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I had a miscarriage recently, and I’m actually OK.

It’s been awhile since I posted anything of actual substance online. I update my Instagram regularly, mostly with absolutely pointless videos of my son eating breakfast, or playing with dinosaurs, or coloring. You can follow those exciting updates here #yourewelcome

I’ve tried sitting down and writing many, many times since we moved here, but it’s been awhile since I had something concrete that I could actually process from start to finish. Something defined. Black and white. Easy to process.

For some reason, this miscarriage has been that for me.

Most of you probably didn’t even know I was pregnant. I was only 7 weeks or so. While it definitely wasn’t planned, we adjusted quickly and welcomed the news. I knew I was pregnant for about a week before the miscarriage started, and there have been some gloomy and wistful days. Not just for the loss of life, but also for the loss of another plan.

Since leaving CO we’ve watched so many plans come and go. Living life completely open-handed is not easy. Holding out everything to be redistributed, redirected is exhausting at times. We’ve left nothing behind for a Plan B. Moving forward into the things that are before us is often… Daunting. Exciting, for sure. We’re both adventurous people. But everything’s turned out just so darn different than what we had planned or consciously hoped for. There are so many factors that are up in the air right now. So many unknowns in the midst of walking out the path we find ourselves on. When we found ourselves expecting a child again, we accepted that as another factor to consider as we move forward. Because of the pleasant surprise of Ellis (we weren’t exactly the most enthusiastic parents-to-be before Ellis), we knew this child would be the same; an absolute joy.

So you’d think that when I experienced miscarriage, peace wouldn’t be the primary experience. But it was. And I’ll tell you why. Or I’ll try to, without offending anyone.

When I was pregnant with Ellis, I read several books on natural pregnancy, labor, and delivery (See my Goodreads if that kind of thing interests you). The main thing that stuck out to me out of all the literature I consumed was this quote

“One cannot help a physiological process. The point is not to hinder it.”

When I was in labor, I made the controlling, Type A part of me (the part that wants to know what is going on, why it is going on, and what I can do about it) chill out. I trusted my body. I let my body do what it needed to do. And it did.

Side Note & Disclaimer: I 100% realize that this cannot be the case each and every single time. There are things that go wrong where medical intervention is absolutely necessary. For those times, I’m so grateful for the medical professionals trained to right the wrongs happening in our bodies. But the majority of the time, our bodies are created to operate a certain way and they are fully capable of doing so.

The point is that I gained a deep respect for my body through the experience of labor and delivery.
And in the same way that my body can, when operating correctly, sustain a life for nine months, my body knows when it cannot.

Here are some facts that I learned while having a miscarriage:

They are very common: Statistically, about one in every four confirmed pregnancies end in miscarriage. See here & here & here
Of those miscarriages, most of them occur because of chromosome abnormalities. See here & here.
Also, most women report feeling emotions like shame, isolation, and guilt as a result of a miscarriage.

Maybe this is common knowledge to most people. It was new information for me and instead of experiencing extreme sadness and shame that most women report feeling when experiencing a miscarriage, I experienced peace.

I just deeply respect the order of things that is set up in our bodies. In a weird way I feel like this miscarriage has broken through a cloud of confusion around me. In our life right now with so many unanswered questions, plans that constantly change, constantly weighing the pros and cons of a new decision – a concrete thing happened. Definitely not the outcome I would have chosen, but I’m OK because I know that my body is operating as thousands and thousands and millions of other women’s bodies have operated since the beginning of time. Being apart of something solid, something bigger than myself feels grounding in a way that I’ve been craving. Even through the midst of a dealth, I feel such light and peace.

The opportunity to have this perspective shocked me.

And of course we’re sad. This was a precious life. And we would have loved and cherished him/her regardless of any abnormalities present. And granted, I haven’t been trying to have a baby for years, I don’t have any past traumatic experience with having a baby, not to mention I was only 7-8 weeks along. All that to say, there are so many factors that go into my emotional response. If you’ve had a miscarriage and had a very different experience, I’d love for you to feel free to share that experience. Everyone is different and this is not my attempt to write a trendy post to contradict what everyone says about something standard like being emotional when there is a death.

I guess I just wanted to share our experience in the small chance there someone out there who needs to hear a story of how we went through a miscarriage and were OK.

Like, really OK.

And maybe this perspective can bring this converstaion out of the realm of only emotions, (all of which are valid) to also include facts, which are just as valid.

