I’ve been gestating on something for a year. I am now in labor. In May of last year my first husband, my daughter’s father, shared that he had been offered a very lucrative job offer in Australia. He communicated with me that he didn’t want to take Summer from me and that he wanted her to go with him and her stepmom. He listed all the reasons why and honestly I didn’t see a reason so say no. I am a firm believer in what cultural immersion can teach someone and the opportunity for my child to have that felt right. He also told me that if I was a “no” to tell him immediately so that he could let his potential new employer know that he wouldn’t be accepting the offer. I told him, “I need to know more but I’m not a ‘no’.” Once I had enough information to say ‘yes’ they embarked on the long haul of paperwork. And we all embarked on the long haul of waiting. 

The year came with marked moments of “this is actually happening.” In July he went to visit his new employer. In August he submitted their visa application. We waited. In the meantime we worked on our legal agreements around all of the logistics of being a global family, and we waited. They thought they would have them by February and that they would be departing in March. They were wrong. Twice. We waited. March came and went with no updates on visas being granted. Lawyers in Australia got involved. We finished our legal co-parenting agreements. We waited. More applications were filed. We waited. They were told it could be June. We waited. 

Before I continue I want to make something abundantly clear. I’ve supported this for my child almost from the beginning. I am one hundred percent supportive of my child living in a foreign country with her dad, whom I trust, for the next four years while he fulfills his contract with this company. I am also experiencing grief and loss. The chapter of my life around 50/50 custody parenting is coming to a close and a new one is beginning. I am excited for the opportunities that this will bring into my child’s life and I am grieving that I won’t see her every other week. This was both a no brainer and the most painful parenting decision of my life. 

Then, on May 13th of this year, an hour after I had landed in Hunstville, Alabama for an event that I had been helping to organize, I was standing in Whole Foods when I got the call from my daughter. With an enormous smile on her face she excitedly shared with me that the visas finally came. I stood there, in front of the refrigerated drink section and didn’t know what to say. I did my best to share her excitement but all I could feel was nothing. Just an emptiness that sucks the life out of you. Someone who has sat with another who is dying knows what this feels like. At the moment of death the room is both empty and full. It is one of the oddest paradoxes to experience. And so was I, filled with both nothing and everything. The nothingness of not knowing what to feel and the fullness of feeling it all. The paradox of human emotional capacity is immeasurable. 

Later in the weekend I would learn that they depart at the end of June. On Sunday morning as I was typing a message to her father around some of the details of the final handover I broke. Mid sentence in our shared google doc that we use to communicate logistics I had to put the phone down as I began to hyperventilate. Then the tears came. I’m grateful I wasn’t alone. Two of my dearest friends were with me. Eric rubbed my shoulders as they heaved while hot tears pooled on the floor between my feet. When Amanda was done with her shower she came over and comforted me as well. The gratitude I still feel in not being alone in that moment will stay with me always. 

We are now inside the last 30 days before they depart. My daughter is with me for three weeks,  with them for the last week of school, then back with me for her last five days here. I cry daily. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. Everyday there are tears. Some are quiet, some are loud. Some arrive with a sharp inhale, some fall silently down my cheeks. I’d been holding it all in for a year and in that moment in the cabin in Alabama the floodgates opened. As I type this they are falling. I’m doing my best to both be present and maintain our normal flow of daily life. She’s still in school. I’m still working and pursuing all other aspects of my life. We are doing our best to make sure she spends time with everyone we are closest with before she departs. 

Today I was sharing with someone that this process, this transition, feels like birthing all over again but this time it’s emotional rather than physical labor. However, at the end of it I will hand over my child to her father just like I did immediately after I birthed her ten years ago once I had held her and knew she was safe. Only this time I won’t be getting her back for three months as they begin their new life on distant shores. 

