I woke up in the morning on the futon of Ithica NY, covered in blood. Is this my period? “NO fuck, you’re pregnant” — shaking, I began to clean up. So much blood. I called my midwife in OR at 430am, 130 her time Silently desperately screaming as not to wake the nice man up that was hosting me.
The midwife casually called back. “You’re having a miscarriage. It’s best that you stay at home.” Didn’t she know? I didn’t have a home. I was fleeing the West trying to find a home. I was far away from my abuser as possible: Ithica, NY. His mom knew this and let him know. He agreed, his family cycle had been put on him from a very young age. And I was taking on the role of his mother, way too fast.
Rewind a few weeks back. (Zeeeeep) My friend Deniz got me across the country. I called her a week and a half back. She heard not from me, but from a child rocking that had just been to war and brought it back to her home. This naive girl just knew that love could heal it – love can heal all. But Deniz, she knew what I needed when I didn’t. Now, that’s a real friend. I had lied to protect him from so many people. I really believed my love could heal all. I was blind, I was ignoring the femme creative, intuitive woman I am. I was also very alone. I had driven myself into a state of isolation & many people were whispering lies, creating a telephone game out of my survival. So, I hid my wounds and put on a face as if everything was just. dandy.
This wasn’t the first time I believed I could lose my life. I had just escaped a war zone, only emotionally and spiritually scathed. So, I had decided to bring the war back in the house with me. The pain of love and war is very real. It looks something Venus trine Mars with nothing between but a crescent moon. When he was good, he was really good. When he was bad, he was really bad. Damn, I know how to pick em 😉
Okay back to the miscarriage. The war was bleeding out of my vagina this time. I was so ill, I could not even create life. The greatest power a woman can give to this world had been taken from me. To my knowledge, not one healthy pregnancy has come out of a water protectors. That many still births, that many miscarriages does not stem from only cortisol.
I was desperate. I am a Doctor of Natural Medicine, I know what to do. I drove straight to the Urgent Care imaging center.
I marched up to the center gate keeper, so much blood dripping between my legs. My greatest love I could possibly create in this world, hanging on for dear life inside my womb.
“I need an Ultra Sound. “
“You need a Doctors note”
“I am a Doctor & I can call about 5 of em on the West Coast. I am pregnant, potentially miscarrying and I just need that heart beat, one more time to know if I have hope to save her.”
“You need to go down to this and this center to get THIS Doctors note”
I was the first there. Nothing pisses me off more than systematic bullshit. I was pacing, holding my womb, silent tears streaming.
The system had me in this state for 3 hours. There was no urgency. I scanned the room and the place for who would need to be triaged first. No one. A simple arm sprain and a woman with blood dripping that may or may not lose her shit on you. I got to the back room with some special advocation, the only comfort being hot sheets that had been drenched in bleach. There, there I could lose it. But I didn’t. I would wait until I could go to the toilet, where I always lose my shit, figuratively and literally. (It’s a great safe space to cry where hardly anyone will bother you.)
3 hours of this and finally, the damn Transvaginal US. My intuitive friend on dial, “Yes, she’s still with you, she’s still hanging on.” My sisters wished this upon me, I know it, but they were still on dial and empathetic to my face. And of course my non blood ma, Spitfire. Now, also known as Hellnessa.
The morning stopped all time and space for me. It was a storm of fear of not being in a hospital where they believed in my medicine, sterility, and where the Doctor talked down to me as if I was stupid. The US revealed no heart beat. I knew this as soon as I probed myself. My womb still hurts typing this.
Next step: serial hCG blood testing. I was in shock. I went to the system. No one there, I was alone at some random place in Ithica, NY. Functioning on pure survival. I went to the toilet, cramping. And there she passed. I flushed her down the toilet like a gold fish. I paused before I did. I coulda grabbed her, but the voice inside my head stopped me. “No, don’t be that crazy woman.” I stumbled out the hospital, to my rental, I collapsed out of the car. Nothing could hold me. Looking around, I saw the Hawthorne. Omg. What perfect medicine. I crawled to her, covered in tears, blood and snot and I payed down my grief to her. I gave her it all, I prayed, I was real. A nurse heard me, she came out. She offered water & a chaplain counselor. She obviously thought I had lost my knockers for grieving with Hawhthorne. They can’t see it, they can’t see these plants are sentient spirits that have wayyyy less ego than us.
So I got back to the random house in Ithica. I called him, who brought war into my home, into my being. We bonded upon grief. We had just set up a birth plan the night before. I was going to be at the border so the baby could have tribal care in his home. He knew Mohican midwives, we could do this. But she, she knew better. And yes, she is still here.
That day, I serendipitously ran into the Ithaca Naturopath. She gifted me Ignatia 200C + we co-created Hawthorne, Dong Quai and Yarrow with cell salts. I highly recommend this for any woman post miscarriage.
She told me that Cornell has a hold on Ithica in the NatMed Realm and Natural Medicine was growing at an alarmingly slow rate. Ithica was not my place. Only my place to miscarry life, ironically in Carl Sagans brilliant universal study home. I always really dug the dance between mystery and science of his show, The Cosmos.
So, I got out of Ithica as soon as possible. First stopping at the cute co-op. Being around food always comforts me. I drove on in that little rental car to my best friends house in the mountains of Catskills. There, I rolled my favorite Peter Stockebey blend and became a smoker again. There, we had a fire, with a drum and song in the distance. There, I saw her spirit dance once again. There, I saw a house floating on the hill, suspended and unused as an art form. There, I re-met my brother who showed up in all the best ways he could have. There, I decided to go home and face my estranged family. There, I also lost my sister who made my problems her own. There, I became an independent woman, confirming I do not need the spirit of camp to go to war. There, I freed the moose mother that could fiercely protect her youth.
There are so many forms of trauma. I happen to be moving through a survival trauma that pulled the string of being molested as a child.
This is not a unique story, except in the fact that it is my own to heal. And that I am not afraid to go to my capacity to be with it, on every. level. of my being. And the fact that I have a killer triads of healers, doctors, NPs & SE Practitioners, earth-sky medicine, and plant allies at my side at all times — I have the community to go there.
This is my story of healing of PTSD Part 3. I hope sharing it empowers you. Miscarriage is common, yes. And it behooves us as an over-cultured society to grow softer and understand impact of losing a child as true loss. A woman’s body moves through the stages of birth during miscarriage, therefore she loses a child. Honor her, honor the mothers, grandmothers, and the generations yet to come.
© 2019 Copesthetic Health