Loss and learning

I dreamt that I was playing the violin.  I was soft, my movements flowed, and my violin and bow felt completely natural in my arms.  The music sounded as beautiful as I ever had the skill to create it.

I awoke, and the realization was instantaneous that this dream, which had felt like home, was only an illusion.  The unearthing of the long-buried grief was just as immediate.  It closed my lungs.

The music sounded more beautiful than I can ever make it again.

I lost violin now half my life ago.  I don't know when I stopped identifying myself as a violinist deep inside, but it's gone.  I still love the instrument.  I still have vivid, full sensory memories of every aspect of it.  I'm amazed, on the rare occasions that I do pick one up, how well I can still remember to hold my body and place my fingers - because in between those occasions, I marvel at the fact that I ever had the abilities that I did, and I don't remember the person that believed she was a violinist with the same intransigent, integrated certainty as being female, daughter, friend, human.  Yet I can wake from a few moments of revisiting that old self and find myself knocked sideways with grief.

Then I think of my self as midwife.  This sabbatical and career shift is different from the end of my violin career in so many ways, the most obvious of which is that I chose to step away from home birth midwifery, and I would have done anything I could have to choose to keep violin.  Still, I grieve it.  I miss it.  I miss witnessing the power of birthing women, just as I missed the power of music.  I miss working with women as they create themselves as mothers for the first time or again and again, just as I missed working as a team to recreate a timeless piece of music.  I miss using my hands to comfort, to assess, to receive babies, just as I missed the physical, proprioceptic quality of playing violin.

I wonder whether I will lose my identity or skills as midwife if I stay away too long.  I wonder whether, if I did, the grief would follow me through my life in the same way as the loss of violin has followed me.  I wonder whether, upon reclaiming midwifery in the hospital setting, I will stop being able to relate to my old home birth midwife identity or continue to grieve my choice.  So I take this dream as a reminder of the opportunities that come with challenges - in this case, the opportunity to look back at the loss of my violinist identity and ensure that I preserve my midwife self, even as I step away temporarily from midwifery, perhaps permanently from home birth midwifery.

When I was forced by my body to quit violin, I rejected music so fully that I cut my connections with the friends I had made in symphony; in my midwifery sabbatical/shift, I am maintaining several relationships with midwife friends and intend to continue to do so.  I stopped listening to classical music for several years, let alone playing it;  I am keeping current on research and attending conferences and workshops on midwifery.  I abandoned playing violin at a much lower level when I was unable to regain my abilities;  I am willing to use my skills in a limited fashion in order to maintain my skills along with the standards I have currently set for my career continuation and my personal life, since fully using my skills at this time would detract from my attention to my career goals and family.

Moreover, I am focused on the fact that I am continuing on my career path as a midwife.  When I had to quit violin, I had hope at first, but gave up completely after relapsing when I tried to play after being released from physical therapy.  With midwifery, I know that I have chosen a sabbatical, and that it is temporary.  I know that I will return to midwifery with all the dedication I had the first time, but with the wisdom I gained from the experience of being wrongly singleminded for so long.  I will return having worked hard to maintain my skills and knowledge.

I am now almost certain that I will return to full-scale midwifery not by using my existing license to run a home birth practice, but rather via nursing school, the MSN in midwifery and women's health, and work as a hospital midwife.  The reasons for this are not the point of this post, but I will talk about them soon.  I wanted to share this now, however, because it is one of the ways that I focus on the fact that I am not moving away from midwifery during this sabbatical, I am moving toward midwifery and toward the initial call I felt to midwifery, which was to work with women choosing hospital birth.  I have learned so much about how to meet the needs of my children along with my need to have a meaningful career, and this newfound knowledge will benefit my future clients/patients (it's going to take me some time to adjust to the P word), employers, and my family.

I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, but I believe that in everything that happens, there is an opportunity to create reason.  Half my life later, I still sometimes feel broken in places by the loss of violin in my life.  I am grateful that I have managed to draw upon the experience for wisdom in navigating the current transition in my life and career.