After everything. After the birth, after the waiting in desperation for an answer, after the surgery, after I was still not ok, I said this thing. This thing that’s stuck in my brain.

I told my friend if someone would’ve told me that this was all going to happen, if I had a vision of what the future was going to hold, I never would’ve gotten pregnant. I would take it all back.

“You don’t mean that. You’re just thinking in this moment,” she said.

“I do. I mean it.”

And I did mean it, with bitterness.

And here’s the thing. I’ve tried to overwrite that moment so many times since then. Every time I tell my story, I make sure I add that I would never take it back.

I wouldn’t now. But when you’re in the darkness, when the pain is so fresh, when you are desperately grabbing for hope that seems to be moving farther and farther away, desperation starts to set in.

And you say and do things that are symptoms of the desperation. Those things aren’t you.

I wouldn’t take it back, because the darkest moments of my life have both directly and indirectly led to the brightest moments. Because I am a better person today because of it.

I have learned to be vulnerable. I have learned to be a friend. I have learned that I still have a long way to go.

I wouldn’t take it back because that would mean taking her back. And in that moment I was fine with that, but now she is the joy of my everyday. She has certainly been a gift who has taught me to love more deeply, to forgive more readily, and to appreciate the little moments, an expression on a face, the intonation in a voice, the joy in someone’s eye.

Her name means “heart,” and it certainly fits.