the inescapability of karma, maybe

Angie is a writer, poet, and painter. With the stillbirth of her second daughter Lucia, Angie began writing about mothering and grief at Still Life with Circles. She shares a piece of art, music or writing from a bereaved parent or family member every day at the year-long creative project still life 365, and paints and illustrates mizuko jizo and other aspects of babyloss, pregnancy and parenting.

For a couple of months after my daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks, my husband and I saw a grief therapist recommended by the hospital and our midwives' group. She served a purpose, mainly by helping us answer the thousands of questions we suddenly had:

How do we tell everyone that our daughter died?

What do we do with the nursery?

Is it okay to tell people that we would prefer not to receive flowers?

How do I eat breakfast in the diner where they fussed about my pregnancy?

How do we talk to each other about something other than her death?

After a few months, when those mundane moments of terror in the market passed, our therapy sessions became unproductive. She would ask how my husband felt and he would say, "Hungry."

She would ask me how I felt and I would tell her about Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed, compassion, Buddhism, and suffering. Her eyes would glaze over and she then she would tell me I was avoiding my true feelings by intellectualizing.

"Perhaps individual therapy might be more beneficial for us," I mentioned to my husband as we left her office one snowy Tuesday. I had some bigger questions. This therapist wanted to educate us about our grief, not philosophize about the nature of the universe. I felt nostalgic for a time in which I never lived where a stinky Socrates sat in the town center, just waiting for someone to pose a question about fate, death and the gods. I needed an oracle, an unemployed philosophy PhD. Or maybe even a lama.

photo by MC-Leprosy

I began seeing my Buddhist therapist again. I saw him many years earlier, when I was a single woman bitching about my non-committal ex-boyfriend, insomnia, and my career. I have dabbled in Buddhism for fifteen years. And by dabble, of course, I mean reading Buddhist teachings and writing, but not finding a regular sangha, or community.

Sure, I meditated, occasionally visited a Buddhist monastery for group meditation and teachings, but I never sought an actual teacher who challenged me. Zen. Tibetan. Shambhalan. It didn’t really matter. I sometimes just wanted to feel people around me who could sit quietly together. Intellectually, Buddhism just makes sense to me. Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by our attachments to worldly pleasures and illusions of happiness. One needs to be accountable for his or her actions in every aspect of your life. Compassion, meditation, letting go of attachments and kindness can change suffering. Totally get it. Of course, there were times when I would get fascinated by some obscure text and teaching, but mostly I lived by the basic tenets, except the no wine thing. Alcohol always found a place in my Buddhism.

When I thought I should seek therapy, I sought a Buddhist therapist. I didn’t want therapy devoid of my spiritualism. I sought a more holistic solution to my angst and emotional ennui. The Buddhist therapist became sort of a de facto teacher for a lone wolf like myself. He guided me in meditation. He gave me some incredibly deep insights that mirrored my own beliefs. I learned more from him in the eight month period than I could have imagined. My therapist suggested that perhaps I was a Pratyekabuddha, or a bodhisattva who develops realizations without the guidance of a guru. He encouraged me repeatedly to seek a teacher. He pointed out, "Of course, you know, the challenges of that path are always arrogance and misguidance."

Of course, I have always been arrogant and misguided.

It made sense for me to visit the Buddhist therapist again after my daughter died and I was flailing. After I had met with him for a few sessions, we had begun reincorporating the Four Reminders into our sessions, which had been a bit revelatory to me in my earlier therapy.

1  ::  the preciousness of human birth (It is a gift you are here)

2  ::  the truth of impermanence (You are gonna die)

3  ::  the reality of suffering (Life’s gonna hurt)

4  ::  the inescapability of karma (You better do it right, or you are doing it again.)

He mentioned the last one again. "Karma," he said, "is how our actions affect our suffering."

"Oh, I have been meaning to talk to you about that," I said. And I had. I’d been thinking about how different religions deal with suffering. Majoring in Religion at university, I became fascinated with theodicy, which is the theological problem of reconciling evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a just and good God. But, in Buddhism, suffering is a whole different animal. Buddhists mostly take out God, but leave the suffering. Suffering is the nucleus around which Buddhist thought orbits. Still, something never sat right with me and karma. I want to believe that if someone commits a horrible sin against man or humanity, he or she will suffer eventually. 

