I should have known this year was going to be a doozy when I found myself on a bus on my birthday, just off the Las Vegas strip, being serenaded by an Elvis impersonator. 2016 sort of continued from there with its endless stream of bizarre and disconcerting events. Brexit. HB2. The shock and depression of our presidential election. Riots in Uptown.  Prince and David Bowie. Brangelina. Mayo losing yet another All-Ireland Final. The Indians losing the World Series. The list goes on.

Thankfully, there are positive memories to look back on as well. The Cubs winning the World Series, for one.  The Cavs winning the NBA championship. My dad beating cancer. Walking our son in on his first day of school. Making the biggest jump of any employer on Fortune’s list of Top 100 Companies to Work For. Mastering my gym selfie.  Celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary.  And who can forget my first trip to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo?  That was straight up bucket list action.

But something else happened that I would be remiss to ignore. I found out I was pregnant for the second time on a Thursday morning in January.  Shortly thereafter, I received confirmation that this was no longer the case.  Our miscarriage happened early, and it threw our entire year off course. While we won’t ever really know, we’re convinced she was a girl.  We would have named her Kate. She would have been born by now, and we miss her desperately without ever meeting her.

It was more of a non-event, really, but in a Christmas season now with much of the world waiting for a child to be born, it seems as though I still haven’t stopped waiting for my child.

Suffice it to say that 2016 has been rough. Maybe it’s not for us to know why things happen as they do, but it’s high time I wrote something about this particular thing. A thing that so many women experience, though you may not realize it because no one talks much about it.  I suppose there isn’t really much to say.  At times, you can almost convince yourself it didn’t even happen — but then there is the longing that never fully goes away, the lack of confidence in what you are capable of.

So today, I acknowledge what happened, and I hope that, in giving it its terrible moment in the universe, we can close out this mess of a year and move on.