When The Globe Breaks
Thank You – clicking through to this page is something I don’t take lightly. Miscarriage occurs in one in four known pregnancies. If you or someone you know has been impacted by pregnancy or child loss then I hope that this in some small way – may help you on your journey.
At least, perhaps to know that you are not alone in the devastation that can occur. These stories are often hidden from view – not talked about.
If you choose to read on – Please, please look after yourself. In release there is healing but only if you are in a place that can support and nurture you.
Contact me – if you need to – you know where I am
Much Love Jo xx
Here is my chapter – as it is in Sue’s book
‘You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.’ Max Ehrmann.
When the Globe Breaks
Trauma changes us. It doesn’t just affect our mood, our opinions; it changes the very fabric of who we are. Like a physical wound which heals and leaves its scars, so too does a trauma to the mind, to the spirit, to the soul. Pick up a snow globe and shake it so hard that it almost breaks. The scene becomes obscured through the torrent of power which rages through, but (once the seismic waves have stopped) the flakes eventually fall. To the casual observer, the scene hasn’t changed, it has returned to its ‘normal self’ – but look closer and the flakes can never again be settled in the same way.
And if the globe is shaken again and again and again sometimes it does break and the effects are obvious to see, a change in how someone looks, how someone acts, how someone can ‘cope’ with life. Sometimes we manage to ‘fix’ the cracks, glue back the shattered pieces and sometimes these repairs become so neat, so unseen that they become forgotten, hidden from public view.
The cause of such cataclysmic shifts will be as different and unique as we are; a brain injury, a life-threatening illness, war, abuse, a road accident, bereavement. And like the shattered globe, it’s coping with wave after wave of pain, of shock of grief that can eventually break us.
November 26th 2015
My friend Wyn, calmly calls nine nine nine. ‘Ambulance, please …. Excessive bleeding, miscarriage.’
I lean my head onto my arm, and hold onto the side of the bath; knees and feet pooled in a congealing sea of blood. I’ve been here alone for hours, determined that all would be okay, that I could look after myself. I’m Fourteen weeks pregnant, but not pregnant – at least not anymore. Development stopped many weeks ago, ‘No heartbeat.’ Yet somehow the message didn’t filter through to my body; I continued to have swollen boobs, nausea, a bloated stomach …. The placenta must have kept on growing and now, although I don’t know it, it is stuck. My lifeblood, quite literally draining away.
The order of things
I love being outside, I love the breeze on my face and the green hills of home but Like many of us, I have struggled with my mental health. My mum died when I was in my early twenties and often with a smile on my face, a mask unwittingly plastered in place, I got on with living; launching myself into new adventures, searching perhaps, but for what, I didn’t know. I’d grown up knowing that my mum had miscarried my twin, but I’d never asked many questions. After she went it was too late and somehow, hidden inside there was a part of me that just wasn’t complete.
In 2005 I met Nat. Love blossomed and despite many challenges, we made a welcoming and loving home and often his young son, my (almost) step-son came to stay. But gradually there were increasing tensions; I felt stuck, with an unfulfilling work life and no real sense of purpose. The pull of motherhood, once suppressed and dormant began to raise her head and I could no longer ignore her. However, being diagnosed with unexplained infertility in April 2015, the day before I turned forty, wasn’t quite how we’d envisaged things going. And when we were told we weren’t eligible to receive IVF through the NHS – the reality of our journey fell over us, like a blanket, slowly smothering.
I began researching elsewhere, and in so doing discovered a whole new world – an uplifting, holistic, and fundamentally different way of experiencing life. Through meditation and energy work, I was unwittingly being equipped to deal with what was to come, and amazingly I fell pregnant that September.
For a few short weeks, I was truly happy. The challenges, the stresses; they just fell away. I was pregnant. I was somebody’s mum. For two months my whole being was devoted to growing our baby-to-be; my purpose ahead of me. I was fascinated by this magical development and they became as much a part of me as my own beating heart.
But on October 28th 2015, a bright sunny day in Cumbria; my little world started its inward collapse. Attending a routine medical appointment, I walked into Barrow hospital, ten weeks pregnant and as content with my life as I ever had been. Sometime later I was walking away – and nothing would ever be the same again. I’d had an impromptu scan. No heartbeat could be found, and where there should have been a tiny pulsing life there was nothing.
How could I not have known? It turned out development had stopped at only 6 and a half weeks – nothing in an average life. For nearly a month I’d felt more and more pregnant; nausea raising its head, tiredness too – and yet as I talked to our baby-to-be – they had quietly slipped away. A conception we had longed for had entered our lives in a month we hadn’t thought possible and left without us knowing.
About a month I waited in limbo, willing the doctors to be wrong; concocting any number of elaborate, desperate reasons as to how my baby would still be coming. Then at fourteen weeks, in the privacy of my own bathroom, my body was finally trying to relinquish all that it had fought so hard to protect. Contractions had been washing over me for hours, pain coming in waves, clots passing and then brief lulls. Eventually, the pain stopped and my body was desperate to rest. But the blood kept coming. I was calm, too calm, and somewhere deep within my inner survival, I knew I needed help.