But what if you are suddenly the one suffering?

"Uh, yeah, with something like stillbirth or the death of your baby without any reason, I wanted to know, uh, you know, I mean, when I think about karma, with this kind of suffering, the bad-things-happen-to-good-people-type suffering, uh, this is awkward, but what I wanted to know is: do Buddhists think it is my own fault that my daughter died?"

"Of course not," he said, after a pause. "At least not in the way that you are talking about. Traditional Buddhists feel that in our past lives we were all kinds of people: thieves, mothers, butchers, farmers, murderers, liars, nuns, doctors, children, and animals. A monk once told me that if we piled the bones of all the lives we have lived, it would reach through three universes. You may be going through your loss as a result of past karma from a life hundreds of years ago."

I hated that answer.

I wanted to spit on the floor and demand my money back. In no uncertain terms, I told him so. Then he clarified that the complexities of the idea of karma makes it difficult to explain, but Buddhists do not traditionally blame the victim for their own suffering. You could study karma for years and not quite get it. The Buddha taught not to take his words literally. He said to use this teaching to develop my own understanding of the universe. He asked me what I thought. What does karma mean to you now, as the mother of a dead baby?

I think the world is chaotic and random and often cruel. The death of my child had nothing to do with me—nothing I did, nothing my husband did, nothing my daughter did. She just died.

Thinking that Lucia’s death is my karma, or heaven forbid, her karma, or the karma of my entire tribe is of no comfort to me. Without a physical reason why Lucy died, it is hard not to search for a metaphysical one instead. It is hard not to speculate on why the Volcano Gods are angered, or what action in my youth caused my daughter to die now. And yet, I reject that. The guilt of that interpretation would eat me from the inside out until I am nothing but a withered shell of a parent.

To me karma means something much different than tit for tat. Spiritually, I have to figure out my own reason to move forward. What I do have control over is what I do with my experience of chaos and suffering in the world. This life, right now, is my choice. This is my karma. What am I going to do with this experience of loss?

Compassion. Fear. Love. Understanding. Grief. Sadness. Comfort. Kindness. Anger. Patience. Misplaced emotion. Mourning. Selfishness. Selflessness. If I toss each one, carefully peeled and scrubbed, into a blender and drink this past year down, I hope to emerge healthier. I hope this bitter juice helps me emerge more of those things I believe makes the world a place less wrought with suffering. I control that part of me, the patient loving compassionate part, the part that experiences other people's suffering and responds with love. Since Lucy died, I am frequently impatient. I am frequently unloving and unlovable. I sometimes give into anger and pettiness. But I try to use those experiences to forgive. Myself. First for the emotion, and then for the death of my daughter.

I have to forgive myself everyday.

As I walked away from that session, the therapist said one last thing just as I left his room.

"Maybe Lucy fulfilled her karma by living her life just as she lived it. Maybe she simply needed the love and comfort of your womb for those months. Maybe she was supposed to teach you about love."

Maybe.

Did you seek out a counsellor, therapist, or spiritual mentor after the loss of your baby? Why, or why not? What phrases, concepts, or exercises learned in therapy have contributed to your healing? What moments felt at odds with what you needed to heal? Do you remember a session that felt like hard work for you? Why, and where did it bring you?

on survival

In Greek mythology, Medusa is a "guardian, or protectress". She is viewed throughout history as equally beautiful and terrifying.

I wonder how many of us here can relate.

On holiday in July we drove for hours through rolling Turkish hills to visit the ruins at Didyma.  Typically, I need to be in the right mood for these types of things. I was on the fence until my Lonely Planet guide told me to “be sure not to miss the sculpture of Medusa that has remained surprisingly intact among the rest of the ruins”. Or something to that effect.

Sold.

I remember that the heat that day was the kind that gives everything in sight a shimmering, rippled effect. We walked slowly through the remains of the interior, then circled the perimeter.  I felt like a grain of sand on the worlds longest beach - dwarfed by the enormity of it all.  I finally found the medusa set away from the rest of the rubble. I had walked right past her on arrival.

