Weathering the Storm

You could say that I have been living in survival mode for the past few years. From our infertility journey to our miscarriage to the loss of Oliver, it started to feel like I was waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Psychologists believe that this is just the brain’s way of coping. Normally your brain is in learning mode but when you experience trauma your brain goes into survival mode. There are certainly varying degrees of this, the worst, of course, being PTSD but the way it affects you and your everyday life are very similar. When the brain is in survival mode, it starts expecting bad things to happen and perceives negatively that might not actually be negative at all. It’s the brain’s way of protecting you from future trauma.

When we lost Oliver and my body had been through physical and emotional trauma my brain shifted to survival mode. I think the fact that we had lost the twins within the same year meant that my brain could reason that trauma and loss was going to continue to happen to me so I should protect myself against it.

So that’s how I functioned, day in and day out. On some level I felt like I was moving forward because we were pursuing adoption and I was still getting up every day and going to work but the reality was much different. The adoption process gave me something else to occupy my mind and also allowed me to focus on something that at first I could control. I could fill out the paperwork and organize the home study. The problem only came when the planning and preparing part was over and then we just had to wait.

We applied for case after case and although there was no actual trauma occurring I think over time as we heard that we had not been picked it was like my brain got confirmation that “things just weren’t going to work out”.

Then one day we got the call, we had been picked; I don’t think my brain could actually process it. Thankfully, the time from when Jackson’s birth mom chose us to when he was born was just 6 weeks because by the end I felt like I was losing my mind. I couldn’t sleep, I spent hours upon hours worrying about all the things that could go wrong. I kept telling people I just need him to get here so I know he’s okay. I was never concerned that his birth mom would change her mind but more that something would go wrong in the pregnancy or labor.

Finally, the day came and Jackson was and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, only later to discover that now I had a whole new list of things to be anxious about. All in all, I managed my anxiety pretty well but every so often it would overwhelm me and I would be terrified something bad was going to happen to him. Over time these moments became less and less but what I discovered was that the trauma of the last few years had left me almost holding my breath for the next bad thing to happen. I eventually rationalized that it was unlikely that something bad would happen to Jackson but it would appear in other areas of my life instead.

In the last few months what I have discovered is that I had lived so long in survival mode than I wasn’t sure how to live any other way. I knew that by this point in my journey it wasn’t about the grief or loss anymore, it was about seeing things from a different perspective. It was only through countless hours of prayer, discipleship, and therapy that I had even managed to get to where I was in my walk but I knew that this time it was my choice.

There was one particular day that it became really apparent to me. I was sat in my living room with both our kids and I realized that life was good and I mean really good. God had answered my prayers in abundance. He had given us a house that I could never have dreamed of owning, He gave us 2 beautiful children who are truly gifts from God, he gave us incredible relationships with their birth families and has exceeded my expectations over and over again. In that moment I realized that I had to choose to live this life, not the life my past experience or fears had told me I was living but actually living the life right in front of me.

I don’t know where you are right now, maybe you have just experienced a traumatic loss or maybe it was many years ago now. What I would want to ask you though, is what can you choose today? Can you choose to find a counselor to help you process what has happened? Could you choose to reach out to someone who knows what you are going through and ask them to pray for you? Or like me is it time to choose to see the life that’s right in front of you and not the life your experiences and fears are telling you is real?

You are a survivor, you have struggled but you have survived. You have weathered the storms of life and although you may still have the scars you are making it through. There will be hard days and better days but know that you are not alone and one day the storm will pass and the sun will rise again. I have been on both sides of the storm and the one thing I know is that eventually the storm passes and the sun begins to shine again.