For most of my life, I have lived by the mantra “everything happens for a reason”. I got rejected from a college I desperately wanted to go, bawled my eyes out only to get into an incredible school with a top level music program that I never dreamed I could get into. Bam! See? Everything happens for a reason. I broke my foot doing axels in my kitchen effectively putting an end to my figure skating career (I use that term loosely) which freed up my schedule to attend the 8th grade Halloween dance where I first danced with my now husband. Ta Da!! See? Everything happens for a reason. In silly ways and more serious ones, it has been the ideology I have latched onto that allows me to find hope in otherwise difficult situations. It has always been my get out of jail free card - something that made all the bad times “worth it” when the good outcome inevitably came along. 

As I’ve shared before, the summer of 2016, seemingly out of nowhere, my father in law was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. We found out about two weeks before we were set to embark on a big family vacation to Italy. Devastated, we canceled the trip and headed to the beach and tried to make some happy memories in the most devastating time. Shortly after that trip, Mike and I went out to dinner and I promptly came home and puked my brains out. All…night…long. I chalked it up to food poisoning and moved on with daily life but a few weeks later, it happened again and I had this momentary “holy shit” moment where I briefly considered that I could be pregnant. Apparently happy memories were indeed made at the beach, if ya know what I mean. (Gross…I’m sorry). 

Anyway, you're likely trying to do some quick math in your head and if you are a wizard, you will have figured out that I was 41 at the time and we had a 12 year old and a 9 year old. Suffice it to say, our baby days were over. Like a zombie, I went to Target and got myself about 10 tests - laughing the whole time about how ridiculous I was being. There was NO WAY I was pregnant. I drove home down the windy hill past our kids' elementary school - a school we had been a part of for seven years at that point and that we were almost done with. The idea of starting all over again was both overwhelming and terrifying but also kind of exciting. I giggled as I took the test and literally screamed as I  ran around the main floor of our house when it showed up as positive. I swore I wasn’t going to tell Mike until he came home from work but I called him 30 seconds later and just blurted it out. He was, um…shocked. Our kids were at camp so we had a little time to just process this news and to get really, really excited. 

I immediately went back to my old faithful perspective - everything was happening for a reason. A new baby would bring some happiness as we were dealing with the devastation of what was happening to my father in law. There were tears of joy as we shared our crazy news with our families and for a little while everyone seemed hopeful. Well, everyone except poor Bobby who was less than excited when we presented him with his “big brother” t-shirt.  I have a video of that moment but I’ll spare him the terror of reliving it but here’s a picture of it. Mike and I had always imagined having three kids but something always seemed to stop us - I really felt like this little “accident” was further proof of the universe delivering exactly what we needed when we needed it most. 

We excitedly walked into our 12-week appointment ready for our first ultrasound. The initially cheerful tech tried to find the heartbeat for a long time - making small talk, reassuring us that sometimes it’s hard to hear early on, suggesting that maybe I had the wrong date, etc. Eventually she left the room and we sat there quietly for what felt like an hour. Eventually our OBGYN, who had delivered both of our kids, came into the room and in a hushed tone said she wasn’t confident this was a viable pregnancy. She couldn’t be sure, but it was likely we were in the early stages of a miscarriage. All we could do at that point was wait - which was excruciating. A few days later, we went through what millions of other couples have dealt with and lost our little surprise peanut. 

I’m not going to lie, at that moment and for a long time after it, I could not understand why it happened. Why did God, or the universe, or whoever, give us such an exciting, hopeful moment only to rip it away from us? I know that’s not how it works but our hearts were shattered. It took a long time to return to some kind of normal after that and I bore a lot of guilt for getting everyone’s hopes up, and for telling our kids “too early” only to levy another dose of sadness on them, I certainly could not find the deeper meaning for any of it and I was just pissed. And sad. 

It’s been seven years, almost exactly, since that moment I ran around my house with a positive pregnancy test in hand. Many times over the course of these years, I have had pangs of sadness about what a third little Siggy kid would have looked like. I was convinced it was a girl - though we never found that out. But while I’ve had moments of longing for whoever that baby would have been, I also began to develop some amount of gratitude, or at least acceptance, for the bigger plan for our life. This may sound callous but on more than one occasion over the last few years, I’ve felt a sense of relief not having to chase a toddler around. In fact, we spent the last two weeks at the beach - Long Beach Island in New Jersey to be exact - and on multiple trips from our rental house down to the beach, Mike and I commented on how happy we were to just be able to pack up our chairs, a towel and a beverage and head down to the water’s edge where we did absolutely nothing.

