It Was, And Is, A Girl: A Story of Grief Redeemed and Coming Out

It was, and is, a girl.

Dearest friends, it is with the heaviest and happiest heart I write this post full of dreams lost and found, stories ended and begun, all at once, overlapping, as life so often is and does.

I told you last week, vaguely, about heartache and the exquisite agony of watching our children grieve while grieving with them, powerless to do anything but show up, knowing that Being There is both everything and nowhere near enough.

What I didn’t tell you, because I never share my kids’ business without their blessing, is that Abby and Chandler were expecting a baby. A girl, although I was the only one who knew because it was my job to get the cake for their private gender reveal. I was stashing that cake in my fridge when they told me there was no longer a heartbeat. The baby had miscarried, the potential little life lost along with their hearts.

It’s been a week now. More. Full of tears and doctors and what ifs and now whats and whens. And the tiny detail about what to do with that goddamn cake. Lord, that cake. Do we destroy it? Consume it? Light it on fire? Bury it with roses?

Abby and Chandler chose to redeem it.

See, Cai told us a few months ago that she’s a her, not a he, after all. And we rejoiced because it’s always a gift when our children introduce us to deeper and truer versions of themselves. When they reveal themselves in their fullness, beautifully and wonderfully made. But we also rejoiced privately because Cai wasn’t ready yet for the world to know. So we loved her and hugged her and waited. And then she said “OK. I’d like to be me now. Everywhere. Out loud and on purpose.” Which Abby and Chandler knew.

So they called Cai. “Might you want the cake?” they asked. “We’d love for you to have it. We’d love to celebrate you with it.” And she did. So we did. And never have I ever been so very full of grief and delight and sorrow and peace and absolute, abiding pride in my children who SEE each other and love abundantly, even when love looks like offering their pain on a platter to transform it into joy.