Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail.

In 2023, it was reading at the Racket. In 2022, it was the moment on Cathedral Rock where I passed other cowardly people, thinking that it wasn’t that bad! In 2021, it was all moments after I finished creating something like after the initial Weddin video. In 2020, it was the moment(s) when I was creating. In 2019, it was the moment that I realized that he was actually…alive and whole. In 2018, it was the moment that we realized that the car would start. In 2017, it was the moment (or moments) that I deeply connected with a group I had just met at a conference where I thought I would have been antisocial (or just horribly socially anxious). In 2016, it was the moment that I felt in the flow in telling the story of Ice Cream Travel Guide. In 2015, it was the moments after my hat was “stolen” in Rio. In 2014, it was a moment in a writing workshop that I had achieved greatness. In 2013, it was talking to Yasar Usta in Istanbul. In 2012, it was using the ocean as a “big toilet” while floating outside Palawan. In 2011, it was my birthday moment. In 2010, it was the success in Journey to the End to the Night.

This year, more than the previous years, there are the moments that have stayed in my mind. Could I really say that it was the moment before we entered Chris’ mom’s house? That it was my first time and it was unraveling a mystery of a world that I did not know? Or was it the moment and many moments that I had right at the diagnosis, the way that I stood in the darkened bedroom taking the phone call? Or maybe it was all those moments that I hiked and wavered between exhaustion and annoyance and boredom?

Or maybe like many moments in my life was when I read about pregnancy loss. It wasn’t my first time talking about it in a semi-public space. Nor was it my second. But every time because the feelings are so complex yet expected, I am overcome with it all.

Before the writing began, some women chattered about everyday things as the room settled. Children were discussed as it always does. I nodded politely as the topics floated around me. I seemed very interested in their topic and I really was. “Do you have kids?” one asked.

It was a hard question. But I knew what they were asking so I said no. How could I relate with their children’s needs?

In this moment, I had written to the prompt of my greatest fears. First the workshop leader Dionne asked us to make a list of fears. So I did. Then she said to choose one of them. In these kind of writing exercises, I always choose the one that shone the brightest. And the one that shone was the one about my fear of being a parent. And quite naturally, pregnancy loss fit into that.

The writing comes easily, as it always has on this topic. The fears of being a parent and not being one. The guilt I feel about not wanting to be one. The shame. The disappointment.

When I heard someone volunteer to read about how they felt being a parent, I knew immediately that I needed to show my point of view. So I raised my hand when asked if there were any volunteers. I laughed nervously when the microphone went my way—”Is there enough time?” I said self-consciously.

Yes, there was.

I read steadily at first. But then I got to the part where I called myself a monster for being relieved that I could have summer plans. My voice cracked. The strain that leads to crying. I couldn’t steady my voice as I finish reading like I was going to sob uncontrollably afterwards. My pitch rose higher and higher. I inwardly sighed at myself, annoyed that my reading had to be this way. But so it was.

By the end, everybody was crying around me. I didn’t realize that it had such an impact. I was struck by all the people who came up to me to thank me for sharing. I was also a little annoyed at how much I relish the attention. And immediately felt myself wanting to seek a way so that I could blend in. I wanted people to know me, not the me reading the piece. That was for publishing purposes only. And by the end, I returned who I was and who I always had been.