12 weeks, Post-Miscarriage

I’m super proud of my current fitness, mentally and physically. It feels like a lifetime, it also feels like yesterday, but my miscarriage was only 12 short weeks ago.

I’ve had intense moments in my life, disordered eating, sexual assault, but this was entirely different and the emotions that came with it didn’t have a healthy hormonal foundation to stand on as my body changed post pregnancy. Even being trained as a birth & loss doula, I didn’t have words of comfort for myself.

In the early weeks of grief, my mind went to depths I didn’t know it had. There were a lot of moments, actually every day, where me not being here sounded like it would be best for everyone. I withdrew from friends, I withdrew from family, I withdrew from myself.

I took my nebulous of emotions, depression, anger, sadness, out on my marriage, on my body through a resurgence of ED behavior, and wanted to spend every day in bed or just let the shower carry me down the drain.

But my husband loved me the whole time. Even when I screamed at him. Even when I sobbed for days. Even when I couldn’t leave bed. He loved me so hard it made a little light crack in and it saved me.

I needed help, and started in an outpatient, intensive therapy that has helped me love myself again. I am so privileged to be working with a therapist who is also a female runner, who is gentle but firm, who connects me with nutritionist and other support people, and who sends me notes like:

“Keep your head up and realize that you are making progress. This journey is a gradual process.”

“You have resiliency and will get through this.”

Therapy has made me question a lot of things and lately I’ve wondered if I ever really loved myself or if I just parroted self love lines that I wished I believed. When my therapist listed off a series of statements describing someone with positive self esteem I wept. It was the first time I realized just how far away I was from that elusive goal of self acceptance.

Focusing on marathon training has been like a life jacket in a tsunami. 12 weeks ago my total mileage was 6. Today my long run was over 10. I totaled 28 for the week. That’s a win. I am not healed, but I am healing. Little by little, therapy session by session, mile by mile I can feel the little cracks of myself start to come back together, kintsukuroi style.

— M.L.