Passing Weeks

As the weeks progressed, life became a little bit easier for Elan. But there were constant reminders of her loss. As Elan stepped out of the shower one morning, she noticed that her breasts that were once swollen and enlarged through pregnancy were now shrinking and returning to their pre-pregnancy size. The areolas around her nipples had faded from their dark tan appearance and returned to their light pink color. Her swollen and slightly protruding belly began to deflate. These things reminded Elan of the joy and excitement of her pregnancy and the deep sense of loss she now felt. Work became a distraction. The constant emergencies that popped up daily filled her with some sense of purpose even though work did not carry the same weight it once had in her life. The “emergencies” did not seem as important. She became annoyed and anxious at every ping alerting her to a new email and every ring of the phone. Even so, Elan reverted to her same pattern of people pleasing and goal attainment. She came into the office early, worked through lunch, and stayed late to try to climb out of the hole that her leave for the miscarriage created. Although work was a much-needed distraction from her current pain, the constant barrage upon her return left her exhausted.

One weekday morning as Elan felt the anxiety rising her body as she tried to get ready for work, she decided that this was the day she would go for a morning run. Elan would often find an excuse not to run during the week. She often relied on her common bank of excuses to not run in the mornings of being too tired or needing to get into the office early to finish a project. She normally saved any runs for the weekend. But today was different. She almost felt like she could not make it into work unless she did something to soothe that feeling that she was about to jump out of her skin, or something was crawling all over her. She needed to run to relieve the angst. She continued the 5k run/walk program that she had started earlier. This time it was three-minute walk and seven-minute run repeated three times. It was slow. But Elan kept going. She felt each foot land one the pavement in front of the other on this crisp morning where she could see her breath. The repetition of the movement calmed Elan. As she returned home, she felt a renewed energy that she could go to work and make it through the day. She felt reenergized even if just for a few hours.

Elan arrived at work, grabbed her second cup of coffee with two sugars and two creams, powered up her computer, and turned on some music to keep the positive energy flowing. Her supervisor then walked into her office to let her know that the company fired her friend Joey. Unbeknownst to her supervisor, Joey and Elan had become quite close over the past year. Elan and Joey worked on many projects together. Elan told Joey about her pregnancy and miscarriage. Although Elan was thankful that she still had her own job and was very much aware that her friend had just received terrible news, she worried. This company Elan had been working at for only a year seemed to fire people on a weekly basis. There did not seem to be any real reasons for the constant firings except for the temperament of upper management. Elan then thought about her life decisions. She had traded in a lucrative career to work as a career counsel at a law school in a small town and now as in-house counsel at a small real estate company where she made half of her former law firm salary. She had decided to throw everything away to try to give starting a family her all. Elan went through so much medical testing, invasive procedures, and even a surgery. The IVF hormones that her husband injected into her belly and buttocks were painful and bruised her body. Elan had sacrificed her career and her body to try to have a baby. The only thing she had to show for it is the forty pounds she had gained through the years of fertility treatments and a job that seemed to let people go not on performance but on how the wind blew any given day. Elan always tried to rationalize and regroup. She thought to herself, she could only control her controllables, and the rest was outside her hands. She also thought, just keep going and put one foot in front of the other and maybe the answers would come.