#314: 33 Weeks

It's amazing and surreal on Thanksgiving Eve to write this particular post...to think back on how much my life has changed since this project began, to think how much my life is going to continue to change. I felt when I began this project that it would be a year during which I would become more aware of my blessings, and unbeknownst to me it would also prove to be the year in which I would receive the greatest blessing. Today I am 33 weeks pregnant.

I considered not posting about my pregnancy; as is clearly a common writing condition I suffer from, it's often hard for me to find the words for the aspects of my life which are the most personal. And there's nothing in my life-- has never been anything in my life-- that is more personal than to be pregnant. But there's also never been anything in my life that I've been more grateful for, and so it felt imperative to close the year and the project to try and find the words, no matter how fleeting they are, to express my gratitude for the life I carry.

In the most fitting way, I learned that I was pregnant on Mother's Day. From that moment on my priorities shifted. Never before have I felt or understood in the way I do now how much bigger life is than ourselves. I cannot even comprehend how much more deeply I will feel this in the coming weeks.

There is so much I want to say and so much that is unsayable about how amazing it is to be pregnant with your first child...not just because the words are elusive, but because it feels right to only share them with your child. I can only assume that as this life grows within me it's absorbing the infinite love that courses through me, burrowing this into his or her bones so that it knows, always, that he or she is the totality of my best wishes, my greatest of hopes, and the blessing of all blessings...of course not just of this year, but from this year forward, for the rest of my life.