To Love Again

Welcoming Lucy Mei Aalseth

Mike and I are excited to introduce you to Lucy Mei Aalseth! Her name means “beautiful light” and Mei Mei means “little sister.”

Here is a poem I wrote to capture our anticipation of what it will mean to parent again after losing our first daughter to leukemia. How have you experienced loving again after heartbreak or loss?

To Love Again

I remember when I first met your sister.
First words out of my mouth were, “Is she mine?”
I didn’t recognize her dark hair.
Then I heard her high-pitched voice.
Perhaps this was my daughter.

Here was this little person who I didn’t know at all,
entrusted to me to love.
I would get to know her —
her cries, her strut, her subtle humor —
her surprise eruptions of delight
that made me pause and wonder.

And now here you are, Mei Mei, little sister.
Loving you is familiar. I’ve done this before.
And still, I have yet to know you.
I know I’ll see your sister, your dad, myself in you at times.
But you are you, Lucy Mei,
with your own strut and your own voice.

I want the familiar, and I fear it.
Familiar love does not mean a familiar goodbye,
I keep telling myself.
But now I am wiser to know that you are not mine,
though always my daughter.
You are leant to me from heaven and loving you means
practicing daily giving you back.

Loving you means letting the splintered memories
of lost joy be as they need to be,
without judgement,
as the familiar and the new
reveal themselves.

This kind of love, this again love,
is not a love I know yet how to give.
But I am giving it. And I am learning it.
Because what I know already, little one,
is you are worth it.