True Refuges

"Your lost Joseph will return to Canaan, do not grieve
This house of sorrows will become a garden, do not grieve

Oh grieving heart, you will mend do not despair
This frenzied mind will return to calm, do not grieve

When the spring of life sets again in the meadows
A crown of flowers you will bear, singing bird, do not grieve

If these turning epochs do not move with our will today
The spheres of time are not constant, do not grieve

Don’t lose hope, for awareness cannot perceive the concealed
Behind the curtains hidden scenes play, do not grieve."  -- Hafez, "The Lost Joseph" (full poem here)


"I'm here without you baby, but you're still on my lonely mind
I think about you baby, and I dream about you all the time." - Three Doors Down, "Here Without You"



I don't know how much more I have to say about the horrors of miscarriage, except to say that they seem to get exponentially worse. With one miscarriage, it's like, "Well, this sucks, but 25 percent of all pregnancies end this way, so we'll grieve, hope and proceed forward." With two in a row, it's like, "Uh-oh, I hope this doesn't indicate a trend. Just bad luck." With three in a row, you become a "serial miscarrier" and the stakes change. Our most recent miscarriage is like a gigantic hole in my heart. It feels like more of a profound loss, in part because it's our third blow of this kind in a year, and I think in part because we felt some relief that we heard and saw our baby's heart beat. Even though I still worried, that gave me some hope that things could be ok. Nevertheless, it turns out our daughter had an extra thirteenth chromosome, which is incompatible with life. Knowing this was a little girl, and not an anonymous "it" makes this even more personal and painful.

One thing this year-long curriculum in grief has taught me is how much of a precious gift it would be for all of us to give each other the gift of mindful listening. In our culture, "help" has become synonymous with "fix": people see David and me hurting and want to relieve us of our suffering, so they make offers of "help" from the reasonable to the sublime to the ridiculous. The people who have been the greatest help to me have been those who say, "This sucks. You are in the middle of something awful and unfair, and I am so sorry for you." Bless you. One of the reasons that you don't say anything when you enter a Jewish house of mourning is that there is nothing to say. Loss is ineffable.

All of my old complaints about the hurtful things people say and do in their attempts to "help" still stand, though I have some new complaints too. The primary one is women offering me advice for their fertility problems, which are not our fertility problems. There are many stages where reproduction can fail, and I find myself exasperated with advice (again, well-meant) from people who have a totally different problem we do. They don't realize that their suggestions are equivalent to suggesting Lupron, a prostate cancer drug, for a breast cancer patient. But hey, they're both cancer! To all you progesterone pushers: all the hormones in the world would not have negated an extra chromosome, but that will be a later post. I am not immune to this desire to "help"; God help you if you ask me about Lyme Disease, because you will get an hour lecture full of strong opinions! Then again, in my defense, Lyme and co-infections have one cause, though many presentations of the diseases. Infertility is quite a bit more complex since it can have different causes, many causes, or be completely idiopathic.

I am all about care right now for David and me. Frankly, right now, other people's needs come significantly below ours. In trying to determine how to best care for myself, I keep asking myself, "What and who are true refuges for me?" This has guided how I am spending my time and who I am spending it with. No refuge for Sarah, no Sarah. This means a lot of calls to me are not being returned, and that's totally as it should be.

To my great surprise, one of my most helpful refuges has been meditation. It is surprising because my meditation cushion is kinda the loudest place in the house nowadays. You wake up to what is when you meditate, and if what you're waking up to sucks, it really hurts! I listened to a dharma talk today by Sylvia Boorstein titled "May I Meet This Moment Fully, May I Meet It As A Friend." I've been repeating that throughout the day. Some days, like this morning, I was able to compassionately touch my grief in my meditation; other days, it is too intense, and I return to the traditional metta (loving-kindness/blessing) practice.

Loving, compassionate, close friends and family members have also been a true refuge, as have both of my spiritual communities: my Jewish one and my meditation one. I found out last Wednesday that our baby died, yet I couldn't imagine being anywhere other than with my sangha (meditation community). I was hugged by so many people, and got kind follow-up emails from people sending me metta and checking on me.

