Noreena

“I hope my scars never fade completely.”

-Ullie Kaye

In preparing for this project, I was reflecting on the things that have happened in my life. I was thinking about how much it feels like things have happened TO me. And I don’t like that; I don’t like feeling like a victim. I don’t like not having control. I try to reframe things, but sometimes I don’t do the best job. So much of my journey has been about undoing or figuring out how to heal from a lot of things that happened when I was a young kid. It’s amazing how things stick with you. All these years later, I still feel the ripples.

My dad came to this country in the 70s. He emigrated from India, and he met my mom, who is from the suburbs of Philadelphia. They met in graduate school and started dating; my mom was getting an advanced degree in Classical Languages, and my dad was getting an advanced degree in Engineering. They were so different, and when I think back to the start of their story, I often wonder, “Why did they pick each other?" 

It was very important to my dad that we were completely assimilated into this culture, and so as a result, we really didn’t learn a lot about important Indian traditions. We didn’t have a lot of other Indian friends, and people weren’t really sure what to do with me. It was odd for me to try to figure out who I was as a kid. I had those adolescent “Who am I?” thoughts when I was a very young child. My peers would ask, “What are you? Where do you come from?” And I would say, “I’m from here! I was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania!” But I didn’t look like I was.  

I’m the oldest of 3 kids; my brother is 3 years younger than me, and my sister is 3 years younger than he is. We were all spaced very thoughtfully. Before I was born, my mother had been a teacher of classical languages at a private school, but once I came, she didn’t go back to work and was a stay-at-home mom. My dad worked as an electrical engineer. He seemed like a very angry person; I think he felt a lack of control in his own life, and he wanted everything to be perfect, including his wife and kids. And to people on the outside, things did look perfect; everything looked great. I always got good grades… we all were so perfect at everything. So, nobody knew what was really happening.

My mom struggled with her mental health. My dad became more and more angry and violent with her; he was a very scary person. I remember frequently feeling truly afraid that something was going to happen to her… that he was going to kill her. And all of this was going on during my formative tween and teen years.  

I felt so much pressure, and I remember very clearly when my eating disorder started: It was around the time that things were getting really bad at home, and I was also very conscious of my body and how it was changing. My mom was not in a state to support me and help me understand what was happening - what was normal, not normal, all of that - and so I remember feeling very alone in it. I started restricting as a way to try to control everything.  

My mom’s struggle with her mental health and my dad’s abuse escalated and escalated. My mom’s family tried to help her, they tried to intervene; but they also had to be careful, because they didn’t want to make things worse. My mom tried to leave him a couple times. And the second time that she tried to leave, it stuck.

My dad traveled a lot, and during my sophomore year of high school, he was heading down to Orlando for a business trip. I remember him leaving that morning, and I assumed we were going to get ready for school, but my mom said, “No, you’re not going today. We’re going to leave. Pack your things.” She had already talked to a lawyer; she had a whole plan. She told us, “We’re going to drive the car to your aunt and uncle’s house, and we’re going to leave the car there. They’re going to drive us halfway to your other aunt’s house…” So we literally fled with a bag of clothes. At the time, my aunt - my mom’s older sister - lived with my uncle and my cousins in upstate NY. She has always been incredibly supportive and lovely. So we went up there, my mom filed a PFA, a Protection From Abuse, and she started paperwork to file for divorce. I remember it was very dramatic. My dad came back to the house, and my mom had changed all the locks, the security system, everything, and the cops showed up.

I was gone from school for what felt like forever, though it couldn’t have been more than three or four weeks. My mom had told the school why we weren’t coming back for a little while. I remember going back to school for the first time on my 16th birthday. And when I came home, there was a message on the answering machine from my dad; he had left a birthday message for me. I could hear that he was tearful and upset. It was so hard, because even though I hated my dad, I also loved him. He was my dad, and he cared about me the best that he could. I just remember being so devastated. On the one hand, it felt like, “Ok, so that horror is over.” But I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

It was hard for me to get back into school; I was very sad and anxious. I had been a straight A student before, and I just couldn’t maintain that when I came back. My grades dropped. I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t keep it together. I lost any chance of ever being valedictorian or salutatorian. The divorce proceedings took a long time, the equitable distribution took a long time. My mom had been out of the workforce for sixteen years, but she had to go back to work because she needed money. It was really hard. I know that she struggled; we all did. And I was always worried about my siblings. My brother’s sadness came out as anger at the time, and my sister… my sister was like my little baby. I always protected her. When my mom and dad were still together and I knew it was going to be a bad night, I would bring my sister into my room and make sure she wasn’t scared. Thankfully, I think because my siblings are younger than I am, they don’t remember things in as much detail. But I do. I feel like sometimes they think that I should be able to get over these events in our childhood more easily, because it all happened such a long time ago. But in my mind I think, “Yeah, but I remember being in the kitchen when dad pulled out a butcher knife and I thought he was going to stab our mom.” We were all there, but I think I’m the only one who remembers. 

