Pregnant During a Pandemic

I’ve never been great with timing, but man is this an interesting turn of events.

Today I am 30 weeks and five days pregnant. That’s still 65 days until my due date, or as my doctor reminded me the other day, at least 45 days until my going into labor wouldn’t be considered “preterm.”

Also today, the governor of Maryland shut down all restaurants, bars, movie theatres and gyms. Businesses and schools are closing their doors and turning to working remotely (honestly – something I’ve been preparing for my whole life; I thrive with virtual work). There is a part of me though, that small recess of my brain that still holds on very tightly to my old anxiety habits, that worries all this isolating will reawaken my hermit tendencies in an unhealthy way. Setting a reminder now: go outside. Go on a walk. Take deep breaths and remember your world exists outside of your house, too.

It’s strange to watch the news with this small baby boy kicking around in my stomach and see people at their best and their worst. To see volunteer nurses and doctors step up; to see people getting into fights in grocery stores over toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It’s weird to see people say that this is both a huge overreaction and an under-reaction.

I don’t like the most common phrase people have turned to in order to dismiss the chaos. “This will only really affect people 55+, I’ll take my chances.” It’s horrible to see there are those that would be okay with some people getting sick (perhaps to the point of being critically ill or fatally ill) as long as they don’t actually get that sick and can keep living their life. I’d like to say that’s not the majority of people, just the louder ones that always grab my attention in unfortunate ways. People, I hope, are mostly good and will make the small sacrifice of sitting on their couch watching Netflix instead of going out and proceeding with life, uninterrupted.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and with any luck (no pun intended) everyone will stay home and stay safe. Social distancing is an excellent way to practice not drinking and driving or getting publicly intoxicated. I hope everyone takes it as serious as they should. Not for themselves but for their older relatives and neighbors and coworkers. For those with underlying health conditions or autoimmune diseases (HI CELIAC! THANKS! LOVE YOU!), or the pregnant stranger who still needs to run to the store and pick up toilet paper, not because she’s hoarding but because she’s actually starting to run low (GREAT JOB ERICA!).

I’ve never been great with timing, and if I had a choice, I would obviously choose not to be pregnant during a pandemic. But hey, that’s life. I will have to be cautious and hope others are as well. I will have to try to keep my eye on my health and try not to worry too much, though there’s a lot to worry about beyond the basic “we’re out of food.” I don’t want to have this small boy any earlier than necessary. I don’t want his first days in the world to be so bizarre and have our family potentially out of reach for health reasons. But if it comes to it, we’ll make do, we’ll adapt, we’ll push on. It’s what we’ve done before, and it’s what we’ll do now, no matter the strange circumstances we come up against.

So stay home and wash your hands. And if you can help it, try not to be pregnant during a pandemic.

Gentleness

Recently, I drove an hour across the bridge in the gloomy rain to Easton. I was meeting up with my new dear friend Annie to take some pictures at a foggy farm. The challenge of the day was articulating trauma and anxiety. Annie asked me before I came to think about all the things I no longer need to mentally carry, and to burn them away when I got there. With anxiety, that's a lengthy list.

I've had anxiety for as long as I've known. My parents got divorced literally on my eighteenth birthday, and while part of me realized this was a chance I had to distance myself from my mom and that toxic relationship, I couldn't help but feel like I had more reasons to be nervous.

All of my life, I've tried to take care of everyone around me. The abuse I experienced, I took on alone. When my dad or sister needed me, there was nothing I wouldn't give up to help. I think this is one of my greatest strengths: being there for people when they need someone, healing them however I can. But it also makes me feel very vulnerable sometimes. My circumstances growing up have instilled in me a nervousness of people leaving me -- because I'm not enough for them, or not worth the trouble, or not someone who deserves their love. My mom put that fear in me. It's hard to quiet it.

    

I'm very lucky to be living a much different life now. I am with someone who makes me feel, everyday, loved and like I am good enough, strong enough, more than capable enough. When I was little, I never thought my life could be so gentle. In dealing with the trauma that comes from growing up with abuse, I've learned that anger, violence and fear is the last thing I want to be associated with. Rather, I want to give out love, understanding and warmth.

Every day I tackle that voice in my head that tries to drag me out of the present and convince me I'm not worth the effort of love or the trouble my anxiety sometimes brings. I must remind myself that I am enough. Again, I'm lucky to have someone by my side to help me remember that when I'm having a hard time with the PTSD that comes from almost 20 years of abuse. Even if it doesn't always feel true, or even if it isn't true for everyone, I am allowed love and gentleness.

