It’s almost summer and I can feel it in the flowers, from the river. I have been tired, overworked and unsure of my next big steps. There are too many to choose from, I can only take small ones. So, as often happens at times of radical growth and change, my Big Long Open Gash is recalibrating.

I do miss the simpler times, times when I was younger, freer and with less responsibility. I feel a great pull to take things away, off my plate, to calm myself and my environment. Though we live in such a lush place right on the river, the city of New York sits right over the hill, beckoning, pulsing, shining.

Meanwhile, it’s Sunday, and I just want to stop everything in my life and melt into these endless hours. I don’t want to work on anything, and yet I have commitments I’ve made, meetings to take, many emails to send and multiple projects to move forward.

All I want is to live here in my home, writing my books, bringing people together, creating beauty and community and family and life. Beautiful life. It aches, at this time. My heart aches thinking of all that I’ve been through and from whence I have just come. I haven’t told you this explicitly. I was pregnant over Christmas. I went to Australia and lost a little beating heart there. Part of me wishes I never saw that little flicker on a dark monitor in Mount Gambier. Part of me wishes I never left the green hills of Pennsylvania for my first home.

But my family were there, and I had to go. It had been two years since I’d been back. It’s getting easier now to see my childhood home. I used to be sad that the color of the walls kept changing, that the furniture kept shifting, that my bedroom wasn’t mine anymore, that I slept in the room where I once learnt piano. I broke down in tears once in the kitchen late after a long haul flight because the clock wasn’t on the wall where it used to be, and my eyes couldn’t find it. Small things. Big things.

I try to find time to write, but so many other things fill my time now. I sneak hours in the morning and at night, and my eyes well with water when I admit that I don’t write as much as I want, that I feel disconnected from my truth, from my honesty, from who I am. I haven’t told you that I was pregnant, because to be honest I could hardly believe that I had lost something so precious. I have dreamt of being a mother for many years, perhaps for as long as I can remember. It’s in our bones, we women, little or tall.

I don’t know what else to tell you, except that this experience has been one of the most challenging times in my entire life, condensed into a series of months. I’ve never known grief like that. I’ve never known loss like that. I’ve never known the blunt hand of death, and life, like that. I learnt a lot about letting go, about letting things be, about recalibrating, realigning, recreating. “It wasn’t the right time.” “I’m glad we have these extra months.” “Nature knows best,” people tell me.

All I could tell myself was Go through the forest. Do not turn back. Do not stop. Keep moving. You are safe. You are loved. You are protected. The grieving process was sly and surprising. The first week I went up and down, repelled by anything to do with babies, the next moment talking about sweet names again. The weeks following I could speak about the experience as if I had perspective, as if it was done and I was through. Little did I know that the mass of dark trees would suddenly appear one Monday night in the early hours across the horizon of my consciousness.

Oh, I have arrived.

I went through that forest and out the other side, having felt all of the pain, all of the hurt, all of the sense of injustice, and all of the shame. Life is perfect, how could this have happened? I had to come to terms with a voice inside me that said yes, you too are mortal and subject to the forces of life and death. I started reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying amongst countless books on pregnancy, birth, motherhood and parenting. In dealing with the great death of a tiny being, I filled myself with knowledge of life. I never knew the valleys of human existence could dip so deep.

What now? I am stronger. I am still healing, and hurting. Every month when I bleed it seems a new facet of sadness expresses itself. The well goes deep. I cry as I write this. I can’t stop the water, nor do I want to. My love is out at the store, wearing his hat with the feathers in it, finding food for dinner. Our ‘best being’ Joseph Peter is here for a day or so. We sit at the kitchen table sharing the small loaf of bread I baked this morning, dipping it in oil and salt, slathering it with coconut oil and raw honey, and drinking the beetroot juice that Isaac has made.

He cooks for me whenever he is here, and it’s such nourishment he gives to me. I can’t explain the love we share, it’s not even ‘his’ love, nor ‘my’ love, just an all encompassing love that floats us on an ocean of grace, gratitude, peace and security. I want to tell you more about him, and us, as time passes. It’s true that across the five year span that has passed since I moved to this country, since I began this blog, since I co-created Paper Castle Press, much has happened: so much that my life and myself have changed dramatically, and I have to check in with myself, and you, every so often, to make sure I’m still telling the truth. My truth.

It’s easy to pretend that everything’s okay, that one can keep spinning plates without smashing one, even though your arms are getting heavy and you’re not sure you’re meant for that job. I am not a CEO, nor am I anything much else but she who writes, loves, lives lovingly and shares her view from this particular crux of life. I don’t want a lot. In fact, I want to rewind and retune, go back to the simpler things, slow down and savor more of this nowness called life.

This is what I’ll continue to be, and strive to keep doing. Baking bread, being the woman that I am, and sharing myself freely. You know me well enough now that I can’t keep things bottled in. I’ll die somewhere if I do. Here’s to honesty, freedom, simplicity and beauty. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my secret sooner. It feels so good to open up in that place of the heart.