Warning: What follows is not shiny and happy. It is where I am at. It is real. It is raw. Proceed at your own risk.

Thoughts, unseen triggers and visions of two come in unexpectedly and fully flood my heart. It paralyzes me and kicks me to the ground leaving me gasping for air.  I start to pound on my chest, kick my feet like I see Magnus do when he is hungry.  I am in a dark tunnel and all I can see is the color black.  By my side is my beautiful, sweet and curious boy who is cooing to himself.  I try to drag myself out by looking up “Moms who have lost a their twin baby” on the internet. I am searching for a magic pill that will take away my pain, my blanket of sadness, my nightmares and leave me with the outcome that I envisioned for the past 7 months.  But all I find is scary stories about twins who have lost their twins in the womb who grow up depressed, lonely and like apart of them is missing.  This is not the pill I was looking for. And then I lose it.  “Two boys, I want my boys” I scream out,  “I want you back B!” “WHY!!??”

Magnus does not stir, but my husband who I sent to bed comes running out with bags under his eyes.  And these bags are from me, not from our one month old son like you would think, as for the past week this has been happening every night.

“Baby, baby. Stop.” “Take my hand, look for the light. You have to move forward.” “Let the pain wash over you, let your body go loose, let the tears roll. Do not fight it.”  he says.

“I can’t, It hurts. It hurts so bad.” I desperately try to let it go.  I am clinging on to the what if’s, to the Chelsey before learning the news that our son’s heart had stopped.  The Dr’s words, my doulas words, my husbands words from our decision day and the days that followed are all swirling around in my head like a broken record.  I am back at the cross roads of our decision day.

“It happened Chelsey, we can’t change it.  We will never know where that other path leads. And, I DO NOT want to change the outcome. We made it out of love, not fear and that is what I want to teach my sons.” Then he takes both of my hands and looks into my eyes and says:

“You are the mother of two beautiful boys. One in the physical and one in the spiritual world. He was never meant for our world, we just didn’t know it yet.”

I try to let his words sink in. In the past month he has said them over and over again in many different ways, trying to get through the wall of denial and shame that I have built up.

This wall that I have been laying brick by brick has served as my hide out, a place where I can sit in my own sorrows and self pity and wish for a different outcome.

It is a dark place, but in a strange way, it has also been a comforting place. Because it is much easier to sink in the sadness than do the work to move through it. I feel like I could stay here forever, dreaming about our life as I envisioned it rather living in the now.

Then I hear his voice. “Break down the wall and look for a bread crumb of light. “Get up,  follow that light out and change your surroundings”

It’s not pretty, but I do. I get up, I take a shower and as I stand there underneath the hot running water for much longer than I ever have, I see a vision.

Jason and I are at a Y in our path.  The way to the left is mixture of colors, but it’s very bright and almost blinding. And the path to the right is a soft glowing blue.  Jason steps ahead of me and turns to the right. He then reaches back for my hand like he does all the time. I take a breath and step towards him, and in that moment I have two boys in my arms- Magnus and Spirit. Then I take another step and Spirit who is wrapped in blue light starts to leave my arms and fully engulfs all of us in his blue light.  With my free hand, I take Jason’s hand and together we all take another step.

This is my first real vision of Spirit B in this form.  In all my other visions, I have been clinging to his body. The body that I birthed, that I held for 24 hours. It was a beautiful body, but he was not in it. He was already gone.  Even though I know this is true, it is hard to hold. I still find myself back in that dark tunnel, grasping for the simpler times when I could imagine them together.  I don’t know where this path is leading, but I do know that writing helps, talking helps and that while they are sometimes way to far apart, I do see glimpses of the Chelsey that I want to become.