A Portrait of Healing

Photo by Nikki Closser

I read that if you don't properly treat a ruptured Achilles, scar tissue will grow there and you won't be able to walk again. If you don't get the help you need your body will do what it can to fix it for you - but it'll fix it wrong. You have to allow people to help you heal.

The worst part about healing is the time it takes. Time you'd planned to do something else, too. (I'm not the only one who doesn't schedule in healing time, am I?)

Healing time is slow time. Slow time is hard for me.

It was hard two years ago when the pandemic stopped my life in its tracks, and it's hard now. I sped back up as quickly as I could, I guess. I told myself I'd learned all these lessons, and I told myself when I finished maternity leave in 2021 that I was returning to work with a better "work-life balance."

But I was diving into distraction. The thing is, 2020 was really hard. Finding out you're pregnant 10 days before a pandemic shuts down your world and your livelihood is terrifying. Being pregnant and isolated is heart-breaking. And giving birth is traumatic (for anyone). Especially when there's no vaccine yet, no one can visit, and everything feels uncertain.

So I dove back into work as soon as I could. It's easier to run from feelings than it is to feel them, after all. I ran. I ran and took plenty of photos so I could hopefully remember all the things I forgot to see.

But I didn't heal right. Sure, my body healed. (Miraculous considering what I pushed out of it.) I looked fine, too. Everyone praises you for going back to your "pre-pregnancy jeans" but they don't seem to care if you lose your will to live. Inside, my heart was trying to heal but it was just scar tissue. For one year, then well into a second.

I always felt like the processing of my pain was several months delayed, like the Horror photography project I did 9 months after my son was born. The newspaper even interviewed me about it. I said it was a love letter to 80s horror media - which it was - but left out that having a baby during a pandemic was the most horrifying experience of my life. And the experience just didn't feel like it was ending.

Photos by Nikki Closser

People like to talk about maybe 10% of the "having a baby" experience. The PR around the whole idea really has been staggeringly effective. "You'll have a little bundle of joy in your arms- the best day of your life!" Not, "your vagina will rip open, you'll shit yourself, and then you'll faint from blood loss when you finally get to go pee. And that's just a few hours of it!" I've avoided writing publicly about my pregnancy/birth/postpartum experience for fear it will be invalidated, judged, or reprimanded.

But I'm done being afraid. When I was pregnant, I ate sushi. It's fine to eat sushi. They give the women in this country outdated rules because they do not trust us to make decisions for ourselves. The thing is, when you're a woman and you make a decision there will always be people standing in line to correct you. But you don't have to listen to them. In fact, it's easier not to when you realize they're only doing it because they're more fearful than you are.

On that note, after 7 weeks of breastfeeding and nearly losing my will to live, I stopped. I felt guilty for a while, but over time I healed that guilt. I dove into beliefs I didn't even realize I had, and I worked through them. And then when I couldn't sleep or find any joy, I got medication for postpartum anxiety.

My baby turned 3 months old. Then 9 months. Then one year! Around the time he turned 18 months, plans were underway for me to fly to Italy for a phenomenal photography workshop. Of course I added a shoot + trip to Paris afterward, my heart still yearning to visit my favorite city since the March 2020 visit had been cancelled. And then June arrived so quickly. On my way to the airport I found myself telling my sister that I hadn't let myself get excited for my trip to Europe.

"I guess deep down I still believe it will get cancelled."

But I got on that plane and arrived in Venice the next morning. 3 incredible days followed. We drove up the windy Dolomite mountains to the stunning Ceconi Castle. As soon as I saw it I leaned over to my friend Olivia and said, "I need a portrait of me in a billowing nightgown running in front of that castle like a ghost." Another photographer friend agreed to take my requested photo the next day. At lunch I told Nikki that the morning's speaker had begun to crack the shell around my calloused heart.

"I just feel the deepest sense that once you take that portrait of me running across the castle," I told her, "I'll learn what I need to know."

So later that afternoon we did the photos I knew I needed. I felt free and blissful. And then, as I ran across the courtyard I heard and felt it: POP. Had I stepped on something? Turned my ankle? No. But my right leg wasn't working.

Before the ER Doctor even saw me I overheard the Italian nurses - Achilles is the same word regardless of language. And so, multiple hospital visits and many more tears consumed the rest of my would-be workshop weekend. My Venice plans were cancelled. Paris was cancelled. (Again.) Work for a number of weeks had to be rescheduled. And upon my homecoming I tested positive for Covid.

But I'll never forget the way the Doctor asked my colleague (who was translating Italian for me at the hospital) WHY I was taking Busparone. "Post partum anxiety," I said. So he translated. The Doctor looked stunned and motioned to my leg. I looked at my colleague for his translation. "He say, that medicine can make this happen."

I'll also never forget the look on the face of the ER doctor there - who kindly showed me a picture of the sunset I'd missed during my 4 hour ER visit, just to cheer me up - when I told him I'd paid $13,000 for a normal vaginal delivery and 2 day hospital stay when I had my healthy baby. AFTER insurance.

(Oh, and in Italy I had 3 hospital visits, two ultrasounds, medications, and a temporary cast for my travel home. I paid $0.)

Anyway, I am healing now. I've got no choice. But healing takes time. I guess the only way to do it wrong is to rush through it.

It's like when you're a kid and you have the stomach flu - the days and nights seem endless. But one morning you wake up and food sounds good again, games sound fun again, and you leap out of bed to live your life again.

I am waiting for that day. I know it will come. But for now, I guess I had to stop running.

Sincerely,

Mitzi

Yes, I am booking for the fall. I am so excited to hold space again for the amazing women who come to my studio and trust me to photograph them. Healing happens. Inquire here.

Thank you Nikki Closser for the beautiful photos you took of me in Italy.