Little Kacy, our dog, is a true refuge, as always. And on a different wavelength, good TV, in moderation, provides much-needed distraction. What are your true refuges?

A Heart That's Ready for Anything

"We do this practice to have a heart that's ready for anything." -- Eric Kolvig, to me, about why we cultivate a mindfulness practice

"Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and lightness has a call that's hard to hear." -- The Indigo Girls, in "Closer To Fine"

This is my third pregnancy in a year. To our great joy, David and I found out that eight weeks after my D&C for a miscarriage, I am pregnant again. In the past, we only told people whom we'd lean on "if something happened." Both times, something happened. This time, we're trying a different approach: We are embracing that we are just very public people. We don't care if you know we're pregnant, even if things go wrong. In fact, especially if things, God forbid, go wrong. The feedback David and I have  gotten on our blog posts about our miscarriage posts have been overwhelmingly positive; many people said they helped them or helped their friends. We hope that by sharing our experience with this pregnancy, however it turns out, it's helpful. Emboldened by posts such as this one, I want to be upfront this time. I want you to know why I'm overly sensitive, why I'm flaking on commitments (nausea and extreme exhaustion) and that I don't think Sea Bands are fashionable.

I went to a powerful meditation retreat last week, and really connected with teacher Eric Kolvig. I talked with him openly about my grief, and how to apply a mindful and compassionate presence to it. Have you ever had someone say something to you that seemingly went straight through your chest and tattooed itself on your heart? I've had it happen three times; one is too personal to recount here. The second was when my first OA sponsor suggested, "Nothing else you've done to control your food addiction has helped. Why don't you try something different and just trust?" The third was Eric's statement to me that we do our mindfulness practice to have "a heart that's ready for anything." It was clear to me that after a lifetime of feeling blown about by my outside life circumstances, that is my deepest longing: to have a heart that's ready for anything.

If you know me you know that I am anxious by nature, and in fact have a severe anxiety disorder. So, I don't have unrealistic expectations that I'm going to be all Zen about this pregnancy. Every pregnant woman I've asked worries through her pregnancy.  After all, the stakes could not be higher, and we all desperately want to control the uncontrollable. What I am aiming for is to bring a mindful and compassionate awareness to my experiences, and not over-identify with them or become lost in my stories. For example, the other night I was brushing my teeth and thought, "I wonder if I'll have an ectopic pregnancy." I have no signs of an ectopic and no reason to think I'd have one. Instead of beating myself up for the "stupid" thought, I said to myself, "Sarah, brush your teeth. You're pregnant right now." I kindly acknowledged to myself that my brain is looking for ways to predict danger so it can protect itself. It's what brains do, the same way that hearts beat. That doesn't mean I have to buy into every thought my brain comes up with.

Another example of what I'm trying to achieve with this pregnancy is this: yesterday I became gripped with fears that we will lose this baby. Instead of my usual coping mechanisms, like telling myself that the doctors said we have a 70 percent chance of having a live birth eventually, or saying to myself, "don't worry," I took the advice of my teacher Tara Brach. She told me to greet the fear with compassion. So I put my hand on my heart and said, "Of course you're scared. It's ok." I then reconnected with my body and breath. This felt much better than pushing away what is desperately seeking my attention. This process about applying mindfulness to a pregnancy that has some anxiety coming up is what I hope to share on my blog.

So here I sit, full of anticipation about our pregnancy. Hope and optimism that things will go well, but the life experience to know that things might not. Yet, I truly feel like my heart is ready for anything. Bring it.

A Happy Weight

I heard a podcast today that featured an interview with Kathianne Sellers Williams, a registered dietitian, life coach, and artist. She made a comment about helping clients find their "happy weight." She defines this as a weight at which you feel comfortable and at which you don't have to do anything extreme to maintain it. The distinction is more holistic than the traditional mode of thinking about weight-loss goals: the ever-ambiguous, just-out-of-reach "healthy weight," which varies based on whatever chart you're using.