Temple of Apollo, 2nd century A.D. Didyma, Turkey

She sits with pride of place at the entrance, cordoned off and stoic despite the deep crevices that mark her face like scars. More intact than any other scuplture in the ruins.

Look at you. Barely a scratch compared to the rest of them.

I pulled out my camera and smiled, remembering finding this for the first time in the middle of a sleepless night in the month after Sadie died.

Of course you’re here. What better vantage point could you have?

Commanding.

Serene guardian.

Mother hen.

Survivor.

Terrifying when provoked?

I can definitely relate.

.::.

I open my work email first thing to see the subject line, “VISIT TO X CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL”. The air is sucked out of me as I read a lengthy note to all staff about plans for Father Christmas arriving on a Harley, playing on our weaknesses to plea for gifts and funds.

"The children in this hospital are often seriously ill and many will be hospitalised over the festive period. A visit was made to the hospital last week and it was stated that many of these children will be hospitalised over the festive period, some indefinitely."

Memories I’ve had parked in a far away corner wave over my brain like a monsoon and I can’t not cry. I spend twenty minutes in the bathroom regaining my composure.

.::.

I’ve often wondered what it takes for a person to survive something like this. What fabric makes up the kind of soul who can stare down the deepest and darkest tunnel of despair and turn up alive at the other end? Hardly unscathed, but alive nonetheless. None of us are superheroes as far as I’m aware. Just your average Joes and Janes, as random as it comes, without a (traditional) superpower or weapon of choice in sight. Yet here we stand, called on to perform an astonishing, awe-inspiring feat.

This thing called surviving. We do it. We are all doing it, right this second.

We do it with therapy. We do it with screaming and booze and prescriptions and sex.  We do it with the help of partners who are the one person on this entire godforsaken planet who understand us, because their loss is tied forever to our own. And we do it for our living children, or our desire for future children.

And then there’s time, survival’s wingman if there ever was one. 

.::.

“You know you don’t have to feel bad about talking about it.  I think you’re so brave, Jen.”

I do it because in spite of everything, I am still a hopeful person.

.::.

Survival means different things to all of us. What is it to you? What’s your superpower?

gratitude

It’s gut wrenching how much I long for her these days.

A whirl of small brown leaves flies against the windshield of my car as I drive by their tree, almost bare.

Hello, Beautiful…

I feel her close, I really do.

And also, deep in my gut, everywhere in my heart, in all of me – the awareness that my child in her body is missing.

For about a month, we’ve had her picture close by in the dining room of our new home. It’s in a temporary frame… I’m working on something much more grand, much more beautiful. But her sweetest face is there in all its 8x10 glory, peeking out at us as we eat, draw, do homework, putz around on the computer, talk. As I write this.

There she is… and yet that’s not her. It’s just her photograph. Sometimes I feel her there. Sometimes she is in the leaves. Sometimes in the occasional milkweed seed that reminds me of the oh-so-sad-so-terribly-incredibly-painfully-sad week we spent in the mountains after we said goodbye to her. Sometimes in the red tail hawk that flies above Cincinnati, though much less frequently than she did in San Francisco.

When I look at that photograph, I just miss my Baby Girl… in the flesh.

I am reminded each time I look at it just how beautiful she was. And how much she struggled with each breath. That’s when the tears come, when I remember those days in between,

She’s doing surprisingly well… this is what she’ll need in order to come home,

and,

She just can’t get enough air into her small fragile lungs, even with all this support.

That’s when I imagine what it would be like now if things hadn’t turned, if she had come home on oxygen and continued to get stronger.

*****

I know how lucky I am that I got to know her when she was alive. I know how lucky I am that I got to hold her, to kiss her, to sing to her, to touch her soft skin, to look into her eyes as she looked into mine. I know we didn’t all get that in this community of deadbabyparents… I wish we all had. I wish all of our babies were still here, in the flesh, alive and well.