November 26th, 2015
An ambulance comes, whisks me away, sirens blaring, lights on; my safe haven gone.
‘Tachycardic … amber alert,’ says the paramedic into her radio.
When we arrive at Lancaster hospital I am immediately surrounded by the NHS’s finest. Wham a driving force of pain shoots through me as one doctor tries unsuccessfully to release the blockage. An uncontrollable thunder escapes from my previously quiet voice at the onslaught of her hand inside me and then a shot of ketamine suspends life as I know it. I trip out big time and my response to this hideous drug leaves me terrified. I come round not knowing what I am, let alone who or where.
Four pints of heated blood later, an emergency anaesthetic and finding myself holding the hand of yet another wonderful medical personnel, I am cocooned under a warm air-filled blanket.
That night I have the strongest sense that my spirit daughter is watching over me. Not the soul I’d been pregnant for but his sister. She comes to me as a light-filled, angelic being and she reassures me that her brother is resting, recovering well from our shared trauma.
Flipped out – between this loving, comfortable spirit world and the cold hard reality of earthly sorrow I make it through my first night, deeply sad, internally hollow but alive.
The next afternoon, weak but capable of showering myself; of washing away the pungency, I am allowed home. I have some delayed reaction though; to the shock, the ketamine, or most likely the anaesthetic. My torso is in agony, my neck stiff and my words miss-formed. I just want the world to stop. A different hospital and a less than sympathetic doctor add to my distress. We never do find out the exact cause, but it’s as if my body and mind, exhausted, have just imploded.
Unable to cope anymore my snow-globe cracks open and I sink to my lowest depths. I’ve lost my baby-to-be and in the process, I’ve all but lost the hope of myself. I can’t comprehend life in this new forever changed world, and my body, its new blood merging with the old, feels numb.
The Snow Flakes will Fall
As the snowflakes settled, as the physical cracks started to heal I gradually learned to operate within my changed life. But in trying to heal the inner pain, in coping with the reoccurring trauma; in starting to live a new life, I no longer fitted into the imprint of the old one. And no matter how much I resisted, how much I raged there was one more globe-breaking blow waiting to happen – and in January 2017 my fragile life smashed into another million pieces when Nat told me he was leaving.
This second irreversible change held one bigger thought. Despite my shock, my inner collapse, I knew one thing; I’ve survived the worst that has ever happened in my life, so somehow I can and will survive this.
Learning to live and love my new life
And I did survive. Somehow, with the love and support of others, I glued the shattered pieces and built a new life. A close friend recently said, ‘It’s good to see you back to your old self.’
But, that old self belongs to the past, to a life which is no longer mine. In her place is an evolving self, a more truth-filled self; thankful for all her experiences.
Of course, I look the same (well maybe a few more grey hairs) I likely sound the same, but my take on life has changed through my fertility journey. Even some of the language I use to express myself is different. Energy, spirit, meditation are all daily experiences within my life, as I recognise and honour all that has gone before.
It is said that time heals – but I believe that it’s what we do with that time, which offers the true healing. Grieving, consciously learning to let go, spending time doing things we love, reflecting, challenging self-beliefs, looking after ourselves, and seeing exquisite beauty; these are some of the ways in which we heal. Of course, the sun does not shine every day, sometimes the winds rage, and the seas crash. Some days I live with constant inner noise; building, screaming. Sometimes I still wonder what it would be like to step off this earth and many days I still cry, as some welled-up emotion tumbles out. But I know this is important too. It’s healing taking place deep inside.
Not long after my miscarriage, I made a promise to myself, to the universe, to my baby in spirit. If I wasn’t ready to die then surely I must find a way to live. I promised myself that I would do what I could when I could. It isn’t always easy, but little by little my steps have become bigger, my sorrow less and my joy greater.
My life is no longer in crisis, I’m excited to be finding a new ‘normal’ and I am learning to love myself more deeply than I have ever done before. I have come to believe that the universe gives us what we need, not necessarily what we think we want. For whatever reason, my life needed shaking up; I needed taking to my limits so that I could build a new tomorrow. I am still on my journey to parenthood, but the universe is unfolding as it should. I no longer feel stuck. I have experienced maternal love deep inside and I understand the power of holding intention, of raising vibration, and most of all of loving this world enough to hold myself accountable for the promise I made.
At the end of the chapters in Sue’s book – she asked each of the contributing authors to share a few helpful exercises. These were mine.
When you need a little help to trust that the universe is unfolding as it should
- Make a Thankful list
Every night for almost a year I wrote down ten things I was thankful for that day. The cumulative healing power was amazing.
- Transform unhelpful thoughts to uplifting energy
Identify three emotions you are experiencing and then name the opposite.
Tired, Sad and Frustrated could become
Energised, Content, and Patient.
Repeat these new words lovingly (internally or out loud).
This tends to have an immediate impact on me – but I use it carefully so that uncomfortable feelings can still be expressed.
- Journal a stream of consciousness
My most memorable emergency use was on a train. I felt exceptionally overwhelmed and vulnerable. I sat in my seat, pulled out my note book and soothed my inner panic with every word I wrote.