14 Years Ago Today

Our Lives Aren’t Fair—But They Are Good

Fourteen years ago today, I was lying in a hospital bed at Beth Israel in Boston—medicated, terrified, and fully aware I’d be delivering my son two months early.

The pregnancy had been high-risk from the start. I had developed preeclampsia, and without intervention, Briggs and I were both statistically on the wrong side of survival.

I knew that, intellectually. But emotionally? I couldn’t accept that my baby was safer outside of me. The stress of the unknown and the loops of my faulty thinking made everything heavier, darker, and harder to hold.

And still, the facts were solid: I was fully supported. We were at the best NICU in the state. Briggs just needed time and space to grow.

But none of that soothed me.
I was terrified he would die—and that it would be my fault.
No one made me feel that way, except me.

Such piling on.

I can remember losing it over “little things” as a kid, and well-meaning adults, doing their best, would shout, “What’ll you do when something really goes wrong?”
And while I never said it out loud, the truth is: I would make it worse.

One day, while driving to the NICU, I called my mom in hysterics and said, “This is the great tragedy of my life.”
She didn’t miss a beat:
“No, honey. This isn’t a tragedy. It’s a miracle.”

Now, 14 years later, I’m 44. Lovingly divorced. Living with late-stage cancer. Training an anxious rescue pit bull. Selling my house.

And instead of looking back and telling myself to knock it off, I hear my mom’s voice more clearly, and I can answer the past me with something like:

“You’re right. This is unfair. But if beating yourself up actually worked, Briggs would have been out of the hospital in a day, and you’d be the wealthiest woman alive. All the data says: this strategy sucks. So, how bad could it really be to try something else?”

The wannabe comedian in me still chimes in: “Pretty bad.”
And I imagine both versions of me laughing.

My higher self would follow up with:
“It’s funny because it’s true.”

Changing my thinking has been awful—until it hasn’t.
I’m not above an internal dig, but I fill the hole faster these days. With more truth. More gentleness. More forgiveness.

It’s taken more than 14 years. It’s taken my whole imperfect life.

And I expect I’ll be learning for the rest of it.

My greatest teacher, from day one, has been Briggs.

It’s clear to his dad and me that his brain is wired more like mine than his dad’s (which is both a bummer and a blessing, see how I just countered the negative there?).

He’s wildly creative and imaginative. But if he’s not a natural at something, he struggles to stick with it. He gravitates to what he’s good at. Who doesn’t?

But becoming good at something requires repetition. Mistakes. Emotional stamina.
And when mistakes feel like personal failures, it’s pretty easy to shut down. (Or stomp. Or yell. Or throw things. Or run away.)

Like every hopeful parent, I wish he could learn from my mistakes and suffer less. But like every human I’ve ever met, he has to make his own meaning, change his own mind, and decide which of his own thoughts are worth keeping.

And through it all, parenting remains the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Maybe it’s because your child is fully their own person, yet somehow still an extension of you. And when that piece of you is out in the world, struggling to be kind to themselves in the same ways you struggle, it’s the most painful and loving mirror imaginable.

Happy Birthday, Briggs.
Our lives aren’t fair. But they are very, very good.

Whenever Briggs can choose his baseball number, he picks 44—in honor of his first best friend, his Dad’s Dad: Pup. That kind of memory, that kind of love?
It gives me so much hope that he’ll become a friend to himself far sooner than I did.