My dad remarried. I believe he was abusive to his second wife too. She had three kids from her first marriage. I went to college. Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a child psychologist, but I figured out that I wasn’t going to be able to do that unless I fixed myself first. So I ended up going to law school so that I could be a lawyer to help kids. And when I was in law school, we found out that my dad had cancer.

My dad had suffered from Crohn’s Disease for as long as I can remember, and he ended up getting intestinal cancer. By the time they found it, it was already in his liver. He was diagnosed in July of 2005, and by the middle of August, he was dead.  

When he was sick in the hospital, I remember visiting him and thinking, “Maybe this is my chance to have time with him when he’s not scary to me. Maybe we can talk.” But he passed away so quickly. And it’s too bad, because I feel like maybe if he had recovered, or maybe if we had had more time, maybe I could have had the experience with him that I always wanted. I think he became more aware of his own failures and his desires to do things differently towards the end. I imagine most people do when they’re at that point, when they’re that close to death.  

I remember being at the funeral, and his second wife and his step-kids were there. There were people there who didn’t know that he even had kids from his first marriage. They didn’t know I existed. It was an out-of-body experience for me. One of his step-daughters got up and read the eulogy, and I was like, “I don’t even know who this man is you are talking about.” It just seemed so bizarre to me. It felt like I was in a parallel universe.

In 2010, I got married to a man who unfortunately was not very kind to me. Looking back, I’m not surprised. I just think I didn’t have enough time to process and heal from everything that had happened in my past, even though I had been in psychotherapy for a while. I think I just wanted so badly to be loved that I was at a point where I would let bad things happen to me. There were so many times when I thought his behavior was ok, but I realize now that it was not. There were many instances where I could have said no, or when I could have tried to physically stop things from happening, but I didn’t because I was like, “Well, this is it. I just want to be loved and accepted.” 

Also, because of my eating disorder, I was so sick. I had resisted going into inpatient treatment for years because I didn’t want to interrupt college. I was like, “I know what happens when I interrupt my education. It’s not good.” So I managed to keep myself out of inpatient for a long time. But after I got married, I decided that I needed more help. I went to Renfrew for 6 weeks - it’s a residential eating disorder treatment program in Philadelphia - and I actually think that was the thing that helped me leave that marriage. I was apart from him, and I did well there. I realized that the relationship was not a healthy thing for me. I came out of Renfrew in the middle of August, and by November, I had moved out. Our divorce was finalized in September 2011. I will never forget that day because it was the day there was a literal earthquake. The ground was shaking as the divorce was finalized.

I met Sam in November of 2011. There are aspects of Sam that remind me of my dad, but not in a bad way. In a way that’s toned down to the hundredth degree. I feel like my dad would probably have liked Sam if they had gotten to meet. We dated for a year and a couple months, and then we got engaged and married. We knew we wanted to have children, but we waited a year before we started trying. At that point, I was 35, and it just wasn’t happening. We went to see fertility specialists, and we ended up getting pregnant with twin girls, which was so exciting. 

The pregnancy was difficult; it can be especially hard to be pregnant with an eating disorder. I felt like I was eating more than I normally would, but there were still challenges. We dealt with IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) and had lots of doctors’ appointments. The twins were delivered via c-section, which was fine, until it wasn’t.  

I ended up with something called Ogilvie's Syndrome. It usually happens to older people, but basically, my intestines stopped working. It can occur after something traumatic happens to the body, like abdominal surgery, that causes the intestines to stun. 

I was in so much pain. I remember the pain, but I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. I thought, “Ok, it must be from the c-section.” But I couldn’t even get up, I couldn’t even get myself up to use the bathroom. I had to have someone pull me up because it hurt so much. My belly started to swell again, which was weird. Before all this happened, they had been thinking of letting us go home. But then they did an x-ray of my abdomen, and they were like, “Oh, wow. No. You can’t go anywhere.” 

The surgical team came to meet with me, and they were like, “Listen, we want to be as non-invasive as possible. We’re going to try this thing called a rigid sigmoidoscopy, and then we’re going to give you a dose of this medicine called neostigmine.” Essentially the procedure is that they put a long pole into your bowel to try to get things moving. I remember Sam was at home at this point, and I was making these decisions by myself. I was like, “Just do it.” 

