I woke up this morning with the image of a dead wolf seared onto the backs of my eyelids. It arrived in my inbox yesterday and broke my heart. From there my thoughts went to starving children, the mass rape of women and girls as an instrument of war, and the little boy at the table next to us last night whose mother used subtle shame in a misguided attempt to have him meet her needs.

What do we do when our world feels upside down and we want to do something – anything everything – to make it a better place?

I’ve driven my car on a snow covered highway and watched a wolf trot alongside me, her beauty and majesty taking my breath away. I want to save wolves.

I have friends who’ve been raped and seen the effects on their bodies, souls and psyches. I can’t imagine the horrors being inflicted in other parts of the world. I want to end the brutality.

I’ve known adults who cannot free themselves from shame and I’ve seen the positive effects of respectful parenting on the spirits of little ones. I want our children to thrive.

As pleas for year-end donations fill my mailbox and inbox, as stories of man’s inhumanity run alongside photos of Santa in the news, as my heart is tugged in a thousand directions, I can feel myself spinning, flailing to find my footing. I want to be rich so I can throw money at everyone who asks and I know that’s not the answer.

The answer is inside.

It’s slowing down so I can hear my own voice. It’s simplifying and letting go and staying open to what feels right. It’s knowing that I can’t save anyone else and I’m not supposed to.

But I can be a force for good in the world. I can show up as love, without fear, hatred or judgment, as often as possible. I can give my time, my energy, my money in ways that align with my values, trusting that others will do the same.

I have found that to do this, sustainably, I need to love and accept my beautifully imperfect, messy self. It’s unbelievably hard some days but I’m getting better at it. Forgiveness and a sense of humor help.

Today I’m forgiving myself for the office reorganization that’s taking so long, the cat has mistaken my to-be-filed bin for a litter box. I’m loving myself in spite of my inability to get a few daunting tasks done. I’m accepting that I can’t see around the next corner and I am needing to trust, once again, that I am exactly where I need to be.

And I’m celebrating the heck out of all of it. Because life is ephemeral and there is joy to be danced with.

How about you? What are you forgiving yourself for today? What are you celebrating?

This post is part of the Support Stories blog round robin started by Karen Caterson of Square-Peg People. You can read about the origin of the idea here, and find links to the other stories.

The night Benjamin died Ada and I were staying with friends. Steve was on the road, working, and I was on bed rest, unable to do more than move gingerly from the bed to the couch and back to the bed. I’d had a Reiki treatment a few days before and my bleeding had slowed, as it always did afterward, but I was in immense pain. At the time I thought it was a ligament strain. In reality it was the placenta slowly pulling away from the uterine wall, cutting off Benjamin’s lifeline.

I woke from a fitful sleep around midnight to use the restroom. As I sat back down in bed, next to my daughter, I could tell something was seriously wrong. I went back to the bathroom and filled the toilet with blood again and again.

When I’d gone in to the emergency room the week before, my doctor sat at the edge of my bed and said, “If the bleeding doesn’t stop, your life is on the line.” Shaken, I ran downstairs to find Tom still working at his computer. I told him I needed to go to the hospital. He ran to tell his wife and I went back upstairs to grab what I could put my hands on in the dark. Looking at my sleeping daughter with tears in my eyes I promised her I’d come back, willing it to be true.

I debated calling 911 but decided that at 1 am, Tom could get me there fast enough. I remember the blurred white of the lines against black pavement as I called labor and delivery to tell them I was on my way. I called my husband in Dallas and asked him to come home.

As Tom wheeled me through the emergency room doors and up to the second floor, the security guard smiled and congratulated me. I guess he was used to ashen faced, terrified women being pushed past him, not knowing exactly what lay ahead. Only I wasn’t with my husband and I wasn’t supposed to be there. Not yet.

After making sure I was settled, Tom went home to get sleep. I was left alone, an IV in my arm, my eyes avoiding the unplugged fetal heart monitor and my mind trying to ignore the pain that began to come every 3 minutes, as though someone was scraping the inside of my uterus with a cheese grater.

The doctor on call was calm. She thought my body was going to be able to stop the bleeding and wasn’t terribly worried that we couldn’t find a heartbeat. Moments after she left, the night nurse, an Irish woman whose negativity I’d experienced the week before, presented me with the paperwork for emergency surgery. Just in case.

Then I was alone again. Waiting for my doctor to come in on his rounds. Waiting for the day nurses who had become my friends in previous visits. Waiting for my husband to tell me which flight he was on.

Waiting.

I talked with Benjamin. I prayed. I cried. I let go. I told him he could leave if he wasn’t meant to be here.  I told him I loved him but I would be okay. The only thing I couldn’t let go of was my will to live, to go home to my daughter, to kiss my husband again. I knew the bleeding was serious and I wasn’t ready to die.

I closed my eyes and imagined the room filled with golden light. I felt a beam of love envelope me from above, and the weight of a gentle, invisible hand on my shoulder.  I turned inward and found peace.

The day nurse who’d taken care of me the week before came in to sit with me even though I wasn’t her patient. She timed my contractions and looked at me with warm, sad eyes. My doctor came in, hopeful that my body was controlling the blood loss. He left and my body gave me a clear no. As my new nurse walked through the door, I told her I was bleeding again. She checked the pad underneath me and I watched her face change. The room became a hurricane of activity and at its eye my doctor stood over me, telling me it was time.

