Celebrating the Small Things

This is about womanly issues.

My youngest child, most likely my last child, is weaning.

And it’s left me feeling limp, small, and awkward.

I’ve recently begun to sort through my old clothes – my “pre-pregnancy” clothes.

Clothes I wore before I was pregnant with my child, before I knew my child, who was born in the first trimester.

Before I was pregnant with his younger sister, before I knew his younger sister, before I nursed his younger sister.

And as I find myself crying into old clothes that smell like my musty basement,

as I try on old clothes that somehow feel too young for the ways I’ve matured,

I feel limp, I feel small, I feel awkward.

My youngest child is growing to not be a baby anymore, and as I ache for the baby before her, this transition is a strange one.

I love pregnancy, and I love breastfeeding. I love feeling so round and maternal and so close to God and so near the life purposes of my children and so a part of a beautiful lineage of mothers of antiquity.

I pull out from an old, lumpy black sack, a faded yellow tank top with thin spaghetti straps, and I pull it over my old-but-new-again, small, strapless bra.

The Love of my life, he gives me a wink, tells me I look cute and fresh. I smile, and he embraces me.

He knows. And he loves me through my journey.

I will hold onto his words as I nurture these feelings. I will treasure from my most fertile season, the biggest memories, both wonderful and striking, I’ve gathered in my entire life. I will hold onto hope that the season is changing into something that will be beautiful in a new way. I will cling to these things, as I sort through these clothes.

I will learn to celebrate the small things – even when I am the one feeling small.

BIRTH & BEREAVEMENT QUOTES

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She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I am strong.

— January, founder of Birth Without Fear

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.

— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

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