Quick trip, quick post.
One of the fundamental teaching I got from life is: always leave the party when you’re having the most fun. And for any kind of situation this is very true, I mean, try to think about Scrubs season 9, and how they jumped the shark… it always breaks my heart when I think about it.
So, thanks to my wise man, we stayed in Livorno for 7 days only, met the important peeps, made the best of those few days, and went back to Sweden smelling like love, hugs, and happiness; without that bitter aftertaste that makes you remember why you moved away.
No drama, no fights, no bad vibes.
We had to recover from a very hard time for us, ’cause my second pregnancy ended in miscarriage, and losing that baby had been really tough for all the three of us. I really found it unbearable just to be able to get out of bed and not to cry the whole time, and seriously, nothing I’ve been told really helped me in any way.
In the most cases, all those empty words (“think about the kid you already have”, “it was simply not meant to be”, “it’s the nature’s way to tell you it was not healthy”) only made me feel sad and angry.
Only the silent presence of close people was helpful in some way, some of them called, some of them came and visit, had a cup of tea with me and watched me cry, basically.
I remember that in that period a stupid freak I used to have as a Facebook friend wrote on her wall that when a woman has a miscarriage it’s her fault, ’cause she’s sending all her negative energies to the baby, who surrenders to this negativity and dies.
You know, all that “everything happens for a reason; if something bad happens to you it’s ’cause you were not positive enough” thing; I wonder if these people would dare to go to a pediatric oncology clinic and say this shit to sick children, who knows if they would be able to sleep at night, then.
I want to repeat now what I already told her before erasing her from my acquaintances list: women, if you have ever experienced a miscarriage, if the baby you wanted was born dead, it is NEVER your fault. You’re probably gonna blame yourselves anyway, also ’cause at least you’ll have someone to blame in this way, so it can be easier to cope with it – but seriously, don’t trust all this misogynistic, hippy, idiotic bunch of crap that people like to share.
It’s never a woman’s fault. It’s simply a tragedy and you’ve been unlucky. There’s not much more to say, unfortunately.
And it is even way more common than one might think: more or less 25% of the pregnancies (or even more if you also take into account early pregnancies, when women don’t even know they’re expecting) end in miscarriage.
It’s a lot.
So, the only thing a woman can do while recovering from the hormonal chaos and bleedings is to stay put and look for some silent human warmth. Words are not necessary, often they hurt.
Silence is always the best choice.
So we needed exactly this kind of situation. All of us.
In fact my husband had been forced to be ‘the strong one’ while I was mourning, and couldn’t afford to grieve so physically as I was doing, and our son didn’t have the proper attention we normally give to him.
7 days in Italy had been the perfect amount of time.
Sometimes in Livorno people asked me how my pregnancy was going, and I was forced to say there was no pregnancy anymore, but in those cases I often encountered deep respect and understanding. They told me there was nothing intelligent to say, they hugged me and told me they were very sorry.
Also the friends I didn’t manage to meet, they wrote me very delicate messages, which I still thank them for. And all these “I’m so sorry” were the only thing I needed.
But our stay was not only about “people being sorry”, rather the opposite!
Me and G enjoyed some romantic time as a couple, and not only as Mama and Dada (as we normally are in Sweden where we have no family to take care of the kids when we just want to have a beer together), we got drunk with our long-standing friends, dined out and enjoyed the best Italian food, spent some quality time with my mommy, G’s parents, and my lovely grandparents, whom I miss every freakin’ day.
We definitely recharged our batteries.
We have been pleasantly surprised by a lot of things, actually, and this time we didn’t look at Livorno as the shit-hole we despise so (and maybe too) much.
We left the party when we were having the most fun: we were even sorry to leave, eventually.
For some nanoseconds we even wondered why we moved so far in seek of fortune.
[Header pic: Terrazza Mascagni, Livorno ©Gianluca La Bruna]
Just a wandering Family 