That's one thing I can let go of: needing approval from people who don't deserve mine. I'm growing, and learning to accept the parts of me that have callused over. Some days are harder than others but in the cold, in the rain, there's always warmth to be found. Even flowers grow in winter.

So how do I find peace during difficult times? I return to nature, love -- to gentle kindness and happiness. I return to Peter, who is all of these things to me. In a world that is often so harsh and abrasive, one of my greatest personal triumphs is always finding the time, room, and energy for kindness. I take heart in that and know that no matter what, I'm going to make a beautiful life for myself. I'm going to leave my campsite cleaner than I found it.

Compassion is such an underrated attribute that we nearly dismiss it altogether. Imagine if we paid better attention to sympathy and grace. What would happen if we all tried a little harder to be soft? I think the world would be a much nicer place if we valued gentleness as the strength it truly is.

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."

Comfortable being uncomfortable

So here's the thing about living with anxiety: the condition is chronic. It's not going anywhere anytime soon; in fact, it's not going anywhere ever. There will be times that I would consider my anxiety is in remission, where the nervousness I live with has pulled back like low tide on a beach. But like the ocean, it will never disappear. It floods, it recedes, it comes in waves.

When I first started seeking help for my anxiety, I entered into treatment with this mindset of, "If I will do this, I will be better." And by better, I meant fixed or cured or healed or whatever word you'd want to use to imply I would no longer have to deal with this ugly thing that kept rearing its head in my life.

Presto, change-o, psychologist-o, cured-o.

"Better," though, while I was using it to supplement all those other meanings, was actually the perfect word for what I was going to experience. Over time, with a lot of work, I would be better. Better at handling the anxiety, better at calming myself down at the onset of panic, better with dealing with the aftermath of an attack. Better, as in I would experience it with less frequency, or less severity. The graph of recovery would trend upward, but it wouldn't be a straight line from A to B, Anxious to Cured. No, not cured... Healthy is a more accurate way to look at it.

I have been dealing with my anxiety in much healthier ways. I'm making huge improvements in my internal dialogue, and how I express myself in times of stress or nerves. In the past, if something were to occur to provoke my depression or my anxiety, I used to just swallow it. I would let it eat away at me until it became this big unbearable thing. And now, I say something. I speak up when I need help, I know how and when to ask for it. That's a big improvement for me.

A lot of this change has come from working with my therapist on TalkSpace (which I plan on doing an entirely separate, detailed post about to answer any questions and share my thoughts about the process and how it all works). And of course it helps that I am surrounding myself with people who make me feel safe and who are aware of the things I am working on. But I think a major contribution to my recovery to a more healthy place is that I have stopped setting unrealistic expectations for myself. I have stopped being afraid of my anxiety when it bubbles up.

I have learned to get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's a weird thing to think about, but when I notice the prickling sensation of oncoming panic, instead of getting afraid of what's about to happen (my mind pre-spiraling for the panic attack, thus making it more severe), I prepare myself to sit with it. I let it happen to me, breathe, and accept that what I am thinking and feeling is neither good nor bad, it is temporary. It's a passing storm.

I'm reading this book by Timber Hawkeye called The Buddhist Boot Camp. Now, I'm not particularly religious but I've always been drawn to the lessons of Buddhism, especially when it comes to things like dealing with difficult or intense emotions. There's this one quote from the book that I keep referring back to:

You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.

The storm will pass--it may be a long one, but eventually, everything will end. In the mean time, get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's only going to make the storm that much easier to weather. And once it's passed, it's amazing how bright and easy life is, and makes it that much more lovely to appreciate.

Tough, but good

Where I am in my life right now is someplace really, really good. I am in a place -- financially, emotionally, physically -- that I never knew I would have the privilege or right to experience, and I am grateful every single day to have made it as far as I have. It took a lot of work, and it took a lot of convincing myself that what I've done to get here is a big accomplishment. It's difficult to see it that way at times when I have this tendency to compare myself to others around me. But that's not fair. It's not about how I measure up to others, but how I measure up to who I was before. I am, and will continue to be, a work in progress, and that's okay. I have to remember that.

The good, and bad, thing about being in such a good place right now is that my brain decided, "Oh, okay, you're safe and happy right now, so this would be the perfect time to go through all those boxes up here you shoved aside when you had other shit to deal with." Cool. You know that quote by John F. Kennedy? "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." Well, the sun is shining, and I'm out on the roof.

