September is a beautiful time of the year. Summer is exhaling its last breathes into the air. Autumn has already begun to delicately dust the trees with nature’s palette. The seasons are humbly shifting and for a little while you’re suspended between the warmth of summer and the promise of fall. September resides in the eye of the storm. It’s the calm amongst the extremities that surround it. A peaceful place in an ever changing vortex.

Five years ago, my eye of the storm, calm September’s were hijacked by an invasive melancholy. Five September’s ago, I underwent life saving emergency surgery losing a very desired pregnancy as well as my future fertility.

The crispness of September mornings no longer greeted me with the rejuvenation and optimism of fresh beginnings. The looming excitement of autumn as summer quietly departs only filled my heart with more darkness and despair. Bees humming by carrying the promise of a fruitful spring only left me buzzing with grief and emptiness. Even pumpkin coffee and apple treats failed to deliver or entice the usual happiness and excitement they typically would. The world carried on around me in peace, as I battled the storm inside of me. The storm called September.

The ways in which a traumatic event will infiltrate your life are unexpected. Your life gets split into two seasons, before your trauma and after. Often times, you’ll mourn the loss of the person you were before your life got flipped upside down. You’ll crave the nativity and innocence of a version of you that hadn’t yet understood pain. You’ll look back at pictures of yourself and barely recognize the person smiling back at you with joy in their eyes. You’ll punish yourself for not enjoying that part of you more. Why couldn’t you have basked in the simplicity of that life just a little bit longer?

You eventually conform to this new person you’ve become. You begin to accept that your grief will never go away. It’s almost as if you’ve grown another limb. You realize that you can either learn to live with it or it will live with you.

As you learn to live with the darkness that is tethered to you, you grow and evolve in ways beyond your comprehension. There is a magic in the universe that only becomes available to you after you’ve been stripped down to the most vulnerable version of yourself. You begin to experience life through a different lense.

Suddenly, it’s all beautiful again. Everything becomes more vibrant and lush then it ever has before. Because the grief you are carrying around, reminds you of the delicacy of life. And it becomes impossible to forget.

Five September’s later.

September sunrises crest the horizon with hope and the promise of a new day. The deep hues of color in the sky remind me of the daughter I lost, but also assure me that she is always here. The whisper of the trees as a gentle wind weaves between them, fill my heart with peace and solitude. Birds singing and insects buzzing unite as nature’s melody harmonizing with my soul.

I feel so connected to September.

As dark clouds build in the distance, I no longer fear the storm. I’ve found the beauty and purpose in my pain. I’ve reinvented its role in my life. My grief will no longer hold me back or rob me of my peace and happiness. Instead, it instills a profound measure of gratitude and appreciation for this beautiful life I get to live. It shines a light on all that I do have rather than what I lack. It reminds me of my strength and resilience. I wear it like a badge of honor.

It’s no longer stormy in September. The storm has passed and the sun is shining.