europe, march 2017 part 1, munich - innsbruck - basel

This year has been a doozy.  Back in December, my position with a company after almost 4 years took a strange turn after new ownership set in.  It was practically overnight and the changes were drastic and there was a ton of turnover.  I am a firm believer that since you are at work most of your week (meh) you really should enjoy your job.  At least most of the time, amiright?  

I went from loving my accounts, enjoying the [ large amount of ] travel and liking the comfort of being good at sales to not respecting my management and watching amazing, good employees and friends be let go for ridiculous reasons.  

Then January took a very different, unexpected turn when I found out I was pregnant.  I was traveling (duh) and I just felt off and I knew immediately.  I waited until I was home to take a test because I wanted to be with Andrew.  Sure enough, pregnant. 

I won't go into every detail yet, but we were very excited, thrilled.  Life changed over night.  Too excited perhaps.  March 3rd, the day we were leaving for a two week Europe trip, we found out we had lost the baby.  We were heartbroken.  Crushed.  But we boarded the plane.  

Needless to say, Europe didn't go as planned.  And I feel so selfish to admit that the trip to Europe that we are SO lucky, SO blessed to take, was tainted.  We were emotionally exhausted, sad, our brains were elsewhere instead of soaking in the moments around us.  And that was just the emotional side.  Physically everything sucked too.  I started to miscarry just 4 days in.  

This has been a fucking rollercoaster of emotions.  And it's not over yet.  

Overall, I do think getting away was best for us.  What would we have done?  Returned to work Monday?  Sat in the house for two weeks?  We had experienced life, and life sucks sometimes.  Life sucks sometimes.  LIFE sucks sometimes.  LIFE SUCKS SOMETIMES.  I also realized that NO ONE TALKS ABOUT MISCARRIAGE, and that is heartbreaking and annoying and frustrating and hurtful.  Whew, ok.  Breathe.   

I plan on sharing more later, I do.  More people should.  

Until then, here are some images I did capture, part 1. There were few, much fewer than any other trip.  And I was usually behind the camera.  But I was there, in Europe, with my favorite person in the whole world.  Living the (sometimes) sucky life together.