I've lost about 103 pounds but am still about 25 pounds overweight. For about a year, I have been trying to lose more weight, but in reality, I have gained and lost the same four or five pounds over and over again. I perked up when I heard Sellers Williams talk about the "happy weight," because I've felt very dejected by failing to get my body to release more weight by cutting down on my calories and increasing my exercise. I've tried, and it's not budging. I've worked with my registered dietitian to change my food plan, and I already weigh all my food, so I have exact portion control. I can't exercise any more than I am due to my physical limitations from Lyme Disease, so I'm really doing all I can. The truth is that my dietitian could cut more food from my food plan, but that leaves me hungry and unsatisfied, which then makes the temptation to binge quite unmanageable. I'm just not willing to walk around hungry and cranky all the time just to lose some more weight.

During this weight plateau, it also has occurred to me that I would mostly be satisfied at this weight if I didn't lose another pound. I can buy clothes off the rack, not in the plus size section. I no longer take up 1.5 seats on the bus, and people sharing an aisle with me in an airplane can have their full (albeit, tiny), seat to themselves. My weight doesn't limit any of the physical activities that I want to participate in. There was a time when I wouldn't ride a horse, or be able to walk to the movie theater close to my home, or feel comfortable swimming because someone would see me in a bathing suit. Thank God, that's not the case anymore. Do I love my body? Hell no! I wish. My body shows the scars of my eating disorder: stretch marks, cellulite, and hanging skin. It's not gorgeous, and as much as it pains me to say this, it probably never would be -- even if I lost these last 25 pounds. But by dressing semi-well and occasional judicious use of Spanx Higher Power Panties (they're the bomb!), I manage to look ok clothed.

When Sellers Williams works with clients to help them find their "happy weight," one way they arrive at that number is by looking at the client's weight history. I have had two nutritionists I've worked with tell me that given my weight history -- how obese I was and how young I was when I became obese -- that it would be extremely unlikely that I'd ever get to be an ideal weight on a chart. One of the nutritionists said, "If you ever made it below 150 pounds, that would be incredible. Much more than that is not realistic given your background." Happily, I am below 150! I've exceeded their expectations.

Although I find the concept of a "happy weight" quite freeing, there is still a piece of me that resists it. My rational brain says, "You need to be as healthy as possible, and it's not healthy to carry extra fat." True, but we can't say I haven't tried to lose it, and again, we have to acknowledge that my health history makes it unlikely that I'll ever be thin. More critically, we need to take a more holistic view of what health means; it certainly is more than a number on the scale. It includes data like blood chemistry, lung capacity, and endurance, but also sanity, balance, serenity, and other non-quantifiable markers of a quality, healthy life. For the record, with the notable exception of my Lyme Disease, I do seem to be quite healthy. I used to have elevated insulin levels and triglycerides, but those and other health markers normalized after I lost 40 pounds.

Another thing that conspires to keep me from embracing the concept of a "happy weight" is some peer-pressure from inside OA rooms to be a good role model for the program and demonstrate three-fold recovery: emotional, spiritual, and physical. When people see me, they see an average-looking American woman, meaning someone who could stand to lose a few pounds. They don't know how much weight I've lost and how hard I've worked to facilitate that. I think I just have to let this one go: if some people in OA rooms judge me for still being somewhat overweight, oh well. I can't control what they think, and they have the right to their self-righteous judgment. Whatever. It also occurred to me that fighting this weight my body seems to have settled at (which, by the way, it is evolved to do -- if you lose enough body weight it triggers the "starvation" switch in your brain, at which point the body fights like hell to hold on to every last pound) is very antithetical to Step 3: became willing to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Step 3 is about surrender, not fighting. Isn't what I'm doing by trying to nudge the scale down -- and failing -- fighting? It sure feels that way, and I'm tired. And I think I'm done. If God, my body, or whatever sees fit to release more fat in the future, great, but I think I've given it a good go and now I need to let go, and enjoy my new, mostly healthy body.