Essentially, I spent a lot of my time growing up living in what I consider "survival mode." I got through each day, sometimes by hanging on by the tips of my fingers. I fought just to get through my weeks. So when something bad came up -- something that threatened to pry those fingers off the ledge -- I would push it aside to deal with later. I had to recover from this problem/threat first, and then I could handle that one.  I repressed, sometimes in the moment, so I could survive. But because I was always in this instinct of protect, survive, move on, I ended up collecting a lot of these problems, cluttering the back of my mind. When you're always in survival mode, there's no time to deal with anything but surviving. There's no time to deal with problem number two (or three, or four, or five...).

The Void, I've called it before. I put the problems in boxes and shoved them deep, deep down. And now they're resurfacing. Which is tough, but good. Tough to deal with -- but a good sign, because it means I'm safe. It means my brain thinks I'm capable of opening everything up now. One box at a time.

But it's hard, when there are so many boxes that I don't know where to begin. Or I don't always remember what's in those boxes. And that part scares me most of all, I think. I'm not sure how many boxes of trauma I've stowed away, and I have no idea what's going to happen when I open them up. What will I find?

One of those boxes sprung open this morning. I had the same nightmare, three or four times in a row. But it didn't feel the same as a regular nightmare. It was vivid in the same way that my nightmares tied to memories are. And it was exactly the same, each time it played out. I woke up in a panic, realizing this was not just a bad dream, but rather something from my past I was remembering. The details at the end of the scene I had to watch on repeat this morning are a little fuzzy still, but my brain is slowly trying to untangle it for me, in a way that I will be able to manage. Again: tough, but good.

I will take it one memory at a time. It's nice that I have someone who is always there to remind me that no matter what I find, no matter what I remember, I am in a better place now. I am safe, I am happy, I am so much stronger. This past Saturday I got my fourth tattoo to remind me of this. It's a little sprig of lavender blooms. It reminds me of growth, of fragility. Of grace, silence, and calm hope. I will carry it with me, always.

Taller than Trauma

The older I get, the more free I feel to open up about my past. My childhood was not the nicest of childhoods. There were happy times, as there always are even in the midst of trauma, but I had to live through things no child should be expected to deal with.

During those times, I would do my best to focus to on the good because if I didn't, I would drown. For the most part, focusing on the good meant one thing: my sister. Growing up, though we would argue, we were best friends. We got closer as teenagers, and even more so as adults. She was my reason to be strong and smile. She still is often my reason for those two things. I am thankful that we had very different experiences growing up so she could think back on our family with a pervasive happiness through her memories.

I have come a long way from when I was a child. I am a stronger person now because of what I went through then. I have my priorities very clearly in line. I know what I want, I know what I will not tolerate, and I am willing to work hard to have a life I not only deserve, but one I will earn. With determination and luck, I've found a happiness that would have been absolutely unimaginable as a child. It means everything to me, and I'm holding on tight to it.

Recently, as I've been thinking more about my childhood and remembering moments I tried hard to forget, I feel like I'm shrinking again. This Wednesday, my grandmother (Regina) passed away. (It's odd that it was only yesterday morning; it feels like so much time has already passed.) Besides dealing with the grief of losing a family member, I am also trying to cope with reemerging trauma associated with my mother. It would be a lie to say there wasn't part of me that is terrified of seeing her again at the funeral; I am worrying about things I should not have to worry about before burying my grandmother. But my mind wanders on its own accord and I feel like I'm a teenager again, not in control--not free and happy as I am now.

I am fortunate enough to have someone next to me to remind me that I am in control and no one can hurt me anymore, in any way. I have come so far, I have done so much, and this person in my life is too small to take any of that away from me. I am so much taller than the trauma I've seen. I am so much better because I have gone through it, grown from it. It's nice to know that. It's even nicer to have someone who loves me and believes in me so fully to be there, holding my hand and reminding me. That support next to me makes it easier to face things that scare me. It makes it easier for me to know that strength looks like different things to different people, and even though everyone may not understand it (or agree with it), I am making choices that are good and healthy for me. And that's okay.

It's going to be a difficult weekend, saying goodbye to my grandmother as I face down my past. But I am going to make it through, as I have made it through so many things before. This is not nearly as difficult as what I've already survived, and now I am surrounded by so much light. And when that fear comes back to me, I can remind myself that I am stronger than all of it, and everything I went through--both the good and the bad--not only made me into the person I am today, but led me to the life I am so privileged to be living. No one can take that from me.

I'll repeat it like a mantra: I am here, I am strong, I am in control.