Maybe I have more photos of my baby, but it doesn’t make it easier to have lost her. Nothing can make it easy to lose a child. Easy isn’t a word I identify with anymore. As a word, it feels trivial and doesn’t serve me much. But hard… that feels too simplistic. Sometimes it isn’t hard. Sometimes it just is.

Strange feels more like it these days. Strange because I can simultaneously feel acceptance and disbelief. So many days that is my normal. I still say to Tikva, several times a week, silently or out loud,

Oh Baby Girl… you died. You died.

Then a voice within me will remember, will insist,

But you lived, too. I won’t ever forget that you lived. And for that, I am grateful.

It may have been a blink of an eye, like a daydream… but I wouldn’t trade it in for forgetting the loss of you. Not ever.

*****

I was terrified last year at this time to spend Thanksgiving with our family. I was terrified to be up close and personal with Tikva’s cousin, who was born during the weeks in between my daugther’s birth and her death. I was so scared of being face to face with the reminder that my baby wasn’t there, that he was here and she was not. The fear became something bigger than itself, and I almost spent Thanksgiving separate from my entire family.

But in the end I went. And I sat with this beautiful little boy on my lap, felt his newness, looked into his big brown eyes that reminded me of Tikva’s. And I saw his bright soul, felt his pureness. The ease of being with an uncomplicated soul that a baby is. Connected to him as his own self, not as a reminder of what I didn’t have. He had no idea that he had a cousin who died shortly after he was born. One day he will, and forever he will remind me of the age Tikva would be if only…

But in that moment he was just pure love. And I let myself take that in.

And I looked around at my family all over the house, watching football, taking one more bite of pie while talking and drinking coffee. And I felt so deeply grateful for every single one of them who had held me together before, during and since Tikva’s life. The loss of the months leading up to last Thanksgiving didn’t take away my gratitude for all that remained.

I felt I was still here because of them. Because of my husband and my incredible and brave older daughter, my Dahlia. Because of my sister and my father and my family and my friends – my community. Because of my city, my ocean, my park to walk in, my hawks flying above. My yoga classes to cry silently in. My work to go to for a day’s worth of distraction from my thoughts, and time to read a babylost blog when I needed to go in.

And because of this place I stumbled upon in the early months after Tikva’s death. Where I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t alone, and soon felt the uncomfortable mingling of that relief with the realization that the only way I could not feel alone here was for other parents to also have lost their babies. Where you just get it without my having to explain.

Thank you.

*****

I’m not much for holidays honoring consumerism and the massacre indigenous peoples. I’m not a huge fan of turkey and the gluttony that accompanies this holiday, especially when I know that many of us aren’t blessed to eat every day, much less such a feast. But I do get swept up – just a little – in taking pause for gratitude.

For me, gratitude after loss is different. It’s too simple to say that because of all I have lost, I appreciate what I have so much more. It has something to do with the impossible-to-shake-now-and-probably-forever recognition of just how fragile it all is… that all I really have, no matter how much time I get here, together with those I cherish, is this moment I am in. That understanding just doesn’t let go of me, and neither does the gratefulness I feel that seems to go hand in hand with it.

Because if all I have is this moment, then I better kiss my Dahlia one extra time today, better eat that last piece of dark chocolate waiting for me in the cookie jar, better call my dad to tell him I love him, better tell my husband one more time just how proud I am of him… and I better be kind and gentle with myself.

*****

Thank you, Tikva, for awakening me to the present moment more than anyone ever has. Because with you, I could do nothing greater than be completely present – unconditionally – for as long as we would get together.

And beyond.

.::.

How does gratitude feel to you now? Is it there? The same? Different? If you do feel it, what makes you feel grateful?

a great and noble life

I sit in the sanctuary. It is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar. The year when even the least observant Jew can be seen in a synagogue.

I am not the least observant Jew… Not really possible with a husband who is studying to become a rabbi. Not really possible with the amount of Jewish tradition I was raised with. Not really possible with Polish grandparents who survived the Holocaust. Not really possible with the number of Jewish food calories I have consumed in 38 years.

