THE DARK YEARS (cont’d from Part I): At the time, I was 8 months pregnant. And while the farm boy and I came out of that hit and run accident relatively unscathed, our son Abraham didn’t survive. We were both heartbroken and emotionally bankrupt. I’m sure that there are a few of you out there that can relate.

“Stillbirth and miscarriage bring with it a special kind of grief.

It’s a very lonely, unvalidated kind of grief.”

Quite honestly, I didn’t think that I would ever sleep again. A debilitating anxiety consumed me — 24/7. I was haunted. I found myself in the first of a handful of soul-sucking depressions that I have since experienced periodically throughout my life.  

While that farm boy and I carried on with building our little family, we just couldn’t heal. We were so young. We didn’t have the tools or resources to work our way through the grief. We didn’t know how to bridge the growing gap between us.

Sadly, we eventually parted ways.

Like a bad movie, I found myself alone, a single parent, juggling three jobs and doing my best to pay rent in a crappy single-wide trailer on the outskirts of a small town in Saskatchewan. My farm boy was gone.

This wasn’t the idyllic path that I had hoped for nor had I planned on.

By this time, I felt that I needed to fix my life; fix my broken family. I was desperate for a life of stability in a safe place. I still craved that white picket fence that seemed to evade me. It just made sense to get remarried … and I did.

To another farm boy.

I thought it was a good idea at the time. But guess what? Two tragically broken people together does not make for a good marriage. The union was brief, painful, and wholly dysfunctional. In the interest of brevity, I can say to you that in those few short months, I was shown the shape of a life and a person that I didn’t realize could even exist. No day-time talk show had prepared me for that.

So, there I was. 28 years old, divorced. Twice over.

An unmitigated failure.

I struggled to make ends meet for me and my kids. When I first entered a food bank, I felt defeated. When I applied for social assistance, I was broken.

This was a deeply dark time for me. My confidence was completely shot. Everything that I thought I was and what I wanted had been an illusion. And that illusion had been shattered…

A Girl Least Likely – Part I, Part III, Part IV