Our two weeks there were blissful. We rode our bikes to the nature reserve every morning after which I ran every day. We did a little bit of work but mostly just sat with our toes in the sand, spending time with each other and with friends. I felt settled and content but I’d be lying if I didn’t say there wasn’t a heaviness that had settled over all of us. It’s almost as if a haze is filtering all of our experiences this first year post diagnosis. We laughed, we had a ton of fun, we drank and ate and went on carnival rides at the little amusement park. But everything we did had an underlying current of sadness and worry. Not overt but ever present. So it probably shouldn’t have come as a big surprise that by the 4th of July, I was on edge. When a friend made a harmless comment about how grateful we must be not to have a toddler after his own little one had a mini-meltdown, I lost it. He didn’t mean anything by it - and like I said before, Mike and I have made the same comment many times over. But in that moment, a different reason for gratitude flashed through my mind. Thank God, I thought, I don’t have a 6 year old who would have to grow up with a mom with Parkinson’s. Thank God that they wouldn't have to suffer with this for the rest of their life. Thank God my kids had gotten through their most fundamental, primary years before having to be saddled with this disease. 

I couldn't have stopped the tears at that moment if I wanted to. I bolted into the beach house bathroom and completely lost my shit. I sat on the floor and let it all wash over me, looking at the worn down tiles in the rental and thinking, of course, about how I’d redecorate the entire place. I  eventually got the sobs to stop coming long enough to go back to the party. I splashed some water on my face and blamed my red eyes on the grill that I had been manning for the bbq we were having. We sat on a bench in front of the bay watching fireworks and the tears came again. At that point I wasn’t even sure what I was crying about - I think it was just the culmination of being back in a place that we have been going to since I was a baby and where our kids have been coming to since they were born. I was tired that day but I was also on edge because I had noticed a new symptom that was another constant reminder of what is happening to my brain and my body. Or maybe it was because I had the sudden realization of yet another “everything happens for a reason” moment. Whatever the cause, I went to bed that night feeling completely crushed despite having such a such a wonderful day with so many people I love - including these four kiddos.

We rebounded for the rest of our second week and soaked in the rest of our trip but ended up leaving a little early to get back to our safe little bubble of a home. I got over feeling sorry for myself and got back into the swing of “real life” last week including some really great meetings  - I’m excited to share more on that soon so stay tuned! We are also knee deep in getting the kids ready to go to Uganda for three weeks on a service trip that they have been planning for years. They will work in two different villages, spending time in the schools helping the students learn to read and working at the health clinic. They’ll also get to go on a Nile river cruise, a safari and get to visit a rhino sanctuary - truly the trip of a lifetime. I also joined a new gym which is beyond gorgeous and I am so grateful to have it close by. I am more dedicated than ever to transforming my body to be as strong as I can and I know this new place will be a big part of the next chapter in that journey. I was really excited to have reached my wedding weight this week for the first time since, well…my actual wedding. LOL I’m tempted to try on my wedding dress but am worried I might scar my children for the rest of their lives. We’ll see! And you know if and when I do, it will be on social media. 

When I mentioned all of the above in my therapy session this week, my therapist told me that all the positive things that are coming from my diagnosis are something called sublimation. I looked it up after our session and learned that sublimation is part of the defense mechanisms that help you deal with distress. According to Sigmund Freud, through sublimation, you can reshape the things that upset you through creative expression. I love this concept and I feel like I’ve really embraced it since being diagnosed. Whether it’s getting in shape, or writing this blog, or finding a new community via social media, I am determined to turn this unfortunate situation into a positive one. As I have said before, to find purpose in the pain. 

Or, I guess you could say, to find the reason for everything that has happened. Someday, when Mike and I make it to 90 years old, I want to be able to look back on this time in my life and say, BAM! Parkinson’s happened for a reason. And I know I’ll be able to do just that. It won’t stop me from thinking about Baby Siggy #3 and who he or she would have been. No doubt feisty and funny and smart and a big old pain in the ass who I couldn’t have loved more.