The following is an excerpt from a bigger project that I am working on, told in the third person. It is an accurate retelling of my birthing experience: “finally when the assisting midwife arrived that evening she had settled into a squatting position on the floor once fully dilated. This was the moment she had been waiting for since the previous November. After an hour of pushing she was getting frustrated and impatient. Why was it taking this long? After two hours her midwives said they could finally see the head. How much? She asked through gritted teeth and heaving breaths. Her primary midwife had shown her a circle about the size of a quarter with her fingers. “THAT’S IT?!” She exclaimed in disbelief and anger. She had been working hard for hours in a way that her body had never pushed herself before. She was fatigued, depleted, and wanted this to just be over. But there was still over an hour left before her baby would be here. At one point her midwives could see that she was fading, her body weak, her breath shallow. They waved citrus under her nose to revive her and helped her drink enough juice to perk her up a bit. She exclaimed how she couldn’t do it, her midwife locked eyes with her and said, “you’re doing it” in a way that only a birthing mother knows. Gentle yet firm, clear and determined. In between contractions she would moan how she just wanted to get to the ring of fire, she just wanted to get to the ring of fire. Then, in a searing rush of pain and burning she was there, the moment so aptly named the Ring of Fire because of how it sears the inside you, the crowning of the baby’s head, the final stretch of cervical opening. She screamed “OH MY GOD THE RING OF FIRE” when the moment finally arrived. Three more pushes is all it took. One to birth the head, a second for the shoulders, and the last for the rest of this tiny little torso and legs that followed. She was here, she was finally here. Earthside following the journey from desire, to conception, to development, to birth. Her baby’s gaze, quiet and thoughtful as she lay on the white pad surrounded by the four people who worked tirelessly that day to bring her here. Her tiny body, silky smooth, covered in the white vernix of the womb, quietly taking the world in…not yet breathing on her own but still connected to the life giving cord inside her mother. She rubbed her baby’s arms with the freshly birthed hands of new motherhood until the cord had safely been cut and she could hold her for the first time.” 

The laboring that I am in now feels akin to dilation. I am in the rawness of this. The slow building of opening and expansion as the womb prepares to push, centimeter by centimeter, until the cervix has achieved an aperture of ten. I am in the animal body of my vulnerable state of being. Everyday my heart widens more and more, ever so slightly, always with the knowledge that we are edging closer and closer to the ring of fire when she leaves the safety of my body and is once again received by her father. 

*********************************************************************************************************************************

She left on Friday the 26th of June. I woke her up that morning with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Upon seeing me sad she also started to cry. She told me she didn’t want to go. I did my best to reassure her and just validate all that she was feeling. While she was asleep I drilled a hole in a shell that I had found the previous day at the beach and put it on a silver chain for her. I put it into her small hands and told her I put all my love and protection into it for her, to always keep it close by or wear it as much as possible. I also told her that I loaded up her most beloved stuffie with a thousand million hugs and that anytime she needed a hug from me to squeeze Hedgie and she’d be getting a hug from me. She showered and dressed and had breakfast. I sat with her on the couch while she ate. When it was time we gathered the last of her things that would be going with her on the journey and went downstairs to the truck. I asked her what she wanted to listen to and we put on her favorite playlist that has songs on it we both like. I drove up to her dad’s house and parked. We got out of the truck and stood at the front door for a few minutes hugging. Her stepmom came to the door and when she saw the look on my face she promptly backed away to give us more privacy for our goodbyes. Summer looked up at me with tears in her eyes again and I told her a few things; that it’s ok to love the place where she will call home for the next few years, that she can be both sad and happy at the same time, and that even when she’s sad to always keep her head held high. I gave her one last hug and sent her into the house. I got into my truck and the hottest of the tears that I’d been holding back all morning broke through the damn of my steadfastness along with sob after sob. I white knuckled the drive back to my apartment and curled up in bed where I let the rest of my tears flow. A few hours later one of my dearest friends arrived on my doorstep to spend that first weekend with me so I wouldn’t be alone. I will forever be grateful to him. On Sunday of that weekend I had my first call with her in her new country. She was tired but happy and excited for her new life there. We talk everyday, we text, this week she started at her new school and already has several new friends. Knowing all of this a huge weight off my heart has been lifted. Overall she is settling in well. There have been a few times where I’ve had to call her and help her down off an anxiety ridden cliff but more times than not our conversations are positive and she’s enjoying her journey in a new country. 

Before she left I had a conversation with her about how parents always want for their children that which they themselves never experienced and Daddy being able to provide her with this experience is a big part of our parenting values that we both share. She seemed to understand this at least to a degree. My goal in parenting my child has been to show her the world and send her off into it and with the help of her father, even though we are no longer together, we have done that.