A year ago today, the date 5/4 sizzled its branding iron stamp into my memory with a very specific association. Maybe you’d say that it’s taken me to the dark side (haha)…or dark-er side. 2023 was the year of some depressing events, no doubt.

I miscarried in January 2023 at 5-6 weeks along (while traveling in England), so then for my second pregnancy of the year, the various medical personnel in Seattle needed the start date of my recent menstrual cycle to calculate the official-ish utero timeline and keep close watch.

May the Fourth it was, and I recited it often.

This is a story I need to share, however gradually. Being silent for a year (or more) has been torturous—a fun bonus round of isolation “post”-concussion and “post”-pandemic—yet that silence has also been necessary for me to recover and navigate how to tell this story. The circumstances, which led me to not having a child now, multiply complex and exponential emotions. Saying goodbye to two grandmothers (the last-standers of all my grandparents) in the remaining months of 2023 swept me further out to the depths of a tempestuous, uncharted ocean of grief.

I’ve managed to buoy and bob back to shore, but golly, I’m still coughing up saltwater. I feel a little more courageous to share about it publicly today, since inquiring minds are curious about my uterus… So, here’s a story. Or, the start of a story. I’ll have more to say when I’m ready. Or not.

This photo is from my ultrasound appointment in late June, where I watched a teeny tiny electro pulse flutter inside me. This is now an emptiness I carry and hold close because there’s not a day I don’t think about this little lightbulb.