And yet it is still somewhat a surprise to me that I am there, in this synagogue, following along with this kind of service. It is a traditional Reform Jewish service. The prayer book – Gates of Repentance, special for this day of atonement – talks of

God as Lord,

God as male,

God as judging,

God as forgiving.

I can’t quite bring myself to recite along during the call and response. I can’t bring myself to say, God, oh Lord… out loud.

This is not how I relate to God, to Source, to all that is around and within me. This is not how I connect to my divine essence. Not in this language.

My “God” is not separate from me.

My “God” is not in charge, deciding what I will receive and what will be taken away, when I will struggle and when I will overcome.

My “God” does not judge or punish me.

My “God” does not care whether I fast on Yom Kippur, or that my fast today included drinks of water and kombucha, that my day of atonement included a trip to Whole Foods and time sitting on my couch writing in my journal and reading a (non-Jewish) book.

Then I find this in the prayer book during the afternoon service: 

This is the vision of a great and noble life:

To endure ambiguity and to make light shine through it;

To stand fast in uncertainty;

To prove capable of unlimited love and hope.

And it resonates inside.

Hmm… A great and noble life as one that is lived as well as possible in spite of its precariousness, in spite of our fragility. Amid the fuzzy blurred boundaries that keep changing on us without warning, and rugs that are pulled out suddenly from underneath us.

I have proven capable of unlimited love and hope. Each day I surprise myself that I continue to feel it even more. In spite of the uncertainty that comes with knowing that things can completely fall apart and come crashing down again and again.

I never before thought of my ability to bounce back as being a quality of a great and noble life. I never before related to survival that way. Yet survival is what it is, isn’t it? Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Surviving? 

Or perhaps I have actually… been… thriving…?

***

It is later in the afternoon and the yizkor memorial service has begun. The mood is quiet and solemn and the passage is about our finiteness, words about being on the road towards death from the moment we are born. (I close off some when I hear the words birth and death in the same sentence.) Again I start leafing through the prayer book, unsatisfied with the gloom and doom.

I find this: 

May the pains of past bereavements grow more gentle;

Indeed, let them be transformed into gratitude to our dear ones who have died

And tenderness to those who are still with us.

I was so lost at this time last year. I was so angry… at everything and everyone. I cried through the entire day at our warm and wonderful Renewal congregation in Berkeley, surrounded by friends who were there at every turn to hug me and sit with me or leave me alone outside if I needed that. I didn’t fast. I felt no obligation, no inspiration.

I felt no connection to this day, so soon after Tikva had died. All I could do was picture her spinning in circles in a white dress, dancing to the music, a year later. The two of us together in a parallel universe where she had continued to live.

All I could do was cry an endless stream of angry lost tears.

Now, a year later, the pain has grown more gentle. I think of Tikva with gratitude for the gifts of hope and love she gave me, for the compassion space she cracked open and expanded within me. For asking me to love her in a way I had never before known I could love, for teaching me that hope never completely goes away, even when everything feels lost

Or finite.

And I think of Dahlia, who daily stretches my capacity for patience, who demands my presence, my tenderness like no one else can, who reminds me to laugh in my most frustrated and exhausted moments, and I feel gratitude for both of my daughters, the deepest kind of gratitude for the way things are.

Just as they are. 

***

I surprise myself, that I can feel this lightness, especially today. On this day that for many is solemn and serious, reflective and laden with guilt needing to be cleared and asking for forgiveness. I surprise myself that I feel anything other than rebelliousness about Yom Kippur, this holy day I was determined to mostly blow off this year.

Then I woke up this morning and felt peaceful, held. By an energy that is comforting, serene, gentle. It didn’t matter that I was not spending the day with my community back in California, but instead in my house and at the grocery store and at services that felt mostly foreign.

It didn’t matter that I hadn’t asked anyone’s forgiveness, nor made any big plans for ways I wanted to grow and expand in the coming year.

All that mattered was that when I stepped outside to watch four monarch butterflies and two fat bumblebees holding for dear life to the white flowers as the wind blew them furiously around, 

I felt connected… to all of it.

Connected to the wind, to the smells in the crisp fall air, to the bees and the butterflies, to the light streaming through their gold-orange wings…

Connected to Tikva. 

