Emotional Freedom

In late summer 2012 I had bloodwork done before starting birth control for the first time. This was in Findlay, my hometown, before I moved down to Cincinnati and married my charming husband. The doctor told me that I was Vitamin D deficient (shocking) and that I produce very little estrogen naturally and produce more testosterone than normal females my age. “Is that a problem?” I asked. She said it wasn’t problematic now, but could cause issues with getting pregnant in the future. She told me not to worry about it until we decided we wanted to have kids and put me on a birth control with estrogen in it (like more than your garden variety birth control pill amount of estrogen). She said it would “balance me out”. I didn’t realize I was unbalanced. I asked if I should expect to feel any different and she said I might notice I’m more emotional. About a month later I was crying watching a Budweiser commercial and I thought so THIS is what she meant by more emotional.

Some context:

Growing up I had pretty thick skin but I kind of kept to myself. I chose my friends carefully and always went with the quality over quantity mentality when it comes to relationships. In high school I found females to be so overbearing and annoying. Drama is just so unnecessary. And perhaps since I was lacking estrogen to egg me on into the dramatic limelight I stayed in the shadows. Because of my lack of emotions (for lack of any other way to put it) people came to me with their problems because I could be objective. Because of my lack of emotions people saw me as strong and confident and assumed I had everything together. No one ever asked how I was doing because I didn’t wear my emotions on my sleeve. It wasn't that I didn't have emotions, but that I wasn't good at expressing them.

College went much the same way. I was the confident, musical, straight A academic. I had a small friend group and kept everyone else at a safe distance. The friends I allowed to get close peeled back some of the layers and walls I’d built up to realize that I didn’t have the answers to all of life’s questions. However, most people just never took the time to get to know me. Maybe I didn’t let them.

The summer after my freshman year of college I was a camp counselor. I found it very emotionally challenging because I had to peel back some of those layers myself to be real with my campers. I learned a lot about myself and the things I hadn’t allowed myself to feel. I also had some complicated feeling for this guy named Alex Taylor that really messed with my head… I wonder what ever happened to that guy…

So emotional history unpacked a little, going on birth control was like this weird emotional awakening where I wondered is this how the rest of the female population feels? No wonder women are so dramatic. The first couple of months were horrible. I was an emotion-monger. It took awhile for me to kind of reign it in and control my emotions. And then I got SO GOOD at emotion management that I just shut them down. I unintentionally numbed myself to the world. Perhaps on the outside I seemed the same. I still knew how to respond to situations with the correct emotional response, and sometimes I would allow myself to get emotional, but the second I could put my finger on the specific emotion being expressed I would shut it down.

The sad thing is I thought I needed to be in the business of emotion management. Like no one wants to really know what’s going on in your head and heart so keep it on lock down. So when I got pregnant in January I was obviously happy but I didn’t let myself get too deep into that emotion because the logical side of my brain was like hold up, a large percentage of first pregnancies result in miscarriage. Don’t feel happy until you know you’re not in that percentile. Then at the first ultrasound I just knew something wasn’t right. After the second one that feeling was confirmed. When the doctor told us I was going to have a miscarriage I cried because that’s the natural response to loss but again I was thinking pull it together – you’ve known this was coming. It’s not news just because it’s coming out of a doctor’s mouth.

So I did just that. I pulled myself together and went to work where I calmly told my two bosses what was going on. After a few weeks I was just sitting alone in my thoughts in my head with no sounding board to bounce them off of. I was stuck in this place of no one wants to hear this story; it’s not worth sharing. (Side bar – yes, I have a husband. Yes, he is amazing. Yes, he asked me how I was doing and wanted a real response, but No, he’s never had a miscarriage. He’s never felt the betrayal you feel when your body fails you and you personally feel like a failure for not being able to do the one thing that you’re supposed to be able to do as a woman. So don’t for a second think he was absent in this process, but he wasn’t able to empathize and give me the support I needed but refused to ask for.)

At some point during the two days where I missed work trying to breakdown the tissue and pass it via miscarriage pills I had sent an email to our Systems Support Manager at work. She responded and said something very simple to the effect of “I’ve noticed you’ve been out of the office. Is everything ok?” That simple question gave me the permission I needed to not be ok and respond truthfully. I told her I was going through a miscarriage and my body wasn’t responding well to the medication. Her reply was sweet and simple. She told me she was sorry for what I was going through and that she was there if I needed a listening ear or anything at all. I realized in that moment that no one can help you if they don’t know what’s wrong.

I texted my best friend from college, Olivia. I told her what was happening. I told her I was scared. I told her I was angry – at myself? At God? I wasn’t sure. I just wanted it to be over. Her response was so full of emotion it made me break down and sob – like a gut wrenching, good, long, ugly cry for a solid 30 minutes. And you know what? It felt so good. I had held back all that emotion under some guise of prideful determination to be ‘ok’.

I messaged my bible study table and my friend overseas and was met with lots of words of encouragement and several ‘I’ve been there’s. With every passing message I felt lighter and lighter. The Sunday before my D&C we told our small group. It was of course met with more encouragement and reassurance that this was not the end of our story, but the beginning. I allowed myself some emotion that night. I didn’t want to walk this road alone anymore.

The night before the D&C I called my mom and my sister. It’s always harder to deliver tough news to family members. You feel like you’re letting them down somehow and you don’t want to be a disappointment. Both conversations were very encouraging and I left them wondering why I had waited so long to pick up the phone. Riding the waves of those conversations I decided to send an email to my co-workers that I worked with the most in my cubicle area, Patty and Dawn. I knew they’d see it right when they got in in the morning. I told them I was having a D&C and asked that they would keep me in their prayers throughout the next day and I got texts throughout the day of all the things my stuffed llama was doing in my absence. (Dawn gave me a tye dye stuffed llama. He lives in my cubical. It’s normal.) He was taking meetings, stamping checks, writing emails. These silly pictures made me laugh on a day where you’d think I’d be doing anything other than laughing.

The morning of my D&C my friend Kim texted me. It seemed like divine intervention. Alex and I were sitting in the waiting room in silence waiting for me to be called back for prepping and I get a “hey! Haven’t talked in a while. How are you doing?” text. I told her what was going on, and again, I felt lighter.

Two weeks after the D&C I emailed my team at work and the ladies in HR to tell them why I was mysteriously missing several days in several weeks with no explanation. I know I didn’t owe them an explanation but part of me wanted to share my life with them. This was truly the beginning of my healing process.

Over the course of the next few weeks we told some of Alex’s family and other friends we felt should know and I continued to heal.

All that to say, don’t live in the darkness. Don’t walk through life alone with your defenses up. Life is so much more beautiful when you accept love and support from those around you. God designed us to be relational beings; trying to be anything other than that is like telling God his design is flawed. His design isn’t flawed, we are flawed, and we need each other to get through life.

So let your light shine. Don’t hide your emotions. Get out of your head and if you hear a voice that says don’t share that, no one cares tell the devil to flee and share your life with those around you anyway. I have learned so much about myself and about God in this process. Being true to myself and to my emotions and sharing them with those around me is so freeing and has strengthened so many relationships. People are finally seeing the real me and it is beautiful.