So this is Christmas…
….and for Gods sake, what have you done?

In a blink, the season of holiday cards has come and gone. Any intention I had of reaching out, reconnecting or, in some cases, resurrecting aging bonds with my words, tucked neatly into a 5x8 card with a benign “Happy Holidays” message on the front, is in my rear-view. A website felt simpler, less writer’s crampy.

And probably for the best - I have a lot of things to say to you people & as someone that often uses humor to diffuse discomfort, anxiety, fill space or to say hard things, I do know that my spasms of levity can be difficult to understand and frankly, I fear that my clever repartee isn’t aging as well as I am.

“Aging well” - it’s the latest lie I’m telling myself because it’s important to convince the mind & body that was born in the year that mine was that it can still carry and deliver a baby successfully. The magic and the money of medicine can GET it pregnant - but keeping it that way for 9 months is the miracle.

That I was still working towards another pregnancy, after the loss of my son 11 years ago, may come as a surprise to many…to most…of you. Some of you, because my loss & my subsequent attempts at motherhood is not a story I share generously and for others, because after the loss and my heartache, we’ve drifted. Maybe I’m to blame because it’s difficult, even now, to be able to trust people to grasp the pain of all the years since he died. Maybe you’re to blame because you just didn’t know what to say or how to be a friend to someone that had lost a child. Maybe we both failed in our own unique ways - it’s not a blame game.

And now, as I sit writing this at 33 weeks pregnant, with so much to be thankful for, I wonder who is left to celebrate or to care about this pregnancy? What’s the shelf life of a friendship? Is it like ground coffee - still technically usable but degraded over time to the extent that you’d use it only in an emergency, knowing it will never taste as rich as it once did? The label so faded that you don’t even remember what flavor it is anymore or why you ever bought it?

The last 10 years have been the most difficult I can imagine living, personally, and while the last 8 months have felt surreal and blessed and joyfully impossible, two of the leading emotions I’ve had to contend with are guilt & regret. Guilt, in knowing that we’ve all suffered somehow during these years and that I haven’t been the friend that many have needed or wished I could be for them. And regret because somewhere in my grief, I’ve lost the me that many knew ‘me’ to be and over the course of this pregnancy when I’ve caught glimpses of her, it’s followed by sadness that there are people that I’m no longer in regular touch with to witness it. I shouldn’t feel like I have so much to atone for during this time but, inevitably, I do.

In the last 10 years, I reconnected with 2x people from my high school years at around the same time, by coincidence - one, I was thrilled about because he & I had been close and there was fun, ease & honesty in our friendship, all those years ago. And the other was with a classmate who I never imagined reconnecting with but was a welcome surprise - I felt fortunate to be able to know her as an adult who was living her most authentic life. And when both recounted to me how they’d described me to their partners, one said that I “was always smiling” and the other described me as “happy go lucky, fun and genuine.” I remember those descriptions taking my breath away, at the time, and how hard it was to face how far I felt from myself anymore.

So here I am on the horizon of a different life, but one that I trust will resemble the former one more than the one I’ve lived over the last decade (oof - that’s a tough word) and I wanted to share this news, this new dynamic, this unexpected shift, this ‘holy shit’ moment, this exercise in aging well, with you.

I have continued on this journey because I’ve always believed that fortune favors the bold. And enduring 10 years of repeated IVF attempts and failures after the loss of your first child, just for the chance to arrive at a moment that thousands of women arrive at naturally each day, is fucking BOLD.

I’ve trusted that there are secrets in life that are being held for me that I may not be aware of but that the universe will reveal in time. I know how many possibilities are hidden and that each could lead me in dozens of alternating directions and how these universal secrets will encourage me to live my life differently. A second chance at motherhood is the direction that I’ve chosen - and my hope is that I have your support and enthusiasm for this path and your patience and understanding, if I’m the one to blame for any fracture between us. You have been and are loved.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Berakhah in 2026, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday to my fellow Capricorns.

I would love to hear from you or see you in 2026 and talk about you.

x, Natalie