I opened my eyes.
Thin February light filled the room, and I knew I was pregnant.
We hadn’t been trying — I mean, we had been, but it hadn’t been working, and as anyone who has had to try for any length of time knows, trying can become rather… trying.
But I knew. And so I slipped out of bed and drove down to our small town pharmacy to buy a home pregnancy test.
It was positive.
I woke my partner with the news. We were overjoyed.
We had a room already set aside for a nursery. My mom’s old glider rocker was in there, and I found myself spending a lot of time going into that room and sitting quietly, connecting.
I’d sing, I’d talk, I’d place my hand low on my belly and simply connect. I don’t know how else to explain what I was doing.
They were blissful hours of co-solitude; our own quiet conversations together in the nursery.
For some reason, we didn’t tell anyone about the pregnancy. I wasn’t superstitious that way, but we simply kept it to ourselves, and in a way I think it was to ensure this moment was ours and ours alone, uninterrupted and sacred.
One day within this span of a few weeks I was at my parents’ house, shoveling the driveway from freshly fallen snow, and I felt it — a sudden and bottomless absence. A thing that was, was no more.
A week later, I started spotting. A visit to the doctor confirmed that the pregnancy had terminated.
The physical loss was more than I could have expected. Fear over confronting the tangible remains, the horror of invention and anguish at not knowing.
We don’t talk about those things. No one talks about any of it, until after it happens.
We told everyone, because grief is too unbearable to bear alone.
But people can become strangers when confronted with another’s grief, and I was unprepared for the platitudes and all out horrible things people could say in that moment.
I carry them with me to this day, not in my arms but on my skin.
I didn’t know how to explain that what I felt was real, because people would say I was only sensing chemical changes in my body.
I didn’t know how to explain that what I felt was real, because people would hush me for fear that I was giving fodder to forced-birth fanatics.
But I was simply trying to say that I had a profound journey with that small soul for its brief passage through my care.
I knew her, and none of the words I had to talk about her were adequate to make other people feel comfortable with my love and my grief.
It was the darkest time of my life, and I found myself pressed against the walls of civil society and body politics wanting to scream that what I felt was real and mine and they didn’t need to inject anything else into my screams.
I made a very small scrapbook where I kept the bloodwork from my first appointment confirming the pregnancy and the sincere letters of condolence. Looking back across these years, I am glad I did that.
Grief is a strange animal that lies at your feet. Then, without warning, it slams itself onto your chest, pressing your breath away until you can coax it back down again. But it’s always there.
As is the truth of how deeply you can love, even in a short span of time.
I knew her in those few weeks. Abigail. And she grows alongside my own children. When Morgan was very little she often talked of her big sister who was the same age as her.
This is simply my truth. It doesn’t change anything for anyone else. It doesn’t rewrite laws. It doesn’t diminish science.
It simply honors, and loves.
End notes: I am writing from the acknowledged perspective of a CIS woman who is ardently pro-abortion. My story is much, much broader than the vignette shared here.
I can’t recall a time when I didn’t believe in magic, or that when I spoke with the trees they could hear me, or that one day I would see a unicorn.
I still believe all these things, but more than that, I have grown in curiosity over the years.
My path had largely been solitary, and while I do enjoy my alone time, I love supporting community and finding opportunities to support independent creators, artists, thinkers, and performers.
The Weirdo Collective is a passion project. The idea was sparked by two desires:
1. To keep up with the content my freinds create, regardless of how regularly they post
2. To have a searchable database of Weird thought so we have a better chance of building on ideas and learning from one another.
My personal favorite topics are: lucid dreaming, rocks, nature energy, teaching natural observation skills, and diversity in Weird spaces.
