Loss of My Religion

I wish I could let myself be comforted by religion and spirituality. Honestly at this point, any religion would suffice. It would be so easy to just be able to believe and have faith in those ideas.

But I feel that I have crossed this threshold where I will never be able to get that comfort I used to have from religion. Just as when you were a child and found out there is no Santa Clause or Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, you want so much to still believe that they are real. But the reality of knowing they are just stories cannot be ignored; you see how they cannot be real; and you know it's true. As a child, this maybe your first simple experience with grief, and just as with grief you are saddened and angered by the loss of the idea. Once the deception is erased and the truth revealed, you will never be able to get that innocence back.

I find myself drawing an interesting parallel between my loss of religion and the loss of my children. Just as I lost my idea of "Santa Clause", I have also lost my naivety in pregnancy. I can never get that innocence back, and I envy others who can go through their whole life and never know what risk they are facing when they have their children. I had that innocence in my first pregnancy, and I look back at it in amazement. I would receive congratulations on my new baby before she was even born! I never found that to be odd until after our first loss. When people would offer their congratulations when I was pregnant again, I would think, "How can you congratulate me when the baby's not here yet?" I'm not a superstitious person, but it almost felt like bad luck or a jinx. I remember reading an article a woman wrote about her experience loosing her baby to birth defects. She writes that pregnancy is not a guarantee of life but rather hope of one. I wish more people would see it this way and really appreciate the gift and miracle they have been privileged with.