Posted on by shirindawna

hello darkness, my old friend.

one thing i’ve noticed over the years is how any loss sends me into a spiral where i’m experiencing all my losses again. i can’t tell where one loss ends and another begins. i first noticed it after the breakup following my dad’s passing. and again with then the breakup after that…but it’s not the same, is it? with a breakup there’s a choice. there’s no choice when it comes to death. and yet.

and yet…

they intertwine.

loss of a relationship.

loss of a parent.

loss of a pregnancy.

loss of trust.

loss of innocence.

it’s all profound loss.

i walked through cancer with my baba and then experienced it myself. two very different experiences with two very different outcomes. and yet, that c word takes me to my knees every time i hear it.

it’s been over 12 years since my dad passed…and 8 years since my own diagnosis. some days it feels like another lifetime, some days it feels like yesterday. time and space warp and merge, each subsequent loss stacks on top of the ones that came before. the pain is deep, isolating, and indescribable. there’s a heaviness to the unresolved feelings.

everyone claims it gets easier. with time, space, and peace, we heal. everyone is a psychic when you’re sad.

but it’s not true…the grief never shrinks; you just grow around it. and since grief is love maybe that’s the best we can hope for?

it leaves me to wonder, with all this loss, the old and the new…

is all lost?

Posted on by shirindawna · 16 Comments

the call is coming from inside the house.

this is a hard one to write.

my head is still spinning and i don’t even know where to start, but writing is my therapy so i need to get it out…

earlier this week, someone i considered a close friend expressed that my public breastfeeding (of my almost 4 year old) makes her uncomfortable and voted that i wean my child. (it is an election year after all, things are gonna get weird).

i very clearly stated that i’m not at all uncomfortable. and there is no need to spend time with me if it’s an issue for her.

also, and here’s the part that matters to me, my body went through infertility. and cancer. it survived. and is alive! and i will never ever feel shame for using my breasts, AS INTENDED.

when i shared with her that this mattered to me deeply…that i still feel like my body failed me with cancer, and not being about to get and stay pregnant on my own. after miscarriages, and years, and tears, it’s finally something my body can do and provide for my child. i’m proud of that. i’m thrilled about that. i was not able to use my own eggs to have my child. i LOVE that my body produces milk and nourishment and comfort for him. her response was something along the lines of: my feelings are my own and not attached to your story.

true.

and so dismissive.

i don’t expect my friends to agree with every choice i make ~ that would be crazy…AND i was terribly hurt by the nature of her response. if your feelings are your own and you’re not attaching them to my story, then why did you feel the need to share with me? what exactly was the goal? if not to shame me and try and make me feel weird about my choices? (which i don’t. and won’t. i feel hurt and sad that a “friend” is so judgmental and quick to dismiss vulnerability.)

even more unfortunate is that my husband watched her roll her eyes the last time we were together and i breastfed my son.

(before you ask, yes. she’s a mom.)

the funny thing is, my husband always assumed someone would say something to me about breastfeeding at some point.

…we just NEVER ever thought it was going to come from someone who was inside our circle.

i honestly thought we were past the point of telling women what to do with their bodies. this will never compute for me. a completely asexual activity (literally, feeding my child) is somehow seen as something…inappropriate?

what a weird thing to care about.

so…where do we go from here?

Posted on by shirindawna

queens.

somewhere deep in the colorado rockies, the second group of people arrived. i was part of the first group whose flights had come in earlier in the day.

she burst into the room. she was loud. she was funny. she was furious that we had to take turns showering – she exclaimed that she needed two showers a day and this proposed schedule simply wouldn’t work for her. when asked to choose a nickname for the week, she demanded we call her “queens.” i loved her immediately.

we were at cancer camp. where they fling a bunch of strangers together for a week in the wilderness and make you do outdoorsy things (rock climbing, in our case). group dynamics can be so strange. but for us, it was magic. we all fell in love. some love stories went deeper than others, like ours.

i don’t remember the first words we exchanged. i don’t recall what we initially connected over. i won’t ever forget those late nights of talking. playing games. and the most inappropriate (and vulgar) things i’ve possibly ever heard. the years of text exchanges after that first magical week. the trip to nyc where i was recovering from a devastating miscarriage and she was about to go in for her latest scan. there was a longstanding joke about dicks & feet and i’m no longer sure where it originated, but i think it was one of those late nights in the mountains. there was so much laughter. there were so many tears. we lost friends. i made a person.

she loved her people so well. and if you were lucky enough to be in her orbit, she would tell you how special you were, all the time. she had no ego, she just loved. even in some of my darkest and brattiest moments (infertility is hard, and hearing about others getting pregnant did not result in me being my best self or handling the news with grace), she let me carry on and just loved me. and when the moment called for it, she commiserated.

including this next image because she sent it to me in our text thread.

i still can’t wrap my head around her being gone. it will never make sense to me. i can’t fathom visiting new york and not seeing her. who else is going to try and convince me that all the bread at the bakery is gluten-free (when it very clearly isn’t), milkshakes make a pregnancy stick, and that dating rappers is a good idea?

i scroll through our messages every few months (i can’t bring myself to delete them). gosh, she was funny. and wild. in all the best ways.

her death broke up the band. we lost others over the years, but she was the glue holding us together. she’s the one who arranged the video calls. she’s the one who forced me out of my bubble. she’s the one whose death i can still barely talk about, let alone accept.

nyc won’t be the same without her. and neither will i.

🤍
Posted on by shirindawna

must be something in the water.

recently i’ve received a few unhinged messages from men of my past. i typically find this somewhat entertaining, but i’m noticing that i’m less and less interested in these trauma dumps. sure, everything is copy, but i might be past the age of doing things for the story.

anyway, my husband and i were laughing about this because they all live in the same east coast town. are you guys okay out there?