Je cherche les mots pour décrire le poids du désespoir.

En anglais: I search for the words to describe the weight of despair.

Today I sense the faint crampy sensation of my cyclical ovulation, an echo of the unexpected crampy sensation that began on this day a year ago when I was approximately five and a half weeks pregnant. It was a short-lived pregnancy, but long enough to redirect my life’s trajectory and steer our indefinite international travel plans toward a home base. The row of eventful dominoes in that unrealized parallel timeline could have included a new birthday to celebrate near my husband’s birthday, and a new great-grandchild for my last beloved grandmother to bless before she herself left the party.

Needless to say, I rolled into the 2023 action with deep pangs of disappointment, and that’s nothing to say of the year’s continuation, or conclusion. 2023 was also my fifth year of grappling with the sticky tendrils of a brain injury and its string of sneaky symptoms, thankfully less severe than the first two years.

I find words much easier now than I could in 2019, largely thanks to learning ASL in 2020 to help bridge and reroute those injured linguistic synapses. But I continue to search for words to map and bridge meaning from the reroutes I’ve traversed. Words sufficient to tell the whole story. Words to paint newfound perspective.

I’m grateful to encounter another new year in 2024, and I look forward to surprising myself in many creative ways.

January 2023 Photo taken in the bathroom of an apartment in Brighton, England. Caption reads in French: Je cherche un deuxième essai // Translated English: I’m looking for a second try.