creating art, leading meditation retreats or volunteering at the local hospital. There is no path to true happiness that comes at the expense of another and there is a place for all of us and our gifts in the world.

One of the biggest pulls for me to Hand Wash Cold was the concept of embracing the ordinariness of our lives. I have heard this message repeated in various ways lately. Initially I resisted but my spirit kept wrestling with it. On Karen Maezen Miller’s site, she wrote about a review of her book by Lori Deschene over at Tiny Buddha. If only I’d printed it out to hand to my book club members, there might have been less emotional wreckage. Lori writes:

Most of us don’t want to be ordinary. We want to be special. We want to live bold, extraordinary lives punctuated by moments of passion, excitement, and adventure.

We want to fill our days with people, things, and activities that make us feel vibrant, and outsource the rest to someone else–someone paid to handle the mundane.

We want to take all the uncertainty that life entails–all the potential for loss and sadness and the truth of our mortality–and offset it with undeniable achievement.

We want to discover something, uncover something, build something, invent something, found something, prove something–be something. We want to be extraordinary. We want to be great–or at least moving in that direction.

We want our lives to matter.

This was me in a nutshell for most of my life. The problem with special, I’ve discovered, is that it sets up comparisons. There will always be someone smarter than, prettier than, skinnier than, more talented than me, you, anyone. I think this is why I spent much of my twenties feeling depressed. I was searching for the impossible and all I found was suffering. I had a great time too, don’t get me wrong, but most days when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t want to be me. Finally I quit the acting biz and started my slow embrace of ordinary. What I’ve realized over the last five years, is that ordinary frees you up to be who you really are, love what you have, figure out what’s important and begin to make a difference in the world. That difference might be to publish two books, lead meditation retreats and speak publicly like Karen Maezen Miller, or it might be to organize a community garden, mobilize for a cause you believe in or raise a child with respect, empathy and an understanding of the inequalities in the world.

To quote Lori Deschene again:

Life, by nature, is ordinary. It’s because of our resistance to that word that it often slips away.

Karen Maezen Miller doesn’t write about her journey navigating a foreign country while filming a documentary, or her experience running a billion dollar Fortune 500 company, or her extraordinary life as an heiress, actress, singer, model, athlete or politician.

She doesn’t write about a life all of us wish we had.

Karen Maezen Miller writes about the satisfaction we can experience when we consider that maybe right now is a good time to be happy. That maybe we’re enough–that this is enough. Or as I quoted recently on the Tiny Buddha Twitter stream:

“Happiness is simple. Everything we do to find it is complicated.”

Now to address the elephant in the room: Karen Maezen Miller does live a life most would call extraordinary.

In addition to being “an errant wife, delinquent mother, reluctant dog walker, expert laundress and stationmaster of the full catastrophe” as summarized on her site, Karen Maezen Miller is a Zen priest, published author, and public speaker.

The irony is that she became extraordinary for accepting the ordinary and sharing it.

Yes. My point exactly – though much more eloquently made by Lori. In embracing ordinary, we no longer devote energy to being special and we leave room for our uniqueness to shine. I am not special because my baby died. I still have to wash the dishes, walk the dog and sweep up the dust bunnies. In my acceptance of this part of my life, of the immensity of my grief, I am also able to feel great joy. I am not running away from the ugly parts. At least I’m doing my best not to. In picking up my daughter’s toys, sorting through what I own, sitting down every day to write, I am creating space for the me I swept under the table long ago in my search for special.

The women whose stories make up Half the Sky did not set out to be anything other than who they are. Most didn’t have the Western luxury of contemplating what they wanted to do with their lives. They also do not have the time to pick lint out of their navels while worrying about being happy. I think this is partly why the search for happiness has gotten a bad name. It feels like the territory of a drifting, discontent middle class. Most of us in North America are so far up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that we can’t fathom what life is like in the countries Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn write about. Their book is a wake up call and should be required reading for every senior in high school. The danger, perhaps, is in turning our backs on what’s happening in our own cities in order to fix what’s happening in another country. This is where it’s important for me to remember that there are almost 7 billion of us on the planet and there is room for each of us to make a difference in a way that speaks to us. I wrote more about Half the Sky and its effect on me here. Since I’m already over 1400 words I will leave it at that and encourage you to read it, then share it with everyone you know.

In the meantime, I know that I know nothing, that I am a beginner on this path and that everything is up for debate. Losing Benjamin rocked my world and I am in many ways, happier for it, though that seems strange to say while in the midst of grief. I wish, with a mama’s love, that he were still in my belly, healthy and growing. In his death, I have found pieces of myself I didn’t even realize were lost. For that, I am grateful.

To be continued…

I think Benjamin whispered into my new niece’s ear because she was born just in time for me to run to the hospital and hold her before the end of visiting hours last night. She is – of course – beautiful. As I held her warm little body, I couldn’t help but think how fragile life is. I thought of all the BLM’s (baby loss mamas) who held their little ones for hours or days before they took their last breath and I felt fear. She seemed so tiny. Benjamin was 7 pounds lighter and 10.5 inches smaller. It’s hard for me to remember what that looked like. In my memory he has grown.

My heart beat a prayer for her as I walked out the door.

*****

I hadn’t had a good cry since we left home last Wednesday. Tears had welled and escaped the net of my lashes many times, but whether due to lack of time, space or privacy, there had been no sobbing relief.

Yesterday I walked into the spare room/office at my brother’s and something caught my eye, then took my breath away. I had seen it before but hadn’t taken it in, hadn’t realized what it was. I sat, clutched my chest and sobbed. This is exactly what I would have wanted to have in my home, to have for my son.

This was next to the changing table. I didn’t even know diaper services did all-in-ones.

Snapped up. The cutest diaper ever. I wanted to carry one home, against my skin, for his memory box.

It’s amazing how the sight of diapers can break my heart.