The month I dread is here.

Every year I tell myself it’s no big deal, this too shall pass…and I know it will. December will be here before I know it.

Then the calendar page turns, and it’s November, and I square my shoulders and prepare myself for it…or at least try to.

Back when I was 17 and in love, I recklessly raced into November, not knowing that on November 5, I would find out I was pregnant. I had a negative pregnancy test in October- on this November day, I was told I was 16-18 weeks pregnant. To say I was shocked is a vast understatement.

November 9 was my first love’s birthday – he was turning 16. That day brought us lectures on why I should have an abortion. I listened, head down and so alone in my convictions, for two straight hours. I refer to it as the “aren’t you glad I didn’t suck you into a sink anniversary ” when I call my firstborn on that date every year now. While I am so, so glad I stuck by my guns, it was a tough chapter in my life.

Little did I know the heartache to come. Just four years later, alone at work in a convenience store, I would get the devastating news that shattered my world – on November 26, my first love-the father of our son-was killed in a car accident. I literally collapsed, and strangers attended to me until I could leave work and go home, to make plans to fly home for the funeral.

Thanksgiving that year was just two days earlier, and it was the last conversation I would have with him. The last words we exchanged as we got off the phone were “I love you.”

After he passed, I had a long and very close relationship with his mother. She was like another mom to me – we spoke often, and I visited when I could. Early in 2010 she called to tell me she had small cell breast cancer. On November 19, she passed away. I was in Walt Disney World when I got the news. We came back immediately, and once again I flew home for a devastating funeral I wasn’t at all prepared for.

November 22, 2013, my beloved Tia closed her eyes for the last time. She had fought hard against a rare cancer, until God took her home, laying in the arms of her beloved husband, my uncle. She was sunshine and laughter, love and more love to me. She remains one of my very favorite people. There is a void she left behind when she left us, so young.

November now will also always remind me of the child I lost on April 3, 2013…a child that, if they had grown to term, would have been delivered in November. Instead, it’s just another loss in a month overladen with losses.

I have to be determined in November- determined not to let grief swallow me whole. I schedule workouts. I protect myself from extra stressors. I lean into God.

Sometimes it works, and I breathe easier on December 1, walking shakily forward into a month of celebration and hope.

Many times it doesn’t work, and my depression pulls me into a downward spiral that has me flailing for help.

November. Here you are again.

Here we go.