Steve was on the plane so I called my parents, thousands of miles away. They told me later that they put the phone down and held each other, so far from their daughter and only grandson. I called the friends who were taking care of us. Tom offered to come back. I told them no, I was fine. Strangely, I didn’t mind being alone. It’s not what I would have chosen, but I was no longer scared.

They prepped me for blood transfusions in both arms and wheeled me into the operating room. I was calm, managing to crack a joke with the cocky young anesthesiologist who didn’t believe he hadn’t numbed me properly until I flinched when he put the needle in my spine. I knew what to expect in a sense, since I’d had to deliver Ada surgically. But this time instead of a loud, “It’s a girl, and she’s beautiful!” the nurse quietly came over and told me there were no signs of life.

Steve arrived several hours later and together we held our son for the first and last time. I had three hours with his little body. Three hours to try to memorize his perfect tiny hands and feet and the way his nose looked like mine. And though I was with my husband, and friends soon followed, I knew that the internal chasm I had to cross belonged to me. After all, I was his mother and he was my child.

I cried a little just now, as I wrote this story, remembering how big and painful and frightening it was. And then I smiled at the gift it gave me – the gift of being on my own and learning that I will always be there for myself.  And that there is no such thing as alone.

Growing up in Canada, the red poppies on people’s coats leading up to November 11, Remembrance Day, were a visual reminder of lives lost. Long before I understood the concept of war, I felt connected to the poetry and significance of the day.

My American grandfather, born in 1900, was too young to fight in the first world war. Two of his older brothers were not. The story as I remember it, is that the war was unofficially over but fighting was to continue until the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Pretty and symbolic.

Like those poppies. One brother was on his way to get the other, to tell him the war was done and they were going home. The second brother, my great-uncle Nolan, was killed before he got there. He died November 10, the day before that pretty, symbolic, senseless hour.

Today, on Veteran’s Day here in the US, I remember and honor all those who know the grief of war and I hope, with all my heart, that one day our world will live in peace.

Also today I’m over at WomenHeal.org – a new space for community and connection founded by my friend Christa Gallopoulos – talking about women, trust and the need for love.

And the super-talented and very awesome Christie Halmick of Jewels Branch Creative interviewed me for her Women Branching Out series. Check it out here.

Finally, the  Picking Up the Pieces Tele-Retreat starts a week from Tuesday on November 20th. This will be the last tele-retreat until mid-2013.

The holidays are loaded with expectations and when you add grief to the mix, this time of year can be unbearable or beautiful. You get to choose. Find community, find comfort, find yourself. Join us.

It’s taken me a long time to be able to sit and write this. I’d hoped to knock it out right after the conference – a quick recap with some easily digestible (but powerful) takeaways.

The truth? I’m still reeling.

Sitting in a room with 250 other parents whose children have died was horrifying. And deeply moving.

The pain of a child’s death is debilitating. It’s against the natural order of life.

It’s not supposed to happen.

But it does. Every day. And we don’t want to think about it, or talk about it, because those of us who know what it’s like to have our hearts walk around outside of our bodies can’t imagine – and don’t ever want to experience – the devastation.

There is a silence around child death that only isolates grievers further. As a society we don’t know what to do. It hurts too much.

And so it was affirming to hear the stories. It was also terrifying. I listened as parents told of how only children, multiple children, all their children died. I ached. I cried. I used every tool I have to not shatter into a thousand pieces. I laughed, moved rocks, and walked labyrinths. I heard statistics, research results and why grief shouldn’t be medicated. I learned that I could have brought my baby home and I sobbed at the thought of his sister, his grandparents and the bravest of our friends being able to meet him.

I wondered how long I will be able to do this work that I believe in so deeply.

At a business meeting this week, a woman suggested I read the book The Anatomy of Suicide. Then she mentioned that on his deathbed, when asked if he had any regrets, the author Louis Everstine said, “I wish I’d studied love“.

Those words are still ringing in my ears.

Grief is heavy. Living with it can seem a sisyphean task. But if we don’t let ourselves feel it, we limit our capacity for love. We increase our susceptibility to anger, to depression, to living as shadows of ourselves.

My favorite quote of the conference came from Peter Breggin, M.D., a 76-year-old psychiatrist who, in his over 50 years of practice has never prescribed psychiatric drugs for a patient. He summed up his philosophy on mental health care, and on life, with these words:

All we have to offer each other, is each other.

Tattoo this on your heart.

If you are grieving right now, do not do it alone. Find your right people. Find the therapist, the minister, the friends or the online community that help you know you belong somewhere, that you’re going to be okay. Find compassionate hearts who are willing to hear your story and love you in your darkest – and brightest – moments.

If you’re not grieving now, know that you will be one day. So be that person for someone who is. Offer your heart as best you can. Listen without judgment, without trying to fix. And if you can’t, because your unresolved grief gets in the way, then perhaps it’s time for you to explore it.

All we have to offer each other, is each other.

I offer you my heart, my ears, my compassion. I offer my belief that you will be okay that you already are okay. I offer you love and I wish for you a life where you are able to sit with the depths of your grief so you can touch the center of joy.

with love,
Alana

P.S. Registration is open for the next round of The Picking Up the Pieces Tele-Retreat. Wondering if it’s right for you? Schedule your free 15-minute Shift Session, no strings attached.

P.P.S. Today is National Pregnancy and  Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Everyone, the world over, is invited to light a candle at 7pm for at least one hour, so that there is a wave of light around the world to honor and remember our babies, gone too soon.