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AWAKENING: STORIES UNTOLD, STORIES UNHEARD AND STORIES UNREAD ~ 2

 

Chapter two

“I miss the future I was supposed to have with you.”

I surely would feel the depth of the sentiment in those words. It’s alright to mourn the future that never unfolded for loss is like a silent storm that rearranges the landscape of the heart.

“There are millions of mothers
that live inside my chest,
I speak to them in quiet moments
under the night skies
and in my dreams.” ~emoryhall

Grief is so often characterized as sadness but in real sense there is so much more involved.
And to talk of grief from baby loss – pregnancy loss – stillbirth it is so often dismissed with statements like;

“You can try again for another one.”
“It wasn’t God’s plan.”
Everything happens for a reason”

But in actual fact it is often an extremely traumatic loss. Scary, dangerous, life threatening, life changing and a hundred percent leading to stress and anxiety covered with fear.

There is so much going on for the griever, so much to process and to adjust to the thought of life after loss is hard especially when family and relations are not helping matters.

 

Mokona and I have been married for five years. Today marks our fifth anniversary in this journey.
In as much as I am nervous about sharing my story for it carries uncomfortable reality, I still have to say a word because I haven’t heard other mothers or parents talk much about it; #babyloss #pregnancyloss #stillbirth.

I have been navigating about the experience I had having two stillbirths after one early and two late miscarriages. I still grieve for those little angels. I can’t help to keep imaging what life would have been with them, what the future would have been like. Taking them home and raising them.

The heartbreak that comes with how I have been treated and mocked by my husband’s family side and some of my relations while I’m still grieving the loss is what brings me to live a traumatic life. A reason I am writing this note. They have never cared that I just didn’t lose my pregnancies, I lost my babies, I lost pieces of my heart, pieces of my life.

Mokona have never had the courage to stand by me whenever the goings get bad, when the mockery gets heated. He’s the type of husband that’s so carefree and so unbothered.
Or does he not just care about me? About our loss?

Several times, we have had his sisters and aunts coming to the house to give me all types of herbs and concussions; they said it makes the baby attach firmly to the mother, it strengthens the womb. My aunt has been on it too, walking me to different prophets, pastors and herbalists – making sure I am able to bore my husband a child but it never worked out.
The spiritualist say I should always pay my dues and be righteous.
The traditionalists say I should always remember my ancestors and make sure I thank them well.
The hospitals have never found a problem with me, they said I a perfectly fine and maybe it’s just fate against time – would you believe that?

The experience after it all makes me miss the innocence I had before the loss; it’s hard not to think about the life “before loss”.
Two pink lines always mean “bringing home a little tiny angel in nine months.” But it’s always been different with me in five consecutive periods in these five years.

Loss of a baby changes you in ways you can’t see coming. I never for a moment knew I could grieve so intensely for someone I never got to meet, a baby I named whom I never got to take home with me and my husband says I need not to talk about it. His family always have said he should get another wife or randomly get another woman pregnant and my family says I should be patient and wait on the Lord.

How do you define patience when there’s no response? How do you define patience when there’s no miracle coming forth? And how do you define patience when there’s no compassion from those around you? when you are being pushed to the wall to bring out and give what you can’t possibly offer at that moment? When you are being blamed for a tragedy that you do not know how it came forth? When you are waking up and sleeping to mockery and grief?

I vividly remember just a week ago as Mokona came home a bit earlier than usual, something he hasn’t done in three months after my loss. He told me we needed to talk. I hoped he wanted us to discuss the way forward, how we would possibly get a solution to what we have been going through or how he wanted to comfort me and assure us that it would be alright even if I didn’t see it or feel it working out. But he surprised me. He is getting another wife.

Tell me, is this a battle I should fight with my bible? Or I should go physical? Or traditional?

I have had the thoughts of trying an IVF. That’s exactly what I thought my husband would suggest too. Or maybe a surrogate who would go through an IVF. But he wasn’t taking any of these options. He left me to make a choice of either letting him take a second wife or get a divorce. He clearly put it that I am “infertile” and I can’t give him children – the disrespect.

I just want to stay so busy so I don’t have to feel anything because I realize that; I have been searching for joy in between the rise and fall of my own breath.
Mokona, was the most certain being I ever met. He was gentle and I opened my heart.
I won’t regret him for he is someone I had an amazing time and experience with even if we fall off – he made my life and moments special at a certain time.
But sometimes, you need to let go of control and let the universe help you make things work to attract the things that are really meant for you~Awakening.


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