I’m not quite sure when I started holding my breath.
It was far before I heard the words “there’s no longer a heart beat.” And long before the church taught me my body didn’t belong to me.
Perhaps it began that day we pulled into our townhome complex, and realized the fire trucks were there for our house. Or the time I held my breath to hear my parents fighting downstairs.
I’m not quite sure when it started, but it did.
And then it ran rampant.
This holding of breath, as we pause for life’s blows. It’s as if the holding will make the hit land softer, yet it never does. The endless tirade of life circumstances that knock us off our feet, and wipe the air out of lungs.
How do we learn to breathe through it? How do we pause and breathe and feel when we are navigating some of the most difficult situations of our lives?
The loss of a pregnancy. A terrifying diagnoses. The death of someone close to you. The unravelling of your marriage. The end of a friendship. Leaving a community that once meant everything to you. Managing big emotions, alone.
It can feel impossible. Overwhelming. As though the breath is being sucked out of your chest.
It feels suffocating for a time. Often for a long time. And eventually the air starts to seep back in. Your lungs begin to fill again, as you’re able to take those small pauses, those small breaths, and allow yourself to feel again bit by bit as the grief becomes integrated into your life.
The pause becomes you.
The breath becomes you.
The grief becomes you.
And you become a new you.
An achingly beautiful, new version of you.