Pulling Through

Exiting the frying pan for the fire.

Many of you began reading this Substack when I spilled my heart out about my ectopic pregnancy and subsequent near-death experience in a failed attempt to cure myself of post-traumatic stress disorder, so before this newsletter returns in earnest — and I promise it is, with a podcast and everything — I figured I owed an update.

As of two weeks ago, thanks to an absolutely Herculean effort at overcoming PTSD using EMDR and traditional counseling as well as incredible effort in my home and work life, I can no longer be classified as in the throes of PTSD. I no longer meet the diagnostic criteria — and most importantly, I’m no longer in a position where I am unable to participate in my life, for better or worse, as I now have two preschoolers and a toddler entering the throes of threenagerdom.

Perhaps disassociation was actually the better approach.

Of course, this hardly means I’m done. In fact, it sort of means its all just getting started. It turns out that when you begin to hack away at trauma, it operates more like an onion than anything, and I’ve been holding a lot in for a lot of years. But just being able to encounter what’s been happening over these last few years is a refreshing turn of events.

Anyone who knows me for any length of time has heard about my eight-year struggle with infertility, and there’s a very strong temptation, on my part, to become a public advocate for a host of issues that cropped up in that near-decade — from eschewing IVF over religious and personal concerns, to how I speak about suffering in general — but the truth is, a lot of that advocacy was an intricately constructed coping mechanism, given that sometimes its easier to speak on behalf of others than acknowledge that you are having trouble speaking on your on behalf.

In the process of handling my life’s most traumatic event, I was forced to confront that I’d been glossing over a lot of other problems, including an eight-year span where my life spun largely out of control. Thousands of appointments, ultrasounds, and needles later, I had my children — and if I ever spoke negatively about the experience, it felt, deep inside, like I was ungrateful for what — and who — it produced, even though there’s no shame in acknowledging a hard-fought battle, even as you’re appreciating the spoils of victory.

It was hard. It sucked. It sucked seeing those negative pregnancy tests every month. It sucked getting those excited phone calls from friends who were overjoyed to be pregnant. It sucked to despair, to be angry, to be frustrated. To hate my body, and what it could and could not do. But I felt guilty about it, regardless — even though it was perfectly normal to experience anger, frustration, dysmorphia, and jealousy. To question science. To question God. Just because those questions were eventually answered to my somewhat-satifaction makes them no less perfectly normal.

Now, as I peel back the layers of what finally sent me into that near-catatonic state, I’m letting myself encounter a lot of those feelings for the first time. Not because anyone is telling me to, but because the only way out is through.

It’s nice to talk about it. It’s nice to say that a journey that I cataloged relentlessly had parts I still hid from the public eye — and even from my family. And while I don’t plan on considering all of this forever — there’s really no purpose to the inquiry — it’s at least good knowing that old feelings that resurface, even now, when I see a pregnancy announcement on social media or look at the results of bloodwork or drive by the sign for the OB/GYN emergency room or think about Mother’s Day brunches.

It’s also true that, while many women have choices, a lot of those were taken from me, not because of safety or self-interest, but because you don’t realize how terrifying success actually is. I never had a baby shower; I was too afraid and too superstitious. I knew what loss felt like. I rarely left my house, except to go to therapy so that I could barely control the anxiety. There was no birth plan, no barely contained anticipation, no thrilling shopping trip for a baby registry, no nursery design, no discussion of delivery room. I simply wanted one thing: live children, and I was determined to stay put and avoid all risks until they were in my arms.

Obviously, I couldn’t avoid all risk forever. A bad ultrasound tech couldnt get my son to move his head, so she diagnosed him as too small. Potentially growth restricted. He emerged with a 99th percentile head hidden, mostly likely, by his brother’s feet. The same tech nearly diagnosed him with a deadly fetal abnormality, leaving a startled maternal fetal medicine practicioner to pick up the pieces. A space-conscious twin went transverse. I breastfed for all of six hours before I simply broke down crying from the exaustion of not being pregnant.

My third kid was born during COVID, where none of us had choices.

And now it all hits me, full force. Digging into these experiences, managing them, walking through them, and eventually putting them behind me — and now writing about them, when its safe. And I can tell you that there was so much you didn’t see, still, even if I lived my life and carried my cross in public.

All that, of course, is the easy part. Those wounds, while reopened, were long scabbed over, and they will be again. But there are some big ones that are right over the horizon: pain, loss, Last Rites.

Right now, I see it all with a tinge of humor. How far did I have to go towards death before I realized what was happening? How crazy was it to think I was having a gallbladder attack. How weird was it to live through one of those House episodes where its definitely probably not lupus? And how weird is it to pick out a memorial for someone you’ve never met?

The bad news is, I have all of this left to figure out.

The good news is, its summer and if you’ve been following me on Twitter, I’m now able to throw myself face-first into this project — a project about living well and growing well in the middle of urban life. So that’s what to expect as I ramp this up, yet again. Like my life isn’t already insane enough.

Talk to you soon,

Emily