Wow. A huge insight to the grief you carry. It’s really a lot. I hate that you’re the odd one out ... also by the way this felt like an English lesson from 1999 !! Loved it. Get it in The Anthology if you ask me ... I think we all need a much earlier and wider knowledge of biology and infertility for both education and by means of coping as women. I learn something new every time you wrote. For that, I Thankyou x
Welcome to my English lit GCSE syllabus revision course! I did get an A* I’m partially qualified 😂 ahh thank you so much glad it wasn’t too painful to listen to!
I really enjoyed the structure of this post -- a poem + a discussion -- probably because I’m missing my own English classrooms of the past (both the ones where I was a student and the ones where I was a teacher).
And of course the content strongly resonated. I’ve thought and written along the same lines -- that every pregnancy creates a parallel possible universe, and every pregnancy loss closes it off, and yet you live in the bardo in between as much as you do your “real” life. How could you not? It is where your child or children live.
I think a lot about Cheryl Strayed’s bit about “The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us,” which feels like it belongs in this conversation. Like you, I loved it and argued with it in my head. Because it’s not just one ghost ship, when you’re experiencing infertility or pregnancy loss. It’s many ships. Every single one with a possible child on it, that you almost rode all the way home on, and then didn’t. As you say, I think it will be many years, maybe a lifetime, before I can salute those ones from the shore. The truth is that I want them back, every one.
Thank you for the link Ryan I’d not come across that from Cheryl Strayed before. I’m very happy to receive your much more qualified approval of my poetry analysis - this post was actually quite a nerve-wracking one for me! But I really enjoyed the process so I’m glad that has come across too.
I just read an amazing book on recurrent miscarriage called Life, Almost by Jennie Agg whose Substack goes by the same name as her book. It really hit home how I’m probably living a few decades too early to know all the answers to help me bring a baby home (although we shouldn’t be this far behind in reproductive health - something Jennie explores brilliantly) and I’m still sitting with that and it feels a bit like trying to salute that ship.
I thought your post was beautifully done. I’m using the Voice Memo + Transcribe apps to do a lot of my drafting these days so it felt inspiring to see what an audio + text pairing could look like here. And I’ll have to check out that Substack. Thank you for the rec. And wishing you a good week aboard the ship you’re on, with clear skies.
Ryan, my Substack started with a response to Cheryl Strayed’s “Ghost Ship” letter, in which I explore her concept of sister lives in the context of infertility, when a choice is not really a choice:
Wow. A huge insight to the grief you carry. It’s really a lot. I hate that you’re the odd one out ... also by the way this felt like an English lesson from 1999 !! Loved it. Get it in The Anthology if you ask me ... I think we all need a much earlier and wider knowledge of biology and infertility for both education and by means of coping as women. I learn something new every time you wrote. For that, I Thankyou x
Welcome to my English lit GCSE syllabus revision course! I did get an A* I’m partially qualified 😂 ahh thank you so much glad it wasn’t too painful to listen to!
I really enjoyed the structure of this post -- a poem + a discussion -- probably because I’m missing my own English classrooms of the past (both the ones where I was a student and the ones where I was a teacher).
And of course the content strongly resonated. I’ve thought and written along the same lines -- that every pregnancy creates a parallel possible universe, and every pregnancy loss closes it off, and yet you live in the bardo in between as much as you do your “real” life. How could you not? It is where your child or children live.
I think a lot about Cheryl Strayed’s bit about “The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us,” which feels like it belongs in this conversation. Like you, I loved it and argued with it in my head. Because it’s not just one ghost ship, when you’re experiencing infertility or pregnancy loss. It’s many ships. Every single one with a possible child on it, that you almost rode all the way home on, and then didn’t. As you say, I think it will be many years, maybe a lifetime, before I can salute those ones from the shore. The truth is that I want them back, every one.
https://therumpus.net/2011/04/21/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-71-the-ghost-ship-that-didnt-carry-us/
Thank you for the link Ryan I’d not come across that from Cheryl Strayed before. I’m very happy to receive your much more qualified approval of my poetry analysis - this post was actually quite a nerve-wracking one for me! But I really enjoyed the process so I’m glad that has come across too.
I just read an amazing book on recurrent miscarriage called Life, Almost by Jennie Agg whose Substack goes by the same name as her book. It really hit home how I’m probably living a few decades too early to know all the answers to help me bring a baby home (although we shouldn’t be this far behind in reproductive health - something Jennie explores brilliantly) and I’m still sitting with that and it feels a bit like trying to salute that ship.
I thought your post was beautifully done. I’m using the Voice Memo + Transcribe apps to do a lot of my drafting these days so it felt inspiring to see what an audio + text pairing could look like here. And I’ll have to check out that Substack. Thank you for the rec. And wishing you a good week aboard the ship you’re on, with clear skies.
Ryan, my Substack started with a response to Cheryl Strayed’s “Ghost Ship” letter, in which I explore her concept of sister lives in the context of infertility, when a choice is not really a choice:
https://open.substack.com/pub/lizexplores/p/response-to-cheryl-strayed-the-beauty?r=1v5c7y&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Loved this from Cheryl, and your response!