Actively Seeking Joy

The first time I nearly died in pregnancy, I had no clue how close I'd come. I was captivated by the whirling blue lights of the ambulance and entranced by the whole experience.

"Code Blue...wow, that's bad," I asked the EMT cheerfully as he struggled to get IVs into both my arms. 'How cool,' I thought.

By 1999, I had survived three "maternal near-miss" pregnancies. A near-miss pregnancy is one that, all things considered, could have, should have turned out differently...you know, I should be dead. Technically, with my second near-miss, I did die. I flatlined on the operating table moments after the emergency c-section that delivered my third son - a healthy, robust, chubby baby. Obviously, they brought me back but not without a fight.

I remember dying and I liked it. It was warm, so warm, and I slipped down, down, down enveloped by this sense of peace and love. Above me, in the fracas of the operating room, I heard voices like mosquitos that I mentally willed to leave me alone. This was good -- this dying thing. But then, with a jolt, I was back in the loud, chaotic, painful world with doctors stuffing my organs back in like I stuff a turkey at Thanksgiving.

After the birth of my fourth and final son, my doctor, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Washington deemed my case just "ho-hum." He used the term 'boring.' No one seemed to know why I kept trying to die during childbirth but this time, because of him, I was saved and I could enjoy my four beautiful boys and my wonderful life as their stay-at-home mom in Bellevue, Washington.

Except that a week later, I was readmitted to the hospital with sky-high blood pressure and severe edema. I looked like the Michellin man a week after having the baby and actually weighed more than I had when I'd given birth. Between a Lasix bolus and magnesium sulfate, they stabilized me, and the next morning the doctor came by to check on me.

"You're not so boring after all..."

"Funny," I said, "And where do I send my check because I am seriously tired of nearly dying due to preeclampsia or some variant of it." That is when he told me there was no US nonprofit working to find a cure for the leading complication of pregnancy, affecting 5-7% of the four million births a year.

I'd like to tell you that after all that, nearly dying three times and founding the Preeclampsia Foundation, I found my purpose. The reality is that within two years I watched my mother die a slow, painful death to breast cancer, my marriage succumbed to the stresses of my depression and his alcoholism, and I lost my home, my savings, and life as I knew it.

I struggled to find any happiness and I watched as my life circled the drain.

It was then that I decided to make finding joy my mission. I typed up the phrase "Actively seeking joy" on my P-touch 80 label maker, printed it out, and slapped that sucker to the top of my computer monitor where I would be forced to see it. Whenever I felt my resolve weakening, I read it out loud.

And every day at 5:00 PM I cranked on my favorite song, A Moment like This, by the newly annointed princess of American Idol, Kelly Clarkson. I belted that song out and danced with my two and five-year old boys, while the older boys cringed and begged me to stop.

Every day - actively seeking joy.

Every day - dancing and singing "A moment like this, some people wait a lifetime, for a moment like this," my guys swaying and singing along on the top of the coffee table. A cigarette lighter moment.

Happiness did not come in a single day. Life did not stop being hard, but slowly I learned to seek joy, to create my own happiness in the tough times and the good. Even now, twenty years later, it's my go-to mantra - "actively seeking joy."

However, I should admit, that when I decided I was ready to start dating again and put myself out there on Match.com, my first date was a lovely guy with whom I had nothing in common. A sweetheart of a guy named Dan.

Dan Joy.