Maybe it really just helps me to write it all out, document and process it in some way.

Either way, that’s what has been going on with us lately.

That and many other things.

Maybe those will be in the next blog post.

Photo credit:Madison Grooms

February 17, 2018

Country Living, Responsive Living, Simple Living

Revisiting Vision

You know how sometimes you get so deep into something that you’re not really sure what you’re doing?

Well, that’s where we’ve found ourselves the last few weeks. Not at all unhappy with the life that we’ve chosen. On the contrary; I’m (Hannah) extremely happy on the homestead. It brings a lot of joy and peace to my life.

But between milking goats, making cheese, feeding chickens, fixing fencing, and working full time, one can tend to get overwhelmed with the day-to-day.

So, I figured now was a good time to revisit our vision. The same vision that we had when we started this whole adventure together. Maybe see where we are lacking, and where we’re doing really well.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Groth

Are we cultivating creative, adventurous, and imaginative minds?

Creativity has to come out in problem solving around the farm – we wanted to build a root cellar, but didn’t have the time or resources to build the one we were envisioning, so Ryan dug a hole in the ground, and we bartered for a large freezer from our neighbor, and we’re going to bury the freezer: root cellar! Adventure for me looks like trying new recipes, maybe they fail, maybe they work. Or butchering chickens or milking goats for the first time. Or attempting to develop an online business. Ryan is currently working on finishing my dream library in our living room.

His creativity and imagination (and thoughtfulness) is making our home even cozier than it already is.

Are we finding joy in knowing and interacting with the people we live around?

Yes. 100% absolutely. This one is easy. Have I mentioned our neighbors?

Are we sharing what we have with others?

This is actually something we’ve talked about lately. We’d like to be more generous in the way that we think. There is a family here in the valley who are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met. They have us over for dinner and when we leave, they always give us a bag of natural, herbal goodies. They are the most hospitable people; hosting folks in their home constantly, cooking great quality food, and giving away so much of their time and resources.

We want to be more like them in the way of generosity. With our mentality on serving others, and giving where it’s needed and asked for, and even where it’s not. We don’t want our lives to be about ourselves.

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” – Charles Dickens

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” – Paul in Galatians 5

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” – Jesus in Mark 9

Are we appreciating music & art more fully?

Hah. No.

Definitely could be more intentional about this. I was chatting with my sister recently (she’s an artist who just recently completed her senior art exhibition) and she recently had her senior art exhibit. She shared with me that when most folks view or experience a work of art, their first thoughts and questions are always “how?” related.

“How did you make this?” How is this held up?”

She feels the need to address the “how” questions first thing, so that the viewer can move on to the “why” questions.

I love this. & I also feel like the season I’m in right now has been more of a “how” season. That is fine – and needed. I need to know “how to” milk a goat, “how to” make goat cheese, and “how to” butcher a chicken….etc.

But I love the thought of a season dwelling more on the “why”. I think that this will bring more art & music into our lives naturally.

Isn’t that what art is? An expression of the “why” of life.

Are we developing knowledge and creativity in horticulture?

In smaller ways, yes. We’ve spent time foraging & harvesting from our land this fall. Since we moved onto the farm and just got going in July, it was too late to start a garden, but we’ve started to think about and plan for what we’ll grow next spring/summer. We’ll definitely be learning more about this in the next year.

Are we acknowledging and appreciating the existence and creativity of the God of Israel?

This one is convicting to some extent. We cannot help but acknowledge the existence of God. We’ve both seen and experienced too much to be convinced otherwise. However, there are seasons where God just seems to go silent. We see this in the Bible, we can look around and see that this happens with others, and we experience this ourselves. This is part of the reason for this vision revisiting. We just sometimes find ourselves doubting whether or not we are actually doing what He would have us do. Life has seemed like an up-hill battle for us since we met. We’ve listened for God’s voice and at times, He has spoken very clearly, and we’ve acted.

Then, in the silence, we tend to doubt what we heard in the light. Which, is not something we’re supposed to do, but we struggle with it.

We don’t believe in the prosperity gospel.

But we hope that we can evoke the favor of God to some extent, through our obedience.

And at least sense the Spirit of God in our daily lives more.

But this article contains a lot of truth about our generation & here is an excerpt that concludes it nicely::

Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere.
Stop thinking that you’re special. The fact is, right now, you’re not special. You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time.
Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others.

