Installment 1: Creating Awareness
Installment 2: Practicing Acceptance.
Installment 3: Be Curious
Step 3: Be Curious
1. When you reflect on your fertility journey what is one thing that you learned about yourself or your life that you wouldn’t have otherwise learned?
Hmmm. I don't know if I've really learned anything new, but it's reinforced that you really can't take anything for granted. Everything that one person considers "normal" is something that another person spends years or a lifetime trying to achieve.
I feel the same way still about how you can't take anything for granted. I think overall this is a very powerful lesson. And it's one way to start looking for, and finding connection and compassion amid the difficulty and sometimes despair. Of course, the other side of that, which maybe isn't so positive, is that it can become difficult to believe it is ever possible to be normal, or to have a normal outcome.
I used to avoid looking too long at families with babies or young children, because I didn't want the reminder of what I didn't (maybe couldn't) have. Now I find myself looking at them and saying to myself: "Look, this shit actually WORKS a lot of the time. The human population is 9 billion (?) because a lot of people get pregnant and have live babies that grow up to be other humans. There just might be a chance I can manage to do it too, especially now that it's already started....right?"
At some point that line of argument may become fully convincing to me, or it may not, but I keep making it, seeing as I don't know what else to do.
2. What is one thing you are grateful for? This question can be difficult at first but take your time. For example, I am grateful for my husband and the unconditional love and support he continues to give me.
Oh gosh, I'm grateful for so many things. For a loving husband who can share the good things of life with me, and the tough ones. That we have been responsible with our money and can cope with the cost of ART. That technology exists that can potentially help us. For good health.
I continue to be grateful for all these things, and it really relates back to point number 1: everything I could take for granted is something that could well be absent from my life, and its loss deeply felt. I also think that gratitude is about living in the present: acknowledging this moment and day for all its gifts, and consciously putting aside the resentment that yesterday might not not have been everything I wished for, and the fear that tomorrow might not be everything I wish it to be. (But please please please let tomorrow - all the tomorrows - include a healthy, developing Ember.)
I'm also very grateful for this blog and the people who read and leave notes of support. I have never received anything but kindness and I'm very grateful for that, especially since the internet has its nasty side as well as its compassionate side. It still boggles my mind how anybody could be deliberately mean to an infertility blogger, but human nature is boundless in its diversity and perversions I guess. So, thank you to everyone for the kind notes, for finding common ground with the very-literal navel gazing, and if there's someone out there who really wanted to be nasty and somehow restrained themselves, um, thanks for that also, and I wish you support and a safe haven too.
3. If you were to look back and discover a “gem” that came from your fertility journey, what would that be?
I don't know about gems, but it's been eye-opening to discovering all the stories and support online.
Yes, encore. All the stories online have done so much to help me navigate this journey and keep my faith in humanity.
Of course, the biggest gem is Ember him/herself. Whatever treasure hunt through the valley of the shadow got me to this gem, I couldn't ever regret a moment of it. There are no words for the gift of something so precious.
Installment 1: Creating Awareness
Installment 2: Practicing Acceptance.
Installment 3: Be Curious