The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

by Julie Yip-Williams

Life is not fair. You would be foolish to expect fairness, at least when it comes to matters of life and death, matters outside the scope of the law, matters that cannot be engineered or manipulated by human effort, matters that are distinctly the domain of God or luck or fate or some other unknowable, incomprehensible force.

My sweet babies, I do not have the answer to the question of why, at least not now and not in this life. But I do know that there is incredible value in pain and suffering, if you allow yourself to experience it, to cry, to feel sorrow and grief, to hurt. Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

This is my challenge to you, my sweet girls, to take an ugly tragedy and transform it into a source of beauty, love, strength, courage, and wisdom.

but I hope, when you read what follows, you will understand how it is possible to be changed in a positive way by tragedy and you will learn the true value of suffering.

Well, I’m here to play the game, and I choose not to live and die by what the oddsmakers say. I choose not to put faith in percentages that were assembled by some anonymous researcher looking at a bunch of impersonal data points. Instead, I choose to put faith in me, in my body, mind, and spirit, in those parts of me that are already so practiced in the art of defying the odds.

Indeed, each of us as we walk through the journey of our life does so alone. Sure, there are parents, siblings, cousins, friends, lovers, children, co-workers, and many other people who fill our lives, and sometimes their presence and chatter can make us forget that our journey is solely our own to make of as we will. But the truth is that we each enter and leave this life alone, that the experience of birth and death and all the living in between is ultimately a solitary one.

I was blind and it was her fault. She suspected that it was because of the green pills the herbalist had told her to take during her pregnancy after she, while helping the cook, had accidentally poured a big pot of boiling water on her legs. She had tried to not take the medicine, but her legs had become masses of angry welts that burned like fire. Now, though, she regretted taking the medicine; she should have just endured the pain. Or maybe this had happened because she had eaten too many foods with hot characteristics during her pregnancy—too many oranges, grapefruit, mangoes—and not enough cool foods, like watermelon and lettuce. The heat generated by those hot foods had been too much for her baby. Or maybe it was because of her faulty genetic makeup, which both her daughters had had the misfortune to inherit. Or maybe the gods were simply angry with her for something she had done, and now they were punishing her. Whatever the reason, she had failed to protect not only me but Lyna, too; she had failed at her most basic responsibility as a mother.

As honest as I am, I have to admit that marriage and bringing forth life, while filled with joy, were too fraught with anxiety to be truly and purely happy moments.