note: the post below is an unedited version of the original blog post mars wrote on the now-defunct seasspeak.com. this was initially posted on september 10, 2018 and another post on this topic is planned to be released soon. since writing this, the bpd diagnosis was replaced with an autism diagnosis, mars came out as a transgender man using strictly he/him pronouns, and experienced another miscarriage.
This is a post about my experiences. Take what applies, leave the rest. Learn to see through another’s perspective or continue closing yourself in. Spread love instead of judgment and do not feel sorry for me.
Content warning for blood mention and pregnancy.
If you asked me a year ago whether I wanted to have children, I would have asked if you knew who you were talking to. Tell you about why I couldn’t become pregnant in the first place. List all of my diagnoses creating a limited vision of what my life could or should turn into. Know full well that I do want one, and I know who she is, and who she will be; I’ve called out her name since I was 15. But the PCOS doesn’t just go away on its own, or with birth control, or a stricter diet, or weight loss. But my personality disorder won’t change on its own, or with counseling, or medication, or time (although there are studies that show as people with BPD grow older, they find more effective coping mechanisms and the symptoms lessen to some extent). But so many of these things are hereditary and could be passed down to her, or I’ll be a selfish mother like the ones I see and know, or I won’t be good enough for her love.
I’ve joked before about how my 12th house Saturn and Mercury convince me to talk myself out of anything, which is why I was unaware of my pregnancy to begin with. Maybe not unaware, but the amount of denial I was in is unbelievable. While I knew it was totally possible, I mistook my symptoms for things like depression or attributed changes to being unhealthy. I was sleeping more because my body was withdrawing from all the chemicals in cigarettes, which I quit around my third week. I was nauseated with the inability to eat unless the food was hot (if it cooled too quickly, I’d start gagging) and bland. My body became sore with aches and pains of what I thought was releasing negativity or lower vibrational energy.
Even the topic came up more than I’d ever noticed before. A tarot deck I used to work with, but is now in its proper long-term home with a good friend, would spit out the card titled “Pregnancy” every time I would do a reading, whether it was for myself or others. When I had news to tell somebody else, the first thing they assumed was an announcement. The grandmother of my cousin told us that she sees life in us, and the first thing we were worried about was… you guessed it. Pregnancy. She turned her head but her eye stayed on us, like she could see what was starting to develop in my womb. I had plans of talking to my partner about how my mind had changed from not wanting them to wanting them so badly that I’d cry if I saw a cute one. I did not know I was pregnant until my miscarriage.
I didn’t know I was pregnant until I knew what labor felt like. Contractions I thought were bad cramps, because menstruation is basically a lower level of labor, that I had to figure out breathing exercises to work through. Or I’d just roll a blunt and smoke it with the hope of ease in this pain. I smoked so much that week that I don’t remember the conversations I had, or who I talked to, or what I was wearing, or what I was eating. I was still using tampons at this time in my life, and used some because I thought it was just a bad period after not having it for a long time. Having PCOS, I was used to major irregularity with my cycle and just six months prior I was getting a period twice a month. Thinking nothing of the tampon, it was leaking within a couple of hours. I wasn’t worried about the amount of blood because of the time between my last period and this one. I wasn’t worried about the amount of blood until another tampon was leaking, and then pads, and then the stains formed on my clothes. I didn’t realize what I was experiencing before was labor until hours of research on miscarriages validated my concerns, along with seeing the sac. Knowing what the tissue was. Remembering that before the bleeding started, the discharge was a color I hadn’t seen before. I lied to myself still and said it was probably nothing.
I guess I’m still bitter because I was supposed to go to a two-day show for my birthday, which ended up being canceled. The bleeding began three days after my birthday. Nothing was going as planned and I moved over 1600 miles from Long Island to Texas less than two weeks before. All I had was my partner and the same friend mentioned earlier, who lived 45 minutes away and was the one to tell me that yes, I was miscarrying, and no, she wouldn’t let me deny it. I don’t remember when I ended up telling my mom that it happened. I don’t know who else really knows other than the Select Few™ I told personally. This whole process left me feeling more alone than ever, more frustrated than ever, more lost than ever, and I’ve spent a good portion of my life being lost. I didn’t know how to face the guilt or shame I felt, or how to move on from this loss when I decided to be unaware until it was dispelled from my body.
Miscarrying was not a good enough of an excuse to go to a doctor. While I’m still on my parent’s insurance, I didn’t have the money for a copay just to be told what I already knew. For a couple of months after, I didn’t get a period. When I did start bleeding, it stopped shortly after and it was only old blood. I was afraid I got pregnant again and there was implantation bleeding, but it could’ve been the rest of what needed to come out. I didn’t have another period until I was finishing up my book at the end of August, where I freaked out when I saw the amount of blood, thinking I was in my old apartment where the miscarriage took place. This period hurt less than ones I had before, where my cramps would keep me bedridden until the majority of that part of the cycle was over. This period lasted the typical 3-5 days. This period came after hours of energy healing focused on my sacral and root chakras over the course of a few months. This period left me feeling empowered.
A witchy friend from a different part of my life told me that I’d know when my initiation was. Those words have rung through my brain, leaving me wondering when that was. Was it when I was born? When I was coping with my first conscious trauma? When I left my home the first time? The second? Not having a mentor and not knowing much about my family has been detrimental to my developing practice. I’ve made mistakes and I know better now. And what I know now is that my initiation was on the second of February this year. Maybe there were ones before then, but this is the one that stuck. There is an infinite power held in the womb as it is the space for all creation. Learning that, holding that, remembering that information has been one of the most enlightening things for me. My abilities have expanded since my miscarriage. I will not put a limit on how they manifest. My appreciation for life has grown. Appreciation for myself has grown. Throughout my life, I never really considered myself to be a strong person. I am reminded strength and sensitivity are not mutually exclusive, they are what make us human.
By my calculations, and through comparisons to pictures of other miscarriages, I was around twelve weeks along when it happened. I don’t like calling it what it is, even though I have stated it before, and usually shorten it to “mc” when I reference it again. Something about the word itself feels self-blaming, as if it were a fault of my own that this process ended so abruptly. I spent a lot more time than necessary, when I shouldn’t have bothered in the first place, justifying everything about it and explaining why it had happened. It was in my research that I found a new belief, not to take blame away from myself, but to exist with the experience a little bit better. A belief that, upon meditation and discussion, I hold firm: when this happens, it is the soul of the baby who decided. A soul that was not ready for this world the way it would be presented to them if they had been born. A soul that could have belonged with another family. A soul that was not meant for me.
Still, a soul with a message. Maybe the message was for me, maybe it was for my partner. I have tried connecting with this and felt that it was more so for him than myself. Trying to reach out to this soul, communicate with him, anything that had to do with him, never really worked out. But it was through these attempts that I did connect with my daughter, who knows what has to be done before she gets here and is happily awaiting the right moment. She loves me and will probably have a prominent Gemini placement. She sees me for who I am and who I have been and loves me still. She points out that if I had carried him to term, I wouldn’t have the dog I do now, who was adopted on his due date. She reminds me that she is just out of reach, but keeps me in her view, as she stays in mine because life is wonderful and will always be wonderful once the changes are made for her to come here. Sometimes she lets me hear her giggle, sometimes she holds my hand when things get too hard. She convinces me I will be a great mother to her because of how I re-parented myself with my inner child. She sees and she knows and she understands and she loves and for that, I am grateful.
