Finding Me: The Calm After The Storm by Crystal Lupo
Summer turned to fall, turned to winter, turned to spring, and the cycle repeats. Rain gives way to sun, gives way to snow, gives way to storms. It’s been 6 years since my last stillborn child, a little girl named Hildie came into the world like a candle in the wind that never got a chance to light. When I felt her kicks stop, I knew the drill, this was my third in a row- Isabella was second, and Phoebe was first. By this point in my journey I was all too familiar with dead babies and loss.
My fertility journey didn’t start with my girls, it began 11 years earlier, when IVF after IVF resulted in 4 beautiful children, intermittently born between multiple miscarriages. Yes I was one of the lucky ones- I know this.
My fertility journey defined my adult life, so when I painfully decided it was time to move on, who was I? For most of my adult life I was fertility patient and mom- yes I had a successful career and marriage, but I never felt defined by those elements. I knew I was still a mom, but a mom that wasn’t trying to give my kids more siblings. It was a weird feeling. I felt defeated. I felt selfish. I felt incomplete. I felt less than.
It’s hard to experience the calm after the storm. In some ways when I decided to “move on” I felt like I was abandoning my whole identity. Who was I? I am a mom of at least 7, yet people only saw 4, and while in many ways it didn’t matter what other people saw or thought, the fact that I couldn’t find a single mom, or person, who could relate to my journey was difficult. I’ve found commonalities but these are often so intertwined with difference that it becomes hard to relate.
But one day I just stopped, the storm just broke. I stopped trying to find people who understood me, I stopped thinking about all of the what ifs, I just stopped.
I will always miss my girls, but it stopped being something that completely consumed my existence and my identity. Holidays, birthdays, listening to that mom complaining that she’s pregnant AGAIN…sure I still feel it, it still hurts…a lot…and that storm still erupts from time to time.
But as the years pass I start to watch the storm from a safer distance. The storms seem shorter now. I feel more protected from its wrath. And somewhere in the midst of it all, I see my living children…growing…thriving…laughing. We love to laugh. I’m starting to find new interests, I go out shopping or for a coffee from time to time.
I am enjoying “the now” more than ever before, living in the present, and am starting to re-emerge not as a victim of tragedy but as my own person, thankful for my blessing and accepting of my tragedies. The present and future are mine to create, and while I’m still finding my way, I see such calm in the skies, and that helps me feel whole. I am a work in progress but today, I am me.
