health

Voting as an open-hearted expression

Morning sunlight shining on shoreline and ocean
Photo by Carla Kucinski.

I was 10 weeks pregnant when I learned my baby’s heart was no longer beating. I felt like a robot as I got dressed, and then sat down on a round, leather stool with wheels. When the nurse practitioner walked into the ultrasound room, I broke down sobbing into her crisp lab coat as she held me. At the time, my doctor gave me three choices: 

  • Take a pill to help pass the fetal tissue
  • Let my body go through the natural process of passing the tissue on its own
  • Have a procedure called a D&C to remove the tissue and ensure the entire pregnancy is passed.

I went home that evening agonizing over which choice to make, while also grieving the loss of the baby. To me, there were no good options. Each one sounded horrible. If I chose the medication or the natural process, the thought of physically experiencing the baby’s tissue passing through my body felt unbearable to me, as well as the unpredictability of not knowing when it would happen—days or weeks—or where. I was terrified it would happen at work. And when I tried to imagine myself trying to go about my days carrying in my body the baby that was no longer living, I would sob. I didn’t think I could handle the emotional pain of that. I decided on the D&C. 

My doctor and her staff handled me with so much care and compassion. Even though I was mildly sedated, I was awake during the procedure, and I remember everything. But the image my mind always goes back to was the nurse who patted my right knee, smiled at me through her mask and kept checking in with me throughout the procedure. 

I was fortunate. It was 2016. I was given a choice, and I chose what was best for me emotionally, mentally and physically. I had access to good quality healthcare. I had a doctor who was trained in the procedure. I had a medical team who cared about me and supported me. 

Today, women are not as fortunate. In fact, I would say we are very unfortunate. Our choice has been taken away. 

A D&C is the same procedure used for abortions, but, as I’ve shared in my story, it can also be used when a woman has miscarried, or when medical complications arise for the patient during their pregnancy. For some women, the procedure is a matter of life or death. 

But since the overturn of Roe v. Wade and changes to state abortion bans, women’s lives and our health have been put at risk across our country. Women who are experiencing pregnancy complications are being denied medically necessary care because doctors fear losing their license, facing criminal charges, or hefty fines. A pregnancy may need to be terminated because the mother’s life is at risk, but if the baby still has a heartbeat, some states won’t allow termination. In some cases, it is becoming difficult to even find a physician in a medical practice or hospital trained to perform a D&C. 

As a result, women are turned away, sent home, forced to travels hours to a state that will give them the care they need and deserve, and live with longterm consequences to their reproductive health because of delayed treatment or no treatment. 

We deserve better. 

After my D&C, I got to go home and sleep on the couch with my dog and be taken care of by my husband. I can’t help but think how different my story might have been if that happened today.

As a licensed mental health counselor, I have worked with clients who have gone through traumatic pregnancy loss. Sometimes I have been the only safe person they have been able to share their story with. They had to make unimaginable decisions, oftentimes alone. I have sat with them as they sobbed, as they grieved, as they worked through their trauma. 

When I went to the polls last week, I carried with me, in my heart, these women’s stories and my own as I casted my ballot for Kamala Harris. My vote for Kamala was a vote for my clients, for the women in my life who I love dearly, for me, for all women—past, present, future. 

I believe Kamala will fight for us and protect us. I believe she will uphold our human right to make decisions about our own bodies. I believe the future of our healthcare system will be put into the capable and compassionate hands of Kamala and her cabinet. 

“Voting is an open-hearted expression of what we care about. Voting is evidence that what we do in this world matters. Voting enables us to participate in the outcome of our lives.” 

I read these words the other day by Sharon Salzberg, a meditation teacher I have been following for a few years. It resonated with me and captured my feelings about what it really means to me to vote. 

What I have shared here is an open-hearted expression of what I care about. It is evidence that what I do and you do in this world matters. 

I believe that if Kamala is not our next president, I will be sitting across from many more women in my therapy practice with more traumatic experiences, and I will be holding the hands of many more women in my personal life whose bodies, dignities, and lives will not be respected or protected. 

That is an outcome of our lives that I do not want. 

***

I got this tattoo a few weeks after my miscarriage to honor the loss and to remind myself to hold onto hope during times of uncertainty.

Words with friends

I’m spending the last afternoon of 2014 doing something I hope to do a lot more of next year – writing.computer

I’m not making a resolution to write more, mind you, I’m just wishing it so.

Resolutions seem a bit old school these days. Even the sound of the word – resolution – is antiseptic and cold. Besides, couldn’t we all fill our attics – and basements – with empty well intentioned resolutions we’ve  abandoned over the years? They’re right over there in the corner with the ThighMaster.

My friend, Amy, had a great status update on Facebook the other day, declaring that she was not making any resolutions  but taking a one-word approach to intentions for the new year. Her word for 2015 is health and she hopes to focus on this word every day in some fashion.

Amy is the mother of a two year old so I don’t know how she has time to focus on anything extra but I can already tell by some recent updates that she’s off to a good start.

I’m a big believer in “less is more” so Amy’s post was intriguing to me and I started thinking about what I would want my word to be.

I tried out a few and then very quickly landed on one – kindness.

Just saying it out loud makes me feel better.

By definition

By definition

And I love how one word can cover so much ground – kindness to others – all others, yes, I suppose even Republicans and Time Warner Cable representatives. Hey, I didn’t say this would be easy.

I’m talking about real kindness – deeper than just helping the old ladies at my church out to their cars on Sunday after service or letting someone into a long line of traffic.

Kindness to my spouse. That one is pretty easy. I mean you really have to almost try to not be kind to someone named Joy who has a smile that could disarm Darth Varder.

Kindness to myself. Gulp. Somehow I think this one is going to be the toughest. Like most folks, I’m quite accomplished at beating myself up. Ironically, over the years, those beat downs have often been about failed resolutions.

Amy and Jules seem to be on the right path.

Amy and Jules seem to be on the right path.

I think Amy is on to something here.

And I think kindness has actually been stalking me for awhile. Over a year ago, my wife and I were having a very intense conversation about marriage and what was the most important thing we each wanted in a relationship. We both said, almost simultaneously, kindness.

So it was quite fitting that at our wedding in DC this past May, my best friend, Carla, read one of my favorite poems by Naomi Shihab Nye – “Kindness,” of course. It is an achingly beautiful poem and I hope you will read it at the bottom of this post.

It begins like this: “Before you know what kindness really is you have to lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.”

I have lost many things over the past several years – things that I loved with my whole heart – and I think I do understand more clearly what kindness is.

Before you know what kindness is as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

I think this goes way beyond “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” – this is an intentional way of being in the world and it takes a fair amount of courage to embrace it.

I think I’ve often tried to follow kindness in my life but this year, I’m hoping it will follow me so if I happen to stumble, I can just look over my shoulder and know that I’m still on the right path.

 

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.