Connected to my essence, the most pure and true part of me.

Connected to a deep knowing inside me that I can and will continue believing in hope and love.

Perhaps the makings of a great and noble life are that simple.

.::.

And you? How do you connect with the part deep inside that is most entirely you? Is there something bigger that helps you feel connected? How have you stretched and expanded through losing your child? What makes you recoil, contract? What helps you to feel you are thriving? What are the makings of your great and noble life? 

signs signs everywhere signs

'Is there someone you have who can spot your warning signs?'

'Sorry?'

'Is there anyone who you talk to. Someone who will notice any signs.'

'Can you give me an example?'

I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I wanted to make her say it out loud. I wanted to hear how she would articulate that the emotions I consider normal cohorts to grief are what she considers 'warning signs'.

I had explained upon arrival at her office that I was finished my prescription and was not planning on refilling it. Her first words?

'Oh. Oh, my.'

Ah. Signs.

WARNING: SHE IS LOOKING SAD TODAY.
WARNING: SHE APPEARS TO BE FEELING A LITTLE ANTISOCIAL.
WARNING: LET’S GET HER BACK ON THE DRUGS, IMMEDIATELY.

---

'You mentioned your temper before. And crying often.'

In my mind: ‘OH MY GOD Lady. THAT’S what you call signs? Then I’m fucking CERTIFIABLE, with or without the antidepressants.’

In reality: 'My husband and I are close. My mother and I are close. I have a good friend here now.'

‘That’s good. They’ll know you well enough to spot the signs.’

Next I tried in vain to describe the physical side effects I’d been suffering from over the previous 48 hours since stopping because frankly, I was pretty freaked out. I was dismissed, albeit in a very polite manner.

---

Walking home from my appointment, I realized with a shiver that my bare legs and flops would soon go the way of the closet in order to make room for tights and boots and English wind and rain. Why hadn’t I noticed the temperature two hours earlier? Was it the same reason I forgot to open the window for the dryer exhaust? Or why I left the milk out all day?

I imagined with the seasons changing that I might have an embroidered toque I could pull on, serving the dual purpose of alerting anyone to the difference between these infamous signs and a banal annoyed mood resulting from a hard day at work.

It could be white, with pink letters sewn in. And reversible!

On one side: BAD DAY & BITCHY

And the other: DEAD BABY MAMA

How's that for a sign?

---

I've had to take two days off from work this week after finishing my last pill over the weekend. I'm dizzy; really fucking emotional. I feel dopey and foggy and have tried unsuccessfully too many times to count to describe the weirdo tracer vibe I've got going on. Every blink feels as though it's taking me three steps further than I'd intended. Does that even make sense? I guess I'm Coming Down.

Is there a rehab for this kind of situation? Cause believe me, I'd love to go. Three weeks would be perfect. Goodbye world: I'm taking a well earned breather.

In the end, Doc's only explanation was 'heightened awareness'. I've been dulled profoundly around the edges for almost a year now, leveled out by a magical chemical concoction that has kept me on a relatively even keel.

Don't get me wrong - as opposed as I was to antidepressants in the beginning - my opinion has changed completely. I was several months into our loss when I saw Christmas on the horizon and started to lose my shit all over again. I couldn't cope. I sought medical intervention. It helped - no question. I just wish I'd known how profoundly and physically I'd be affected by the removal of said chemicals from my system.

So far, I'm hanging in there. Five days in, one tentative step at a time.

I am 100%, honest-to-goodness, wholeheartedly of the Whatever Works for You camp. I can't say with certainty I won't go back to this form of help in the future. But right now, fulfilling the promise to myself of weaning back to my 'natural state' (HA, I know) within a year is important to me. The idea of another pregnancy this year plays a huge role in my decision, of course. But more than anything, right now I just need to follow through on ONE thing. With my most basic self.

I worry minute to minute how my revived and heightened awareness will affect my progress in moving forward. How will I cope, just me?

Only time will tell.

.::.

Have you had experience with antidepressant since your loss?  Have they helped you? If so, would you mind sharing what led you to the decision, and whether or not you've decided to continue?