Incompatible with Life

A fundamental truth of pregnancy and infant loss is that a mother blames herself. It doesn’t matter what the doctors and nurses say to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault—that it was nobody’s fault—she believes at the deepest part of her being that she caused her baby’s death. All around her she sees other women who have delivered their perfectly healthy babies with ease. Her awareness of having been singled out for the agonizing fate of loss is compounded every time she realizes that she is the only mom in the room who didn’t get to keep her baby. The broken record of prenatal admonitions screeches in her head. If only she’d exercised more, or eaten better, or been able to keep those horse pill vitamins down, or prayed harder…She ponders what she could have done to deserve such disaster. She wonders if God hates her.   Her shame is a secret so dark and deep, so powerful, that it drives her sorrow underground. To publicly display her grief would expose the magnitud...

I have a confession to make, one that seemingly meets the criteria of a mundane mid-life crisis: I love what I do, but I hate my job. I’m a kindergarten teacher by trade. I adore children—always have, always will—and have a natural affinity for the littlest learners. I enjoy watching their growth across a school year, the way they come in green and fresh as newly planted seeds at the start, and leave my classroom as saplings stretching toward the infinite sky of knowledge and understanding. I hate the metrics that are used to define my students’ performance (and my own). I loathe the over-reliance on a narrow band of assessment measures that ignores the intangibles of student growth and extinguishes the joy of learning. I resent seeing children reduced to numbers on a grid in the name of data-based decision-making. I cherish the time I spend with my students in the Zone of Proximal Development. I thrive on the everyday teachable moments that enable me to coach into my stud...

It's Valentine's Day. My husband is working today, not that we would have had plans to do anything special. It is, for us, just another weekend, simple and ordinary. Both of us are more pragmatic than romantic in nature. The one time I sent Scott a bouquet, he sold it to a co-worker who'd just had a blow-out with his girlfriend and needed a make-up gift. He did take me out to dinner with the proceeds of the sale, but the writing was on the wall. We would not be a couple who showered each other with sentimental tokens of love. My career path into the kindergarten classroom has ensured a steady stream of gifts and goodies, so I haven't missed out. Every year I am inundated with boxes of chocolates and valentines filled with sweet expressions of the undying affection of my five- and six-year-old friends. I rather enjoy this innocent side of the holiday. Racy lingerie and dirty talk are not my forte. Hand-scrawled hearts and messages of unconditional love and accept...