35 Weeks
Sometimes I look at my life and think that I am obsessed with pain. It’s not that I seek it out in some masochistic way, but when it comes I lean in. It’s where I’ve had the easiest time feeling present in the human experience.
When I was widowed in my twenties, my immediate response was to join a group of writers. It was no more than a week after Sergiusz was gone that I was part of an online cohort of grievers who found comfort in reading the words of each other's sufferings. And just a few months after that, I began to work on a portrait series about young widowhood. Fueled by instinct and adrenaline, I decided that my path to healing would be to seek out the stories of those coping with loss. This was partly a need for distraction and perspective, very much for community, and ultimately to make some meaning out of it all. I remember friends and family being worried. “Do you think that’s such a good idea,” they would say, “to bring more stories like that into your life?” It was an opinion posed as a question, coated in concern. But there was no other answer for me. There was no other path I could see to make sense of my pain than to understand it deeper. I wanted to touch the fiery core of the humanness of grief.
I did the same thing with my grandmother’s war story. So many people dive into their family history (particularly those of the Holocaust) with the hope of telling a story that will convince society of “never again.” That wasn’t my goal. I can’t even imagine that as an outcome, but perhaps that is my cynicism for human behavior rising to the surface. Rather I wanted to understand the horror, because without that lens I would never understand the redemptive narrative I witnessed in her own experience. Learning about my grandmother’s hurt over and over again took the past into the present and made it tangible and tactile. And perhaps in some way, upon reflection, it made the pain more controllable. With each survivor’s story I engage with and each genocide I study, it’s like putting my hand on an increasingly hot stove. Understanding human suffering has become a practice for me, not simply a lesson to learn once.
But what does one do with the understanding? This has been my most persistent question in recent years. I’ve read books about fascism and racism and antisemitism. I’ve studied so many of the ‘isms,’ as have many of you. I keep up with current events. I pay attention. And what I find is that all the consumption, all the understanding, all the deep dives and question-asking, it leads to more hurt. More confusion. More conscription to the deep corners of my own wandering thoughts, mindful and mindless alike. More cynicism. More skepticism. More exhaustion. More discontent. A loss of appetite for my own curiosities.
I don’t have an answer to that question right now, but it does make me wonder if all those people who expressed concern about me nearly a decade ago had a point.
In this current chapter of my life pain has become a topic in a brand new way. I clutch my stomach as I walk down the street, the Braxton Hicks contractions slowing my pace. I tell my dog to wait and she patiently does as I hobble along in the shoes that no longer fit my swollen feet.
My books, teachers and friends tell me that the contractions are there to practice for what is to come when I give birth to this baby. It is a pain that will be brand new. A normal pain. A natural pain. A pain that means progress. A pain that is purposeful and powerful. A pain that leads to something completely beautiful and magical, otherworldly and even, dare I say it, godly.
In a birthing class last week, T.J. and I were given the exercise to hold ice cubes to examine the way we handle pain. The instructor explained that it was important for the partner to understand this as well. “To support someone in pain, a person needs to examine their own response,” was the message, and one that could be applied to so many spaces in life. In a series of minute-long exercises we sat there with blistering cold water melting down our arms, practicing different ways to cope. Was it intentional breathing that calmed us? Was it distraction? Was it looking around the room and noting every color we saw? Or was it a flow of compliments? “You’re such a badass,” I told him to tell me, not ready to take in any commentary on my looks at this late stage of pregnancy when he started to say I was beautiful.
“This is the only time you will go to the hospital and nothing is wrong,” the instructor reminded us over and over again.
“A normal pain, a natural pain, a purposeful pain,” I thought, unable to break my mind from the pain of the past—all of which I would also consider normal, natural and purposeful.
“There is so much about birth that reminds me of grief,” I said to T.J. as we drove home. It’s a sentiment I’ve repeated regularly since we began learning about what to expect in having a baby and the postpartum period.
I sit here now at 35 weeks pregnant and in the throes of nesting our small home. We are playing Tetris with our furniture, organizing and reorganizing. I’m taking deep dives into albums and throwing out hundreds of photographs from the past lives I’ve lived in order to make space for the new. I’ve hidden the stacks of books about genocide and authoritarianism to prioritize more gentle reads like Make Way For Ducklings and Goodnight Moon. With every physical memory removed from our home I’m trying to reconstruct narratives that consume too much negative space, and see my ability to learn about life in a new light: there is a more joyful way of experiencing the world coming to me, and I’m eager to know it.
It’s at this stage of pregnancy where many people ask about a birth plan. Even strangers want to know how I’ll confront a physical pain so great and unknown. “I have a loose grip on how it will go, but lots of opinions,” I say, being both very vague and very honest. The question is on my mind though. It hovers above me. When the day of the birth comes—will I diminish the pain with medication or try to breathe through it all? The question of story barrels down on me. I ask myself how I want to remember this day. The part of me I’m most familiar with wants to know the pain. I want to understand the pain. I want to feel every crevice of the human experience as it biologically will offer. I want to lean in. But then I hear stories from friends who tell me that decreasing the pain via intervention allowed them to be more present as their child entered this physical world. What a new idea for me to consider—less pain could mean a path to feeling more.
Further Listening
In this piece, I mention that after I was widowed in 2016, I joined a writing group for grievers. That course was Refuge in Grief led by Megan Devine. The daily prompts gave me a reason to wake up in the morning and being part of a group of individuals sharing their experiences with the death of a loved one saved me spiritually. It also showed me how impactful writing in community can be.
A few months ago, I reconnected with one of the people I met in that group—the artist and beautiful feeler and thinker Allison Adams. She brought me onto her podcast to talk about inherited memory and the alchemy of storytelling. We also spent time reminiscing on the unique way in which we met. I encourage you to take some time with her Substack (Allison’s Substack) where she explores transformation through creativity. You can listen to our conversation there as well.
Beautiful, Rachael! I wish you all joy and blessings for the coming transformation—no less miraculous for being natural and ordinary—your pain is soon to undergo.