It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. After they did the procedure, they were like, “Now that we’ve done that, we need to take you downstairs and give you the neostigmine. It’s hopefully going to jump start your intestines. Kind of like jump starting your car.” So, they put the medicine in my veins, and everything that followed was so traumatic. The medicine was making my body contract so forcefully. I remember the nurse next to me - her name was Meghan. I remember looking over at her and saying, “Meghan, when is this going to end?” And then I passed out. That’s all I remember. My heart rate dropped to 42, and they had to give me a dose of atropine to bring it back up. I don’t remember the rest. But they put me in bed, I woke up a couple hours later, and they were like, “We think you’re probably good.” 

They let me have some ginger ale, which was amazing, because I hadn’t eaten anything for days. The girls were discharged from the NICU and brought to my room, and it was great; I finally got to hold them. Sam was thinking we were finally going to get discharged, since I was doing better. He was like, “I’m going to go get the house ready for us. I’m going to do the laundry, I’m going to take care of the dogs, I’m going to mop the floors, it will be all ready for you.” And I was thinking, “Ok, great. This is so exciting.” So he left, and I remember getting on a phone call with a friend, and when I hung up, I thought, “I don’t feel good…”

I went out to the nurse’’s station and told them, “I’m not really feeling good, I have some discomfort in my belly area.” And they were like, “You know what? It’s probably gas. Let’s have you walk around, do a couple laps, and we will see how you feel.” So I did a couple laps, but the pain did not go away. I went back to my room, and the nurse who was in charge of me that day came in, and she gave me a dose of vitamin k in preparation for me to go home. But all of a sudden, I just started having these terrible belly pains. I remember telling the nurse, “Something is very wrong. I don’t feel good.” And the nurse who had just given me the medication said, “Sometimes, you don’t feel good after that…” And I was like, “No, get the nurse manager. Something is very wrong. I don’t feel good. I think something is really wrong.” So the nurse manager, Kelly, comes in, and she was like, “You have a fever. Stay there, we’re going to get some people to help.” 

The next thing I know, the surgical team is there, and I was like, “Oh no, you people again?” They started talking about me but above me, and eventually they were like, “We need to take you down to the operating room.” 

It felt like a scene from a movie. They were rushing me down the hall in a stretcher, literally running with me, and it’s freezing cold; it’s always freezing cold down in the ORs. I remember before they took me in, it felt like they were having me sign my life away. Then they took me inside, and I looked up at the anesthesiologist, who was this old wrinkly guy. I remember it being so bright in there. And I remember thinking, “Oh God, I just want to wake up when this is over.” And then he gave me the meds, and I was out.

When I woke up, I don’t even know how many hours later, in recovery, I learned that my intestines had dilated so much that they perforated. They had to remove a large part of my large intestine and tie it off into an ileostomy. I stayed in the hospital for a long time, recovering and learning how to take care of the ileostomy. But eventually, I got to go home with the girls and Sam and this ileostomy. Sam had burned through his 10 days of paternity leave before we even left the hospital, so he had to go right back to work. It was such a hard period. I was trying to take care of the girls by myself and make sure they were feeding and gaining weight, I was in a lot of pain and on heavy pain meds so I couldn’t drive, I was so anxious, and I was so tired.  

Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. I think initially I was just so happy to be alive that I was like, “You know what, I can figure this out, it will be fine.” But then just being alone with both of them… They were beautiful, happy babies, but I was just paralyzed. Like, who do I pick up first? Who do I feed first? I just wish that those first couple of months with them would have been different. I was also trying to take care of myself, because the surgeon had told me, “Listen, this doesn’t have to be permanent. If you can get your bowel to heal, if you can get your albumin level up to a number that I want, then I can reverse you. I can reconnect your bowels.” And I was like, “Ok.” I knew what I had to do. 

I got to the point where they could do surgery again, and they did. About three months after coming home, I had another surgery. I don’t know how it was possible, but that one felt more painful than the first one. They can’t close the wound all the way, they’ve got to pack it, and eventually it will heal on itself. But everything works now. It’s amazing what the body can do; it literally healed itself. 

When I followed up with my OBGYN, she told me that the same complications were likely to happen again if I got pregnant and had another baby. She said, “We don’t know exactly how it would manifest, if it would resolve with or without surgery, but it will probably happen again.” So, in December of 2016, Sam decided he would get a vasectomy. He went to his primary care doctor who was like, “I do vasectomies, it’s an outpatient procedure, no problem.” He followed up with everything he was supposed to, and they were like, “Ok, you’re good.” We found out later that the vasectomy was improperly done. 

