Letters to no one

I want to start off by saying these letters are going to be written by me – a person (not a bot). Although I wish to remain anonymous (because these letters contain personal thoughts I don’t wish to share with friends and family), my hope is that the details contained within each will be enough for you — the reader — to feel connected to me, or be able to resonate with my words vs. a picture.

As such, I won’t be connecting any social platforms or refining my words with AI. The mistakes are my own. The thoughts are my own. And the flow is my own.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Our beginning together. With a little bit (or perhaps too much) of information about me. I’m a wife and mom of three. I live in the mountains, and I run a small Airbnb business. But this letter isn’t about my business and it isn’t about the mountains. Or being a wife. It’s about loss.

Over the past 14 months, my husband and I have been trying to expand our family. We’ve been pregnant 3 times. And I’ve miscarried each pregnancy at different times. Once very early on. Once requiring a D&C. Once in my bathtub, surrounded by blood, and ready for it to be over, but desperate to remain pregnant at the same time.

I waited two weeks for it to happen. That’s the max amount of time my doctor’s said is OK, otherwise there’s a risk of infection. I was scheduled for a D&C the following day, but it wasn’t necessary. They told me when it happened, no “products of conception” (and yes, that’s really what they call the baby once it passes in utero) would be visible.

They were wrong.

I passed the entire sac, still filled with fluid, and saw our baby floating inside of it. It’s little body stopped forming weeks prior, but it was still very much, at one point, real. At one point alive. At one point planning to come into the world.

Or was he? (I say he not knowing gender, but going off of a feeling). 

This is a question I’ve been pondering a lot over the past 14+ months. Was the plan always for that baby (or those babies) to enter my womb, and exit early?

I’ve heard somewhere that sometimes that happens. Souls come into the womb to experience the gravity and density of earth. Like a practice round. They get their footing. Find their center of gravity. And then leave. 

Maybe they go to new parents. Maybe back to the same ones. Or maybe that quick physical incarnation in itself “completed” their mission because it was never really about them, it was about the experience of the mother and father. Of the lessons they needed to learn, or grief they needed to experience.

I don’t know what the truth is. Or why it happened 3 times in a year. I just know it hurt. And it took something from me – a trust in my body. A trust in myself. A trust that things always work out. 

Or did it?

Do things always work out?

Is this how it was supposed to shake out?

Was the loss part of some bigger learning or experience?

Was the timing not right? 

I don’t have the answers. And the more I ask, the more I realize I don’t know. Which brings me back to the beginning. To this letter, to these words, to the virtual therapist they represent. And perhaps as I send them out into the ether… meaning will form.

Or maybe it won’t.