Vicissitudes of Spring

My life has been both a dream come true and a living nightmare in recent months: four yoga retreats (three as teacher, one as student) and three bouts of illness, one culminating in surgery.

With the arrival of March came appendicitis. Even though this ailment is due to unknown causes and can happen to anyone (as it did to my super-fit cyclist uncle in his late sixties and to my friends’ tall skinny Indian-American son in his mid-twenties), it somehow felt like the universe was out to get me personally.

Even though I was able to hobble my way over to the emergency room across the lake and get a quick diagnosis and same-day surgery, I felt shoved off the pleasant and stable treadmill of my life. A false sense of being “derailed.” (Because, what rail? What track? Life is nonlinear and not a competition.)

The first two weeks of post-op recovery were fucking hard. The gash below my belly button felt as much like a stab wound as a surgical one. Life had stabbed me in the gut. Moving from standing to sitting and vice versa was painstaking. Shifting position in bed evoked winces, even with the help of as many types of painkillers, natural and synthetic, that I could get my hands on.

Fifteen days after the surgery, I was grateful to have the strength to welcome four people to a yoga retreat that had been planned many months prior. Two men and two women that I didn’t know when they arrived and who would become friends within the span of a week, as often (when we’re lucky) happens on retreat.

Though I didn’t share this tidbit with them, I was 99% convinced that my husband and I had just conceived a son.

Why? I had received a potent intuition on the evening of Friday, March 15 that a little boy soul wanted to come through me and to join our family. This was beyond odd, seeing as I had felt content with our nuclear family (myself, my husband and our now 11-year-old daughter) for the four years since I’d suffered two miscarriages within a span of eight months the last time we “tried.”

Nonetheless, the intuition was so overpowering that I went across the lake to my ob-gyn the very next day and had her remove my copper IUD. That same afternoon, four nanas (spiritual guides and midwives) from Santa Lucia came to my house and did a Mayan fire ceremony. One of them sensed a baby in the field. And a swift conception occurred at dawn the next morning.

I was so sure of this feeling that I shared this news, gradually, with a handful of trusted friends. Most of them were elated for me. I received all kinds of signs and signals that what I believed to be true was reality. I even downloaded a baby tracker app and started taking prenatal vitamins and reading a Deepak Chopra book about pregnancy and birth. I felt symptoms and experienced unusual phenomena in my body that I absolutely attributed to the new human seedling in my womb. All signs pointed to yes.

The week after my aforementioned yoga retreat, I treated myself to going on a retreat, as a student this time, a move that had been 100% inspired by my post-appendectomy healing process and a desire for enhanced self-care. The retreat theme was “breath is life” and the venue was Villa Sumaya, a dreamy lakefront retreat center where I’ve worked (part-time/on and off) for the past nine years.

The teacher was Laurie Ellis-Young, a vibrant and fabulous woman and author of an award-winning book also called Breath Is Life. Our group had seven women of multiple generations: three in their early thirties, three in their late sixties, and me. I shared my miracle pregnancy story in our circle one morning. At the very moment I finished the tale, two songbirds flew through the window into the yoga temple and spiraled around the thatched roof for a solid minute as we all gaped at them in awe and wonder. It felt like another sure sign.

Of course, I was careful not to share any of this nutty news with my parents or any friends who had known me back in Texas 19 years ago when I had a rainbow-technicolor manic episode that culminated in my involuntary commitment to the psych ward for 10 days in April 2005. (Back then, I’d had delusions that I was pregnant with the second coming of Christ, which I don’t remember, thanks to all that flashing brain chemistry popping and crackling in my mind, but my friend Amanda has reminded me of it.)

So I was blissfully convinced I was pregnant and would deliver a baby boy in early December. Until my period came, albeit several days late. The illusion came crashing down. With the flow of blood, the disappointment followed. I was teaching yet another yoga class (a one-on-one retreat, this time with a lovely young Australian woman), so I repressed my sadness and went on with the show.

Early the next morning in bed, I let the tears come as I hugged my husband in bed. The bitter disappointment, not only of the fact of non-pregnancy but also that my mind, body, heart and gut were so powerful to play such tricks on me, to make me buy so fully this false premise of pregnancy. At the same time, I’m almost 44, I have type-2 diabetes, and being a mother, I know how all-consuming pregnancy and having a child is for the first several years of their precious life. So I was blue yet accepting. Disillusioned yet grasping the truth of reality. 

Shortly after the culmination of this third consecutive week of retreat, I became ill yet again, with what felt like gastritis. Instead of getting better, the situation devolved to the point where I was throwing up anything food or drink that I tried to consume, even plain water. So, I again decided to take myself to the urgent care at the hospital in Pana. Again, it was a Sunday (my appendix adventure had happened on the same sacred day of the week, six weeks prior). I was hooked up to an IV and my veins were promptly filled with fluid and medicine. My blood and urine were tested.

I had a raging urinary tract infection, it turned out, and my blood sugar level had skyrocketed. I was perplexed, as I’d been carefully limiting my carb intake and had long since cut added sugars from my diet since my diabetes diagnosis in March 2023. In fact, I’ve lost about 25 lbs. since then, through dietary changes, more exercise, and intermittent fasting. I’m aiming to lose another 20.

For the second time in two months, I had to cancel a planned family vacation to the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Instead of basking at the beach, I was wallowing at home in bed and on yet more antibiotics, gradually recovering from this latest blow to my delicate illusion of health and wellbeing. It got me down. Depression enveloped me like a cozy gray blanket and I wallowed in self-pity. I quit doing my dear breathing practices, quit walking, quit yoga-ing.

Soon after finishing a round of antibiotics for the UTI, I started to feel telltale signs of having intestinal parasites, namely sulphur burps, something I’ve become accustomed to over the years of living in Latin America. Rather than ingest yet more antibiotics, I have opted for the herbal remedies this time. I got tinctures, capsules and teas from a nearby apothecary: black walnut husk, wormwood, neem, clove, etc. It’s bitter medicine that requires an entire month of thrice-daily dosage that makes my face pucker up and elicits a moan of disgust. But it’s working and it’s natural. Gracias, Pachamama. 

Now it is May. We leave in 10 days for a two-month visit to the U.S. At the end of the month, I’ll turn 44. I am not pregnant, and considering my current blood glucose level, becoming so would be super risky for myself and the baby, especially during the first trimester. I accept the notion that maybe something else is wanting to be born through me—not a literal human child but some other type of writing project, retreat inspiration, or another yet-to-be-determined creation.

I am doubling down on my healthy low carb, no-sugar diet and longer stints of intermittent fasting, for myself and my own health and longevity. I admit that I do harbor the flicker of a hope that maybe, still, we can conceive and welcome one more member into our little family. I am strong, and I am still of childbearing age, albeit at the tail end of it.

Maybe. Or maybe not. The practice is to balance letting go and making effort—and to watch Life to unfold as it will through the lenses of love, joy and gratitude.