How a Maple Brownie Helped Me Return to My Body After Pregnancy Loss
Briefly

How a Maple Brownie Helped Me Return to My Body After Pregnancy Loss
"Pregnancy loss is about grief, obviously. You are shocked and depressed and angry, but not always in that order. Sometimes it's a roaring rush of all these emotions at once, a cacophony that paradoxically blends into a dull white noise. The persistent emptiness of what-might-have-been. Meanwhile, you're also navigating a body that was visibly pregnant moments before, with all the attendant hormones."
"It's a sad story. And not at all "on brand" for me. At the time, I was a television writer and producer, working for comedies like Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. Warm-hearted, silly, witty. That was my wheelhouse. In 10 years, the most tragic thing I'd written was in Parks when Donna sacrifices her Mercedes-Benz for Leslie's city council campaign. I'd taken some time away from TV to write a novel about grief complicated by a love triangle, but even in telling that story, I'd found"
I returned home from the hospital in August 2020 after a night in Labor and Delivery, having gained 40 pounds and with engorged, leaking breasts. A triplet pregnancy ended when my water broke at 19 weeks; the fetuses were never alive, though I held them and said goodbye in the same hour. Grief arrived as shock, depression, anger and a persistent emptiness, layered on hormonal and bodily changes after pregnancy. At the time, I worked in television comedy and had been writing a novel about grief. A nut-butter brownie later became a small, concrete route back toward joy.
Read at Bon Appetit
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