The Lucky One

Wellbeing reader Mikhailla Fitzgerald always considered herself the lucky one. Then, at 23, she lost her three-day-old son to Group B Strep. Here she reflects on how grief and pain can coexist with luck, purpose and a beautiful life.

I’d always considered myself the lucky one. In life, I had been somewhat privileged through the sacrifices those before me had made. I hadn’t been exposed to too many challenges, and I always held a zest for life that, at times, I’m quite sure annoyed my parents, because they themselves had a very different upbringing. I recall the moment my dad once said, “Mikhailla, you need to get your head out of the clouds,” but the truth is, I loved to dream. I loved to believe that there are no limits in life, and I was addicted to believing I was simply lucky.

However, my luck did run out … or so I thought. It was the journey of deciding I wanted children with my partner that became a whack in the face each time. I was only 22 and experienced a miscarriage, and then another, and then finally was blessed with a nine month-long pregnancy and the birth of my son, Foxx. That joy turned into three days of my newborn fighting for his life before he eventually passed away due to Group B Strep (GBS), and at that point, it felt like there was nothing lucky about my life.

I kept trying to see the light, but honestly, the clouds were overbearing. I remember the night I came home from the hospital empty-handed after my son had passed away, and even the sky was crying with me. The worst storm I’d seen in years rolled in, and lightning struck the ocean in front of me as we drove down into our apartment car park. It felt like the world was permitting me to process that life perhaps isn’t made up of only beauty and dreams, as I had wholeheartedly believed.

Something shifted. I was deeply hurt, but I noticed hurt around me more deeply, too. It becomes suffocating when you realise that at any moment your whole life can change, and you have no control over when those moments will happen. I had thought that trauma was reserved for those who had lived multiple decades, believing they would be strong enough to endure it through life experience. Yet somehow my life path decided that at the age of 23 I would be ready to endure the pain of losing my three-day-old newborn child — a child I had dreamt about since I was a little girl and had been desperately trying to hold for almost two years.

It didn’t make sense for years, and when you’re grieving, all you try to do is make sense of it all. You go through a whirlwind of emotions that punish, torture and break down every part of your human existence. But after almost nine years now, what I have learnt is that I truly am still the lucky one.

And this is because I got to find beauty after pain, which means pain didn’t defi ne me — it rebuilt me, better, and created a beautiful life and legacy with purpose. The loss of my child taught me how to open up to the deepest parts of myself and learn to live as the person I am — someone who still dreams with no sky as the limit and feels lucky every day — while also being aware of the depths some of us have endured. I realised that whatever my path, I will continue to experience hurt, hardship and trauma that can break me down at any given moment, but going through it all doesn’t mean I can’t still live a fulfilling life. The two worlds of grief and pain can coexist alongside the belief in luck.

This same hope — or perhaps it’s a mindset — gave me the strength to try for more children. I was blessed with my second child, our daughter Elle, two weeks before what would have been our son’s first birthday. Fifteen months later, I was pregnant again with our son, Cruz. Both are now healthy and thriving eight and six-year-olds.

This same trauma gave me the strength and momentum to channel and focus my grief into a passion project that began with sharing my own story online, accumulating an audience through a blog and social media, before going on to build a talent management agency that managed others who shared their voices and stories online. It expanded further into two children’s books, My Sibling Above and Love From Above, which continue to sell daily, empowering little people to understand and navigate loss.

I couldn’t change the loss of my child, and while I didn’t feel lucky that my life path took me down a road shaped by such trauma, I do feel lucky again — because I accessed a depth within myself, and within my life, at a young age that forever changed the trajectory of how I live, embrace and believe. Loss changed everything about the way my life would have gone.

This article is featured in WellBeing Magazine 223