One Stitch, Two Stitch
When I gave birth to Maya, I came out with some pretty bad injuries that it took me an entire year to recover.
I remember asking every woman I knew who would give birth after me "how was it? any stitches?" and it felt like they all said "one or two, not too bad".
I was jealous, ashamed and alone.
I even resented them and their one-stitched vaginas a little, too.
Until my one friend years later had the exact same experience as me. Traumatic, and a long recovery. And there I was, almost a little happy and relieved about it.
It's taken me years to grapple with those feelings and why I had them. Why would I take any bit of what felt like joy in another's suffering?
More recently, I began to realize why.
I realized that what I had I wanted was not for my friend to feel pain or to suffer. It wasn’t that at all.
It was that I wanted to not feel so alone in MY pain, in MY suffering.
And I thought I needed others to experience it too for that to happen.
It’s been 14 years since then and I see and manage my pain much differently now, every new pain experience a new challenge.
As we speak, the pain in this world is increasing.
Tremendously.
And how we react to each other may begin to reflect that pain.
Money, job loss, grief, illness.
It’s going to be hard to feel joy for someone else, when we’re hurting.
Forgetting so easily that it's not that we want others to suffer WITH us,
We just want to feel less alone.
It's going to take a lot of us in the coming days to be supportive of each other.
To feel jealousy, yet cheer her on.
To have loss, yet to celebrate their win.
To feel ok and remember that there are many who are not. They are not ok at all.
To let grief and joy dance together.
To let the wins lead us to help those who have lost.
Sure, we’re in this together.
But it sure looks different for each of us. We must stay aware of that.
Because it has never been about how much pain and suffering we endure together, experiencing it all the same. It has to be about how we get to the other side, together.
In the grief.
In the joy.
One stitch, two stitch. Twenty.