#nosetothegrindstone

Are we encouraging others in their journey to discover themselves capable of creating a simple, fulfilling, self-sustaining lifestyle?

I would hope that this would happen, but I guess the only thing that we can control is to live this out for ourselves and make friends along the way. Which is what we attempt to do.

There are many other points from our original vision for what our life could look like, and maybe I’ll revisit them at some point.

Ryan: It’s encouraging to look back and see that even though we envisioned our lives being different in a lot of ways, all of our goals still apply. And we’re achieving/practicing most of them. Even though we’ve been discouraged at times when things haven’t worked out according to our vision of how they should go, God has still been faithful to the things he’s spoken over us, and in a lot of cases [like the tiny house (plan A) or the purchase of land and trailer (plan B)], His provision has been greater than we had envisioned for ourselves.

For now, we’ll just leave you with this verse that we are convicted & challenged by often.

“If you get rid of the yoke from those around you, the finger-pointing and malicious speaking, and if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday. The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never run dry. Some of you will rebuild ancient ruins; you will restore the foundations laid long ago; you will be called the repairer of broken walls, the restorer of streets where people live.” (Isaiah 58)

Photo Cred: Elizabeth Groth

December 1, 2015

ryan corson fishing in westcliffe colorado

Responsive Living

Hold Your Breath and Be Still

Do you ever feel like you just completely miss entire seasons?

It’s already April and I remember the snow, ice and cold weather (it’s mostly all still here in high mountain Colorado), but it still feels like winter has just….

flown by.

And more than the weather, the holidays and my sense of passing time seems…

off.

Christmas happened? And Thanksgiving? Wait…. is Lent seriously already over? I mean, I didn’t really participate this year. I just couldn’t. But it’s really already Easter??

Although it’s odd, mostly because normally I enjoy these passing milestones AND I obviously took photos of this season (as a Nikon ad I recently saw said, I am part of “Generation Image: Your Camera is Your Voice” #millennials) I just have this weird, peaceful sense that these seasons come every year, and it’s just OK that I completely missed them this year. I don’t really even have remorse about it. It just happened.

I think one part of it is the absurd amount of hours that Ryan has worked over the past 10 months. With him working so much, and with both of us being fairly introverted, we tended to hole up in the apartment to catch a couple minutes together. The downside of this was that we didn’t have many friends while living in Brighton (this was also an upside for two extremely busy introverts). But the reality is that community and relationships are what help mark the passing of time. They often help distinguish one day from another, one season from another.

It’s also hard to celebrate with friends when you don’t exactly feel like celebrating.

Another big part of all this weird numbness has been affected by my dad’s health issues. He has been in and out (mostly in) of the hospital since October with severe, acute pancreatitis. He’s doing better these days, but it wasn’t until after Christmas that the doctors even told him, “It’s ok. You can breath a little now, you aren’t going to die.”

I’m not even in the same state as my family, and those kind of prolonged health issues of a loved one weigh on a person. You kind of just hold your breath a little bit, hoping somehow that will shove all the health and healing into your dad from 800 miles away. You kind of just want to lay low for a while, while he’s forced to lay so much lower. It’s also hard to even want to experience life when you know your family is all dizzy and exhausted from the trauma of it all.

There’s a verse that my dad has had close to his heart (so its been close to mine) since this all started

Be still and know that I am God.

I was reading this, once again, a few weeks ago after feeling overwhelmed with my own life changes and adjustments, and I looked in the Hebrew of this word “be still”. I was slightly shocked to find that the roots of that word included words like

fail

be faint

be feeble

be idle

let alone

be slack

Um. Excuse me. That’s exactly how I have felt about life over the past few months. And here, with words that have come to be so dear to my heart, I am receiving permission to just be all of these things. It’s so wonderfully freeing when the God of the universe (or some dude who wrote on his behalf) tells you (a perfectionistic tight wad) to just go ahead and be the mess that you are. He can take it. He can handle it.

There is a lot of good news to all this. When life feels like a mess, it’s ok. When major seasons just seem to roll over your numb soul, it’s ok.

Those seasons are going to happen again next year.

There is some relief knowing that even though I’m not experiencing these seasons right now, that lots of people are. And that next year they will too. And perhaps I’ll join in then.

The seasons will come again.

Christmas. Winter. Lent. And Easter.