Life is not a compromise.

There is no middle ground. Only yes, only no.

July 2019, in Marshall, Michigan with my mom at a scrap booking retreat house

I took this photo the day before I discovered I was pregnant for the fifth time. It was the last memory of contentment and peace before the instant tumult struck me in the gut. I write this, because my thoughts, my emotions, my inner world grew dismal and grim very quickly after that positive pregnancy test. So dismal and grim, in fact, that I kept wishing I could die.

This terrible desire for an end to what I had held as the highest good - life - persisted daily for three years.

Each morning, as soon as my eyelids fluttered open, I would think, Oh, I’m still here. I wish I had died in my sleep. After a few seconds, I would hoist my body over the side of my bed and force myself to maintain the rhythm of routine. I told myself it was for the sake of my children, and largely, it was.

I do not write this to you, because I intend to leave you with a heavy and suffocating message. I write it instead to serve as both a warning and a celebration - a warning, because if you have never despaired, then you surely know someone who has, or is at this moment; and a celebration, because, well, I am still here. And I am grateful I hung on.

While weaving through old journals to search for snippets of memories from three years ago, I found a crude attempt at a poem I’d written:

They say hold on.
They say let go.
Tension - 
Release.
Tension -
Release.

I’ve stood on the precipice 
Of life and death
For too long
Tarrying
Worrying
Teetering.

Will I fall
Or will I fly?

There is no middle ground
No compromise
Only yes
Only no
What will it be this time?

In holding on I clutch hope
But in letting go there is serenity at last.

It began as an interminable stretch of loneliness, a dull ache of the heart that prevailed over any experience of fulfillment or flicker of happiness. I did not want to be pregnant when my youngest child was only six months old. I did not want to be pregnant at all, ever again.

Our family had epitomized what it meant to being open to as many children as possible. Everyone gushed, “Oh, you have such a beautiful family!” To which I would force myself not to grimace and instead graciously but swiftly thank them. With chagrin, I’d turn away, turn inward. I internalized this unshakeable, unrelenting sense that no one understood and no one cared about how arduous raising five children largely alone was for me.

What carried me? Invisible grace. It’s all there was. There was no air, no sunrise, no color for me during that time. Only night. Only gray. And a hollowness where every fractal of light once shone through me, during the years and seasons of life when I was blithe and callow. I did not know the type of suffering that led me to wish for death or to believe that not to exist was better than barely surviving.

Maybe it’s because sometimes you become erased by the things that break you. Who you are, what you’ve built, the life you believe belongs to you are nullified, eradicated. What remains is a void. And at the time, this vacant, bottomless space within you accounts for nothing.

In the immediate aftermath of this decimation (of dreams, of self, of the past, of joy), you are blinded by the jarring reality that it’s vanished. You peer into the caverns of emptiness, but what reverberates are only the echoes of what once existed. You cannot see at this time that emptiness primes you for what’s possible and what lies ahead.

You don’t know that all of life sprouts from the detritus of other living things that have died. You only notice death. Your death. The end. And you forget that beautiful things, powerful and new things, emerge and morph from dark and quiet places: babies in the womb, a seed germinating beneath the soil, a butterfly in its cocoon.

Every moment we each have a choice between life or death. We do not always see it this way, but life does not permit us to compromise. We cannot straddle the ambiguity forever, the maybes or what ifs we tend to use in order to purchase more time for decision.

There is only yes.

There is only no.

Both belong to you in equal measure. Sometimes yes means you are choosing to engage in life. But sometimes yes means you are withdrawing from it. Speaking no establishes what you are and are not willing to tolerate from others and from yourself. Each yes, each no, are commitments of integrity that withstand the times we cannot bear to keep going a single minute longer.

Yet you do. As I did. You keep going, because you are curious about finding out if the proverbial light at the end of your tunnel really does exist.

What saved me, that invisible and puzzling grace, was that I asked myself, What might become of my life in a year, in ten? Is it possible that I can build something stronger from this vulnerable fracture?

And the answer is a resounding yes.

Self portrait circa spring 2022. My eyes reveal a depth born from the suffering of the previous two years. But the smile is genuine.

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What I’m Reading:

Regardless of your personal feelings about the British Monarchy, I want to tell you that Prince Harry (and his ghostwriter) is honest. I grew up adulating Princess Diana, which solidified as an adult after I read her (official) biography. Clearly, she was a highly sensitive person. She was the bridge between the “commoner” in the UK and other British Commonwealth countries and the monarchy she represented. That’s why she was the People’s Princess.

Her son, Prince Harry, carries on her life, her legacy, and her work. In my view, he is brave to do what he has done, which is to decry the political maneuvers within the monarchy, expose its corruption and double standards, and to set boundaries to protect his wife and his children from the paparazzi that - he claims (and I believe) - were responsible for his mother’s death.

My only frustration is that the middle, to me, droned on quite a bit about his military career, and I found myself looking up acronyms constantly in order to decipher the context of his stories. The last third of the book is fantastic, riveting. It’s a hard book to find at your local library, but it’s well worth waiting to read.

Have you read it yet? What did you think? I’d love to hear about this book, or any of your favorite memoirs!