Sadly, miscarriage and pregnancy loss are an all-too-common reality all around the world, and I can count myself among that number. In hospital chaplaincy I have found people like me who have felt that pain and emptiness – some who have been able to nurture a living child, and some who have not. Regardless of […]
On what was supposed to be my daughter’s due date, we went up the hill on our farm. My spouse brought his banjo to play “I’ll Fly Away,” but our almost 2.5 year old toddler wanted to play music too, so some of the ritual and liturgy I planned for the three of us fell […]
We found out we were pregnant the day Mary Oliver died, life entering into this world and life leaving. Opening pink box after pink box just to be sure, I began to have the best and worst feelings of my life, wanting to constantly vomit and simultaneously filled with revolutionary hope. This was our polar […]
My body is heavy this Advent. Mary of Nazareth’s body was heavy too, or so we imagine in Advent. She is often shown so young and beautiful, demure and obedient, glowing though that may be the halo more than the pregnancy. If we have ever met a real live pregnant woman, we might more […]
“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the […]
I was in a church meeting when I found out I was having a miscarriage. I had stepped out of the conference room at our diocesan offices when my phone rang, assuming it was the fertility clinic calling to give instructions for starting the next round of medications. We had been told that the last […]
In the midst of our darkest days of navigating our way through miscarriage, failed IVF treatments, and trying to decide how we felt about adoption, an opportunity arose for my husband and me to travel to Israel on an interfaith delegation of peace with three other Northern Virginian clergy. One of the first stops on […]
I pushed back from the table, breathless at what I had just seen. It was July 2011, and I was sitting in a room at Duke University with dozens of other female ministers. We were gathered for the last morning of The Young Clergy Women Project conference, and keynoter Winnie Varghese had invited us all […]
It was Sunday morning, eight weeks from my last menstrual period, three weeks since the first faintly pink positive result appeared, ten days since the darkened line confirmed it, and a measly 24 hours until my first prenatal appointment. It was Sunday morning, and I was bleeding. Marrett and I had been trying for this […]
On December 19, 2012, I woke up early, went to the bathroom and crawled back into my warm bed in my dark bedroom. Then I realized that I was bleeding. This normally wouldn’t be a shock to a woman of my age – menstrual bleeding is to be expected once every 28 days or so. […]
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