Writing my Way Through Trauma
I never kept a diary or a journal. Writing was never my thing. I am a talker. Put me in a room with people and I will talk non-stop. Don’t get me wrong, I like to write, but it was never something I really did.
All that changed in 2010.
I was pregnant with my second child (after multiple miscarriages), and I went into early labor. This wasn’t just a little early. This was seventeen weeks early – meaning I was only twenty-three weeks pregnant. It was too soon. I had to make it to that magical viability mark of twenty-four weeks.
I spent six days lying in a hospital bed trying desperately not to give birth. My head was tilted down thirty-degrees below my feet. All the blood had rushed to my head. I was in pain, scared, and the only thing I could do was keep my eyes closed and breathe. I didn’t talk much those six days. Talking made me emotional and being emotional made it hard to lay still and stay calm.
My son, Sam, was finally born at twenty-four weeks and two days and weighed in at a whopping one pound twelve ounces. Two days after having Sam, I was alone for the first time in a week and it all started to hit me. Everything I had been through. Everything I had experienced. I was overwhelmed and felt like I was suffocating with all the thoughts and emotions swirling around in my head.
It was late at night, and the only thing I had nearby was my tablet. I opened it up and began writing an email to my brother who was living in Lesotho at the time. I wanted to update him on how his nephew, and I were doing.
Once I started writing, however, the email to my brother took on a life of its own. I ended up writing a long missive that was dumping ground for everything that was trapped in my head. I released it all on “paper”. The anger, the fear, the pain, the hope… all of it. When I was done, I felt relief. I was no longer weighed down by the thoughts swirling in my head.
The next day, after a long, hard day of learning about the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and what lay ahead for me and Sam, I turned to my tablet once again. Writing allowed me to process all the information I had gotten during the day and gave me a safe space to work through the trauma of it all.
It was then that I knew writing was going to save me. I quickly purchased a URL and installed WordPress. Two days after my son was born, my blog, Tales of the Anti-Preemie, was born. At first, the blog was just for my friends and family. But soon, I started seeing comments from total strangers who had either been sent my blog or found it on their own.
To the outside world, the blog was a great format for keeping people up to date on how Sam was doing or to provide hope and information for other preemie parents. But really, the blog was for me. It was my therapy – my release.
Every day I would come home from spending hours in the NICU and I needed a place to put my feelings. My brain was being overloaded with information. There were acronyms, medical procedures, danger signs to look out for, nurses names to remember, not to mention all of the feelings I was repressing seeing my child in such a medically fragile state. Writing was the only way I was able to process information, sleep and go back the following day to face another ride on the NICU rollercoaster.
By the time Sam came home, I had been writing every day for ninety-five days. With him home, I had less time to write, but the need was still strong. I made sure to carve out time every week and write about all the weeks’ ups and downs. Each time I hit “publish” I felt a wave of relief.
Who needed a therapist when I was doing my therapy as publicly as possible? Ok. I needed a therapist, but the writing did as much for me as my therapist did.
Writing brought me peace… and peace of mind. It was my salvation and my way out of trauma.
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BIO
Melissa Harris is a single mother of two children living in Oakland, California, where she was raised. She was on the fast track to being a partner in a mid-size ad agency when she gave birth to her second child, Sam, and the trajectory of her life changed. Melissa is now a work-from-home account manager for two virtual creative agencies in the Bay Area. In her free time, she drives her kids from activities to appointments to playdates, volunteers at the neonatal intensive care unit at Alta Bates hospital where Sam was born, and helps her congresswoman fight for better health care for all Americans.
http://melissaharrisauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=melissa%20harris%20-%20author
One Pound, Twelve Ounces: A Preemie Mother’s Story of Loss, Hope, and Triumph
Melissa Harris’s dream of being a mother again shatters when a fertility doctor tells her she may never have another child due to a physical anomaly in her uterus. Determined to persevere, she undergoes nine surgeries and a year of fertility treatments until she finally gets a positive pregnancy test—only to miscarry both twins within the first fifteen weeks.
When what she’s decided will be her last attempt results in her finally becoming pregnant, she’s told that this baby, Sam, is also at risk. While lying in a hospital bed for six days, trying to get to the golden standard twenty-four-week gestation mark, Melissa makes a decision—she will give this baby every chance to live, no matter what it takes.
One Pound, Twelve Ounces is the journey of one mother’s determination to give her micro-preemie a fighting chance, and the story of that baby’s remarkable battle to survive.
Purchase the book: https://www.amazon.com/One-Pound-Twelve-Ounces-Preemie/dp/1647422132/
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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