what grief gifts us

thoughts + photos from Berlin

A quick note about the below piece: I’ve been writing about our IVF journey a lot in the past few months to help me process my feelings, but I want to acknowledge that this newsletter is broader and inclusive of much more than that (writer insecurities). Despite my very specific circumstances, my hope is that everyone can find something for themselves in the writing and evoked feelings. That said, this will be my last post about this topic for a bit and I’m excited to share some new things with you all in the coming weeks. PS- weekly feels is back / scroll all the way to the bottom! xx

love to you all for the beginning of winter & the holidays ✨

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In November, Berlin is beautiful with its soft orange light and crumpled leaves. The air is cold but welcoming, unlike London, unlike the bitter winds on the plains of Colorado.

In Berlin, I drink the sky and feel the rain like velvet on my skin: a gentle caress, a companion, a longed-for greeting. Light leaves too soon, and candles are lit in its place. Streetlamps flicker awake and wash cobblestones in gold, making even the shadows appear friendlier. The owner of the bookstore in Bergmannkiez puts out ashtrays and bottles of wine.

Dark is irrelevant.

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A few days after our failed IVF cycle, I contacted a pilot friend who offered to let me ride standby on a flight. I thought two weeks away from Los Angeles could cure me. Naive, of course. Grief can’t be left behind at an airport. Yet we create our own realities when we’re desperate, which I was.

After October, I ached to escape. I wanted (needed) a week or two or a lifetime away from IVF, from trying to have a baby. Three years is too long. Too consuming. If you don’t know this journey, or you’ve chosen to be childless, I envy you. The depression is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The depth of exhaustion has no limit until it does.

Infertility is weird in this way—it’s not an obvious wound; instead, it’s ongoing. And it comes with a mixed bag of shame. How can you long for children and be convinced to spend money you don’t have to create them, all the while being a woman with career aspirations and a yearning for independence? These are the questions that haunt me. Infertility is also a reminder that people pity you, at no fault of their own, of course. It’s just that no one really knows what to say. Because who can ever really know what to say?

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Before Berlin, I spent a few days in London, a city where I lived for two years in my twenties. Back then, I fell in love hard and fast—with books and rain and the prospect of truly making it as a writer. I hadn’t returned since grad school. I stayed with friends and drank too much wine and tried to find my reflection in the window of my old flat, except the glass was dirty. Even the weather felt different. More depressing. I got annoyed at the crowded tube stops and mud-covered stairs and couldn’t seem to pinpoint what I used to love about my life there.

In Berlin though, I found the feeling I was searching for. I’m a sucker for new cities, and I was quickly seduced. I stayed in an attic apartment overlooking Mauerpark, where I planned to work on a novel. I stopped drinking alcohol and fell asleep reading Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh. The silence was terrifying but also comforting. I was so alone with only the apartment to cradle me. I put on a record in the living room and pretended it was home.

the coziest attic apartment

I was there for a week, and each morning, my body refused to wake. Is it the jet lag? I wondered. I found I wanted to stay in bed but then cursed myself for wasting the few hours of daylight. I got up, got out. Fresh air. No makeup. A cup of coffee. By the fourth day, I’d walked over fifteen miles. Bookstores saved me. Cafes and museums, too. I dipped inside, somewhere, anywhere, ordered a latte, browsed stacks of books, wandered art exhibits. Then I stepped back outside. I challenged myself to outpace my thoughts. This never worked of course, but the cold helped soften my mind, made everything blurry around the edges.

Eventually, I became frustrated. I love traveling but I wasn’t loving this trip. It was annoying because I was so smitten with Berlin and wanted to bottle the city up or, better yet, move there. But I was also grieving. There were mothers with strollers at every coffee shop and parents bundling their children in scarves on the wooden playgrounds. I couldn’t escape my jealousy, my longings. The truth was everywhere, even in the one place I begged it not to be.

It didn’t feel fair that infertility was stealing my love for travel, too, after taking so much already. I hadn’t been abroad since before the pandemic, before we started trying for a baby. The last time I wandered foreign streets, I didn’t know what existed for my life. I didn’t know who I’d become. I didn’t know this part of the story.

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Weeks later, while sitting on a beach in Los Angeles. It's December and the waves are placid, the sky painted pink. I can’t stop thinking about my trip and how places I loved so dearly could make me feel so sad. Only then did I realize that I felt sad because I was sad. I still am. And that is okay.

Grief doesn’t obey our wishes or commands. While travel can serve as a portal, we can’t escape our feelings or real lives. I left because I was desperate to return to the before, to rewrite history, to be the person I was before IVF.

But the woman who traveled two months ago was not the same woman who traveled in 2017. She is gone. She served her purpose. She was beautiful and light and unknowing of what was up ahead. But she was also a smaller version of who I have become, of who I will be.

And so is the version of me right now, writing these words. I am bigger than who I was but smaller than who I will become. We all are. No matter where we’re at in life—grieving or celebrating, expanding or contracting. It can feel so complicated, but the more I think about it, the more it seems simple:

We will never stay the same, and that itself offers us freedom. We don’t have to pretend. We can be who we are right now, in this moment, with all our big and complex feelings because nothing is permanent. It won’t always be this way.

And that’s the gift of grief: transformation, expansion. The sadness marks us, but then the light enters in. We become bigger so that we can hold space for all of it. We discover love and joy feel bigger. More precious. More vibrant. Just more.

In the meantime though, it’s okay to miss our old selves. It’s okay to feel sad and wish for the reflection in the mirror to look like a different or more familiar version of our face. That’s part of living and growing into who we are meant to become. We can’t escape ourselves or our feelings.

But we can grow bigger.

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I’m so excited to bring back this portion of the newsletter. Below are a few songs, movies, and books that have moved me in the past week. I hope you’ll share some of your own recommendations in the comments below. xx

Watch: The Family Stone. Last night, I rewatched this film for the first time in over a decade (currently on Hulu). One scene that particularly stuck with me is when Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Ben (Luke Wilson) are cuddling in bed and sing repeat the sounding of joy over and over again as the family dynamics begin to crash around them. This, and Diane Keaton’s final line of the film, which is stated amidst everyone’s chaos and grief: It’s snowing.

Read: Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh. This one is super dystopian and creepy. It's a perfect winter read.

Listen: I have two for you this week. First is the most perfect song to welcome winter solstice by

FogChaser

. Second, is this emotional song by Ryan Nealon. For many of us, the end of the year and the holidays are a reminder of loved ones who are no longer with us. This helps put words to these impossible emotions.