go on ahead

[warning: recounts my experience of ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage.]

Dear Penpal,

Personal letters are my guilty pleasure. I adore the intimacy of leaning over someone's shoulder, reading as they write to their loved ones, students, and friends. Collections of letters, thank goodness, are routinely collected, bound, and published posthumously; and we all benefit. They say the "Art of Letter Writing" has been lost, but we can still enjoy correspondence from dearly departed penpals.

My first letter-book was Seneca's Letters, but I quickly found "Letters of Note", originally a blog by Shawn Usher which posted weekly historical letters, and now has a range of letter-filled books, on various themes. Delightful.

That is how I came across Jessie Bernard's May 4th letter of 1941, to her unborn child, in "Letters of Note: Mothers". To put it lightly; she was writing in an era of deep unrest, uncertainty about the future, war, death, and tragedy.

Yet her letter to her child is filled with the hope of spring and creation. My favorite passage is this:

"Your father thinks parents ought to get down on their knees and beg forgiveness of children for bringing them into such a world. And there is much truth in that. But I hope you will never feel like that. I hope you will never regret the life we have created for you out of our seed. To me the only answer a woman can make to the destructive forces of the world is creation."

Much of my poetry is inspired by my reading; I'll read something poignant and think– 'there's a poem here', and do a little digging to uncover it. (poem at end)

While I have no children; I was pregnant very briefly in April and May of last year (2025). During that tumultuous time, amidst the political nightmare, the slow unrolling of a horrifying fascist regime, I was pregnant.

Since I was young, I was uncertain about having children. Later, in my first long term relationship and marriage, that was abusive in every way, I was staunchly childfree– so much so that I underwent my first sterilization procedure in 2017, at 24 years old. A tubal ligation.

I escaped my abuser in 2020, hallelujah. Since then, I have happily remarried, and the question of children has been an interesting one. I am not as staunch as I once was; but due to my health, particularly my connective tissue disorder, any pregnancy would be "High Risk". My partner and I were fence-sitters; safe in the knowledge that we "couldn't get pregnant" right now; but that if we really wanted to later, we could adopt or pursue surrogacy or something.

To be suddenly pregnant; right after a CSF leak and months of bed-ridden misery, after all of these diagnoses coming in within the same year (hEDS, POTS, MCAS, Raynaud's, Sjogren's, ADHD.... any wonder that anxiety was also quietly diagnosed and added to my list during this time? They didn't even tell me!); to be pregnant was WILD.

Here I am, feeling like I am this decrepit, disabled goblin (affectionate), whose body is constantly upending itself; and yet, it can get pregnant? create new life? what the actual heck?

In those brief weeks, I held fear and hope together. One never far from the other.

I had always, always thought, if I got pregnant, I would instantly want an abortion. I got sterilized at 24. I was on r/childfree (cringe). I did love children– OTHER people's children. So when my period was late, and I was feeling WEIRD; and I took a pregnancy test on a whim, just in case; nothing prepared me for the swoop of joy I got upon seeing the result. Followed quickly by an intense, WHAT??? JOY!? NO. WTF!? But I did. High on pregnancy hormones; I began considering the future. A very, very different future than the one I had so carefully planned.

I'm embarrassed to admit it now, when it was so early in the pregnancy, but I thought a lot about what they might be like. A mix of me and the one I loved most. My husband was shocked; by both the result and my response to it– and his own response to it. If it was 'viable', we were going to do our best by it. What a special decision that is to make with someone. Our bond has been made stronger for it. our love and commitment, deeper, even after the loss.

Because; while it was normal, growing, viable– the location was not. It was growing inside of my right fallopian tube. While tubal ligations are pretty good at preventing pregnancy (13 out of 1000 after 5 years, which is much better than pill birth control); if you do get pregnant, there's a ~1/3 chance it will be ectopic.

Ectopic pregnancies cannot be salvaged. They cannot be taken out and replaced in the womb; the lining is no longer hospitable to an implantation at that point, and the removal itself. They are doomed; and dangerous.

My fallopian tube burst, and I began bleeding out inside. I had appendicitis and an emergency appendectomy in 2024; this pain was far, far worse (but in a similar region! I thought maybe my appendix was having a revenge arc!)

I have written about this elsewhere, but I am so very lucky that I was in Colorado and not Georgia. My life was quickly saved, and there was no question regarding whether or not the doctors could perform the surgery. There was no hesitation that they would save my life, no law making them wait until I was on death's door and shutting down.

Politics in other states have killed women in my predicament; they killed them that very year, and are continuing to kill them now. Because; while I was having a dangerous and bloody miscarriage; what saved me was an "abortion". They cut out the ruptured fallopian tube that I was bleeding out from (this tube had inexplicably regrown and reattached itself since 2017, the human body is awe-inspiring), along with the little embryo inside it, which ended the pregnancy. (At this point, approximately 7 weeks in, it was still an embryo, not even a fetus yet).

It's so easy to think of my experience is an edge case; I am rare– but now YOU know someone whose life was saved by an abortion. At scale, in the United States this happens all the time. Every. Day.

Please support abortion services and bodily autonomy for everyone. The politics in my home state of Colorado, gave my doctor the right to act; swiftly and decisively, to save my life.

Please support universal health care. My husband and I only acted so swiftly and got me to the emergency room that night because we had health insurance. If we didn't, I am sure we would have waited even longer; and as it is, my surgeon says we came "just in time".

The days in recovery after were a particular kind of anguish and even shame. To have gotten so carried away, to have hoped. I am so grateful I told my immediate family; I had warned them I had a higher chance of ectopic, and knew I would need their love and support either way.

Yet even in the depths; I came back to Jessie Bernard's Letter to her Unborn Child, to those same hope and joy I had; and I am glad. To have experienced it, to know myself better, and to, in some small way, to have tasted what parenthood might be like in current time. I am changed by it.

So here is my poem, inspired by Jessie's letter and my own pregnancy, laid now to rest:

dear fruit of my womb, my flower from seed
regret, my love, not; your life as my deed
in the face of despair, destruction, and rot
my answer, my prayer; creation I wrought

for nought will be done without many encores
I did not choose life, but later chose yours
to bring you, and guide you, whatever the cost
I beg not forgiveness, for hope is not lost

the world as it is, we build on together
to raise up a child, to dream of forever
an answer against all of the darkness and dread
to pass on a light, then go on ahead.

<3
Aimee