In August of 2017, I found out I was pregnant. I remember just knowing I was and being so angry. I wasn’t even sad at first, I was just livid. I was like, “How is this possible?” I went to see my OB, and she said, “You can have this baby, but it could get very complicated. We don’t know how it will shake out.” She told me that it was my choice, but she said that my safety wasn’t guaranteed if I went through with it.  

Sam and I talked. Originally, he had been excited at the idea of having another baby. But after the conversation with my OB, he was like, “Our kids can’t lose their mom. We can’t let that happen.” These conversations were so hard. In the end, we decided that we should terminate the pregnancy.

On the day of the procedure, my OB said, “Let’s just have you be out completely, we’ll take you in the OR, and you’ll wake up, and it will be over. Let’s just do it that way.” I thought that was the best plan as well. So, we get to the hospital, they have the IV in my arm, we’re all ready to go, and then the health insurance people call, and they’re like, “We’re not sure if this is all going to be covered.” And I thought, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” I said, “I’m not going to put my family in debt because I want to be under anesthesia for this.” And my OB told me, “Listen, I can do it in the office, but I don’t have time until this afternoon.” And I said, “Ok.”  

So, we waited around. It was a weekday. The kids were in daycare; we had been hoping to have everything done and to pick them up at the end of the day. But then, while we’re waiting, the daycare calls and says, “So, we think the kids picked up Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. It’s been going around the classroom.” This meant Sam had to leave right away to go pick them up and take care of them, so I was there on my own. 

My OB took me into her office at the “PEACE” clinic - The Penn Medicine Pregnancy Early Access Center. Her nurse was there as well. I remember them saying, “If you want to bring some music in, sometimes that helps distract people…” So, I had my phone in there, there was music on, but I just… I will always remember being awake and feeling it happen. 

One of the ways I have tried to cope with this experience is through writing. The following is an excerpt from something I wrote recently entitled “Peace.”:

Excerpts from “Peace,” by Noreena Sondhi Lewis 

Peace. Noun. “Freedom from disturbance; tranquility.” “A state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended.” 

Similar: “Restlessness.” “Soundlessness.” “Noiselessness.” “Privateness.” “Freedom from Interference.” 

Good Lord, I wish that’s what I could reach, my fingertips stretching for - yet always missing - the desired grasp… 

What is peace anyway? Is it an absence? The absence of a heartbeat? Of a feeling? 

I remember waiting to go into the room, where my OB/gyn was sitting. I awkwardly climbed onto the exam table, placed my feet in stirrups, ripping the tissue paper that scrunched up underneath my shaking body. I gripped the sides of the table. 

I remember the nurse. She was quietly kind with a worried, furrowed brow. But she had this look that said this is not my first rodeo. She held my right hand. 

You’ll feel pressure. 

But no one tells you that there will also be a release and relief so horrifying that you will never be able to wipe it from your memory. The pregnancy slipping from your body, dropping into the receptacle below. 

The waiting for the bleeding to slow, so you can drive yourself home. Alone. While crying. Fixing your face before you walk into the house to greet your twin 14-month-old daughters.  

I threw away the outfit I wore that day. 

I spent months crying myself to sleep. Crying in the car. Alone. Just my single heartbeat. Knowing that the hardest choice was the right choice was the painful choice was the right choice was the necessary choice. The right choice. 

Unsuspecting people still ask, Are those your only two? Trying for a boy? I quietly, angrily shudder. 

If you see peace, can you tell her I am still grasping for her, yet always still missing her?

I didn’t tell anyone for a while. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I don’t practice anymore, but some of my family still does. We just had to keep going like everything was fine.  

I always feel like there is a child missing. It just feels like there’s this person who was supposed to be here but isn’t. My girls have asked a couple times about having a brother or a sister, and I’ve told them, “Mommy can’t have any more babies, because I got very sick when you guys were born.” I think they understand the gravity of how bad it was, but we haven’t told them everything.

In life, there are always two things happening at once. There are the things that everybody sees, and there are the things that you’re feeling internally. And when the feelings are all icky and gross, it’s often like, “Well nobody really wants to deal with that, so let’s just keep things on the other side.” I feel like I’m a little bit broken. I feel like my heart is just so broken. I don’t know how to fix that. I have no idea what it would be like to not feel broken. Oh my gosh. I wonder what I would be like as a person. What would I have been able to accomplish? What mistakes would I have been able to avoid?  

Over the years, I’ve been in a lot of treatment to process this all, but it’s been hard. I think everything is connected. All those things that happened when I was a kid still affect me. I have love for both of my parents, even though they both did things that were hurtful. I have to love them for the good things they did do, even though it just wasn’t what I needed. My needs as a child were not met in the way I needed them to be met, and this caused a lot of feelings of shame, because I always felt like it was my fault.  

