I wanted to distill and share the three big lessons I’m taking away from my miscarriages last year.

1. Intense emotional experiences don’t have to be all-consuming  

As a highly emotional being, I used to be someone that would be absolutely floored when bad things happen in my life. I wouldn’t be able to function, I’d be thinking about it endlessly and it would take a long time for emotions such as grief, sadness, anger and fear to move through me.

Things felt very different as I journeyed through these miscarriages. For the first, after finding out it wasn’t viable and bawling my eyes out all morning, I delivered a webinar that afternoon to 30 people. Not from a “I have to, no one else can do this” martyr energy, or a “I will bury this and pretend it never happened” bypassing energy, but from a simple, quiet inner knowing that I could handle it and that it would serve me to focus on something else for a few hours.

Over the days that followed I noticed that I could experience many pockets of joy even as I was still deeply in the grieving process. And that I could ride the waves of intense grief without feeling buried by them.

I experienced this again when we went on holiday to Yamba the day after I miscarried the second time. It was a magical holiday, with heartache and happiness existing side-by-side.

2. Surrender unlocks peace

This experience was not something I would have had the resilience to move through had I not had an active practice of surrender. For the first miscarriage we had a two week period where we’d been advised the pregnancy was likely not viable but that we’d need to wait and re-scan in two weeks. The uncertainty was EXCRUCIATING … until my mentor suggested this prayer which, after repeating it enough for the words to settle in my bones, brought me so much peace:

Divine Mother, if this pregnancy is aligned for the greatest good and harmony for all involved, please may it unfold with health and ease. And if it is not aligned for the greatest good of all involved, please may you help my body to let go and release it.

And thank you for helping me to find peace no matter what. 

A similar surrender prayer is now supporting me as we journey to conceive again.

3. We don’t get to choose our experiences, but we do choose what we make of them

Ever since I was little, I always thought I’d have a big family with small age gaps between kids. For now, I have an only child and if we’re super lucky, we’ll have two kids with a 5+ year age gap between them.  Most days I am deeply grateful for my family exactly as it is. But sometimes, the woulda, coulda, shoulda thinking creeps in – that seductive “it wasn’t meant to be like this” form of rumination.

I choose to redirect my focus to what is here, right now. I think this is one of the biggest things that Life asks of us, isn’t it? To let go, again and again to what “should” have, “would” have, “could” have been … in order to fiercely, devotionally love What. Is.

To actively choose This Life, the one in front of you.

And to make it your own kind of wonderful.