When I first found out the baby we were expecting wasn’t actually going to be joining us on this side of the threshold, it took a lot of work for my mind to rearrange the pieces to accommodate for such a tremendous and unexpected loss. When, a few short months later, I would suddenly and tragically lose the one thing I’d come to rely on as absolute, I did the only thing I could which was to fight like hell.

One full year ago. The baby would have been at least six months old by now.

The day I took the pregnancy test, I told myself to just surrender. To embrace all the change this baby was sure to bring. I had a feeling that little life was going to alter our reality in a substantial and significant way. And while my instincts couldn’t have been more accurate, the picture my mind created of these anticipated transformations could not be more drastically different than the present reality in which I find myself.

I’ve only a few weeks left here in San Diego. There isn’t much time before our journey across the country begins. I have so much to release prior to departure, so many habits and patterns and stories to leave behind, layers I have yet to shed but that have no real purpose other than to prevent me from realizing my potential. Even my physical body had insulated itself, creating a gesture of softness to compensate for the jagged and brittle interior of a woman with a broken heart. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my fourth baby, and I don’t think a transcontinental relocation will change that. But I’m leaving room for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, permitting myself to truly allow for a different future than the one I had planned will result in the kind of happiness only faith and love can bring forth.

In other words, the kind of happiness that got us this far.