Following October Back to Myself

Fall came again, and I let go again.

I looked out the window and saw that it was fall. Autumn came late this year, if it’s even here yet at all. It was oppressively hot through September, and even October has largely consisted of days in the eighties, with merciful reprieves from the sun in the morning and evening. I find myself finally ready to cocoon.

Every year around mid-summer, I convince myself that this is the year I will cling stubbornly and fiercely to the warmth, that I will not relinquish it and slide into cooler weather. I cannot imagine how I would ever even crave such a thing. And every year, it happens, the insanity of the neurotic mind drowning out the whispers of, “Remember? This happens over and over again, and every time, it’s okay.”

I am always ready for fall. At first the idea of more darkness and less activity, more hibernating and stillness and less energy and light feels oppressive. And then I stand at the edge of the water, close my eyes, lean back, and fall into it. The older I get, the more I have learned to be soothed by the rising and falling of every day, every season, every cycle. I crave the rituals of change in my bones, even if my mind temporarily protests it.

This October I need to fall back even more than usual. (Ugh, excuse the inadvertent daylight savings pun, which reminds me—THAT is something I will never, ever cease to protest and resist). This October is for trust and letting go, and accepting that chapters are ending. Yes, ending; they are, and it’s okay, it’s time to accept it. This is what we do; turn pages and begin new chapters and finish books or replace them on the shelves halfway through because life is too short for uninteresting fiction. This is when we write new books.

I looked out the window and saw that it was fall, that the leaves were finally turning red and gold after taking their time, stubbornly clinging to summer in their own way. I didn’t miss it—there is still time to savor it.

I notice the trees shining against the mountains and feel that pang of gratitude that I live somewhere so beautiful. I am driving to the vet with my remaining dog, Winnie, on my lap. Yes, I realize this is inadvisable, but she has an ear infection and she is grieving and confused from the trauma of losing Tigger. She has been unsettled, following me everywhere, always on my lap, looking past whoever has entered through the door to see if he is behind them. (Five days after I wrote this, I think maybe she is beginning to move on. I feel simultaneously heartbroken and relieved.)

It’s a short drive and I’ll allow her this comfort. We sit at a stoplight facing west and I take in the beauty sharply; the colors snap me out of forgetfulness, and also transport me to another moment that felt exactly like this, perhaps it was even very same day in October, the 9th, in 2005. 19 years ago. Knowing the uncanny way my memory works, surely it must have been the exact same day.

Let’s say that it was.

On October 9th, 2005, I was 27 and was having a very early miscarriage. There is a whole story to tell about that first one, the one before my oldest child, the pregnancy I sensed immediately but confirmed all alone in a hotel room in Rapid City, South Dakota with my mom outside the bathroom door. A pregnancy just we two contemplated and savored for 48 hours before it ended just as it began.

That next week, I went to work, teaching preschool music classes and doing music therapy for children with special needs. On this particular day, I found myself in a middle school bathroom, checking my bleeding and feeling a wave of pity for myself. Despair, mourning, anger, bitterness (it wasn’t fair; so many women who wanted babies couldn’t have them, and so many teenagers were carelessly getting pregnant with babies they couldn’t care for), and then immediately something shifted.

I could hear the cacophony of middle schoolers in the hallway, and it transported me back to the hell of junior high in the early 90s. That lost sensation of not knowing where you belong, assuming the answer is nowhere, that hollow feeling of not being at home in your own body, the disorientation of being an undiagnosed neurodivergent young adolescent. Once upon a time, I was a 12-year-old girl perched on a similar toilet with peach stall doors and ugly tile, and I was lamenting the crimson streaks that had overtaken my body with relentless disruption. I shuddered at the memory from my vantage point as an adult woman.

Suddenly, a truth pierced the cloud of my emotions: I was grateful to be a 27-year-old woman bleeding out a pregnancy instead of a 7th grade girl with her period in a school that felt like a bad dream. I preferred it here. I would rather be here, now: me, an adult grieving a failed pregnancy, that lost adolescent child in the rear view mirror (and, let’s be honest, still buried deep within waiting for her turn to speak).

The next morning, I drove to toddler music class and noticed that it was fall. The aspens were at their peak, bright sunshine yellow and rich gold leaves with mid-morning light dancing off them. I caught my breath and for perhaps the first time understood that two opposites could be true: I am sad and scared and want to be pregnant and I am not pregnant and what if I will never again be pregnant? / It is a gorgeous fall day and I am alive; I am here, I am part of this beauty.

Six months later celebrating the 20-week ultrasound that announced my first baby girl, with yet another dog love from years past.

I had that exact same sensation at the stoplight today with my anxious small dog perched on my lap, the vibrant autumn leaves out the front windshield over her head. I am grateful that I am not a 27-year-old woman in a middle school losing a pregnancy. I am grateful that I am a 46-year-old woman who has been divorced twice since that day, who is a single mom of teenage girls, who just said goodbye to her beloved companion dog.

I would not choose to go back to middle school and repeat it all over again. I would not choose to start motherhood over and do it again. I am content here, right now, in my late forties, with one daughter and one dog under my roof, finding my way again and again, remembering every October that, yes, fall is here once more, and it is beautiful.

XOXO,
Steph

Connect with me in real life!

• Tickets for Moms Unhinged: I am hosting 10/17 at Fraco’s in Littleton

• Tickets for Comedy Coven on 10/25 at the Dairy Arts Center

• Join The Mother Plus Podcast online for a FREE Rituals Week beginning 10/23!

• Sign up for Nourish Your Creative Fire, a two-hour mini-retreat for moms with movement, meditation, journaling, and sound on 10/23 at Sunny Isle Yoga

• Tickets for Listen To Your Mother Boulder on 11/20 at the Dairy Arts Center