Finding (and Sharing) Joy Amidst Grief
The Lesson Learned
This Mother’s Day, I’m sharing my most personal and toughest journey, and it’s not about my most recent embryo transfer (that’s a story for another time). This is about my journey to discover joy amidst grief. And in case you need it, this is your permission to live your life, do the things you love, travel, explore, smile, laugh — even while grieving.
The Journey
For my husband, Alex, and me, traveling is part of our DNA. Our first trip together while dating was to South Africa, and I like to think that set the tone for our entire relationship: an adventure, a journey, and not so typical.
We started dating at age 16 and married on our 13th dating anniversary, on a Wednesday in a public park with just our parents and siblings. The only stranger I invited was a photographer because I needed someone else to capture this momentous occasion — usually it was me behind the camera. Oh, and we strapped a GoPro to our dog, Perry, who was our videographer.
I’ve always been the historian in the family or friend group — documenting everything from my high school yearbook to my college days with a bulky digital camera always in my too-small pocket. Today I pay for cloud storage solely for the thousands of photos I can’t bring myself to delete. Each one is a memory. And each one instantly brings me back to a place and time.
Like the waterfall hike photo my husband snapped a few years ago in Hawaii, where I went off-trail even though it was terrifying because I didn’t think anything could be scarier than what we’d just overcome — our second miscarriage.
Those who know me know that I love to share about all of our trips — through photo slideshows in our living room with family to Instagram posts with anyone on the internet. But I have never shared photos from our trip to Hawaii, until this writing. For years, I hesitated to share this particular trip — in the midst of a pandemic after we had experienced two miscarriages — because I felt like I didn’t deserve to share the happiness in my life when there was also so much sadness. But now I’m ready.
We landed on Maui on February 18, 2021, the day we were supposed to meet our first baby. Instead, we escaped. We started each day like we started each of the last three years — with a challenge. The unspoken rule: if we can survive this, we can do anything together. And we did. We hiked alien landscapes, summited forgotten mountains, traversed painted deserts, and cheated death more than once. We deserved to, when life had cheated us first.
You see, it has taken me until now to share these photos because I felt it was important to understand the context. To admire the beauty intertwined with the heartache. To see the volcanoes, verdant and lush, while knowing the lava boils within. And to understand that the sun really will come out after the storm (which happens every day on Maui).
What could have looked like an extravagant vacation in the middle of a pandemic was, for me, a form of therapy. The moment I saw the cheap flight alert hit my inbox, just a few weeks after our second loss, I booked the tickets. In a world where there is no playbook for grieving an unborn child, I made my own.
It was more than an adventure, less than a vacation. A holding pattern, not a honeymoon. It wasn’t quite closure, but brought enough of us back to life to make us breathe deeply again. And every time I saw a rainbow, I thought about all of my friends who have their own “rainbow babies” — and how Mother Nature was being a really big bitch. But I still took photos of them.
I am sharing these photos now, more than two years later, after five more due dates have passed, and after more adventures than I can count. I believe that in sharing life’s greatest adventures — both the highs and the lows — we are able to experience them fully. And by doing so, we find whatever it is we may need: be it peace, support, connection with others, or simply a meaning in our message.
In sharing these photos, this story, my hope is that they are a gift to someone who is on a similar journey. My hope is to be a helpful stranger in someone else’s story.
Everyone says that parenthood is life’s greatest adventure. And while I believe that’s probably true, I think these past few years have been a way of helping Alex and me prepare — giving us glimpses into what it might look like to raise our children. I like to think that each trial has prepared me a little more to be a mom. Has brought me a little more peace with this “motherhood” idea that never came very naturally to me. Has opened my eyes and heart to the fact that I will be a good mom. And has taught me to keep taking photos of the moments I want to remember.
I know I’ll be documenting my children just like I do my dogs (and, if you know me, that’s saying something). I can’t wait to share those photos someday soon.