I have carried many of those feelings into adulthood. It can still feel like my fault when my needs aren’t being met, so I think I often subconsciously feel the need to prove that I have none. Take my eating disorder: the refusal to eat feels like my brain’s way of saying, “I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you. I’d rather just not feel things, or I’d rather hurt myself before I let my needs feel unmet again. If my needs aren’t going to be met, I’m going to be the one who doesn’t meet my needs.” It’s so messed up. But that is my mind’s way of coping with everything. That’s what it is. If I dial back on the restricting, then I’m going to feel more, and then I’m going to have to deal with that. Both things hurt, and I have to pick one. You know? I understand that there are phases of recovery. You can do good work and deal with the feelings you have about the trauma you experienced and all of that, but it’s still hard. You have to make this choice. And it doesn’t feel like a fair choice sometimes.

I’ve done and seen things that I would not want anybody to ever have to experience. And I’m not quite sure what to do with it. I like to write, and I’ve written about some of these experiences. I enjoy reading and writing poetry, but I keep thinking to myself, there’s got to be a reason that… there has to be some meaning in all of this. I have to find it, because if not, then it all just seems very harsh.  

I think like most people, I ultimately just want to feel seen and validated. The feeling of being embraced and hugged is like, “Ok look, I’m still here. I’m a person. I am a body that is still here.” But there are so many moments that I second guess myself. I wonder if in the moments that I crave hearing, “I love you” or receiving praise… I don’t know if those feelings are normal or if that is me searching for what I didn’t get as a child. I wonder if the things that I feel like I need… are they too much? Are people even able to meet them? In the past, when I have found myself in relationships that aren’t good for me, I’ve wondered, “Am I recreating this because it’s familiar, or is this just dumb luck? What is going on?” There are some people in my life who have known me for a very long time who fill my bucket. I know if I need something, I can turn to them, and they will be there. But I’ve also had some relationships in which I feel like I have poured my heart out and ultimately end up feeling disappointed or hurt. And then my bucket is empty.

Originally, I thought for my quote I would choose the word “Enough.” There’s been enough emotional hurt, enough physical hurt. Enough with the constant punishment to my own body. That’s enough. But also, there’s a desire for other things - there are other things in my life that I feel are not enough. It’s like a food analogy - you eat a meal and you may think, “I’ve had enough of that, but I didn’t have enough of this.” Maybe it’s “Enough.” with a period, or “Enough!” with an exclamation point. Or a question mark. Or all three.  

Then I ended up finding this poem by Ullie Kaye that really spoke to me: 

scars. 

i hope my scars never fade 

completely. that way people 

who see them will always 

know that they have someone 

they can talk to. my pain 

does not need to define me 

but it will refine me. 

and there is no better story 

to tell than that of a life 

changed by the very fire that 

tried to take you. 

I chose the first sentence - “i hope my scars never fade completely” - as my quote for this project.

I’m hopeful. I want to get to whatever is on the other side of this all. I know it’s there. I’m just having a hard time finding the right path to get there. I think one thing that helps steer me in the right direction is watching my girls make their way through the world. I want to set them up so that they can feel empowered. I want them to just be who they are, to develop into who they’re going to become, and just let them be themselves. They are very observant, very sweet, smart, sassy little people. Sometimes when my daughters say, “I love you mommy,” it makes me so happy, because I think they must feel that way about themselves to be able to give that back to me. Those are the moments I feel good about myself. And in the moments they act out and I get frustrated with their behavior, I also feel secret relief, because I know it means they feel safe enough to do that in front of me. I sometimes think, “That’s probably what I would have done when I was that age, if I had had a different set of parental circumstances.” I’m most grateful for that - that my kids don’t have to grow up with the fear I did. 

I’m trying. I want to love myself; I hope that I can get there someday. I’m not going to give up. But I wish it didn’t feel so hard sometimes. I have these two beautiful little girls, and I want them to know that they are loved, that their needs are not too much, and that they are going to go out in the world and find joy and love and all of those things. I feel like it’s my job to stick around and watch that happen, because maybe that is what will be the most healing for me.

Over time, I do think I have gotten better about gaining insight into everything. I think sometimes I overlook that - that I have done that. So I feel like, I don’t know, maybe I should give myself a break and try not to dwell on the things that I’m not doing or the things I think I should be doing differently or better. It’s been cathartic to share these things. The opportunity to share this all doesn’t come up a lot. It’s kind of like you walk down a path, and then you take a little break and you sit on a bench, and then you get off the bench and you keep walking.