More Motherhood Dreams

I'm going to do it. I'm going to dare to picture more things that I'd love to do someday with my someday-child.

The list below comes from a journal that I kept for the baby during my short pregnancy last year (which is why it's all addressed to "you"). That journal has been sitting unopened since last March, until this week.

Things I want to do with you:

• Welcome you and your family back home to Thanksgiving dinner when you're all grown. Yes, this is the first thing that comes to mind—you as an adult. I wonder who you will become.
• Enjoy you as a baby, too. Feel your fingers close around mine, and watch your legs kick when you laugh. Rock and feed you in the stillness of the night.
• Share the people I love with you, and you with them. Watch your grandpa sit you on his lap and tell you stories. Make Christmas cookies with your grandma. Take you to play with my best friend's daughter. She's already in school now (see, it took me a while to have you!), but I know she will be patient and kind.
• Savor the ordinary things that I wondered if we'd ever do together, like going to the petting farm nearby. For years, I've driven by it several times a week, watched happy families going in and out, and never stopped.
• See your face light up when you touch the softness of an animal's fur, and teach you to care for small things that are dependent on you.
• See your confidence grow as you learn to walk, tie your shoes, and ride a bike. Bite my tongue and smile when you tell me, "Mom, I can do it myself!"
• Give you my favorite books. Happily read you that one special book 500 times.
• Take you to my favorite places, from the city park two blocks away to the national parks I've loved. We'll go on walks, and you can sit on my shoulders when you get tired.
• Do seasonal things: sniff the spring flowers, turn cartwheels in the summer grass, chase fireflies, go swinging at the playground and swimming in the pool, jump in piles of autumn leaves, carve pumpkins at the park, go ice skating and sledding, and catch snowflakes on our tongues.
• Do creative things: color on the sidewalk with chalk, put your art up on the fridge, build forts inside the house on a rainy day, and sing silly songs in the car. I'll clap at school plays and when you master playing "Three Blind Mice" on the recorder.
• Talk casually about the most important things while we do household chores or ride in the car side by side.
• Listen while you chatter about a new interest that excites you—something I'd know absolutely nothing about, if it weren't for you.

(source)

The Daughter of My Dreams

This week I've been reading Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened.

Isn't that an awesome title? The part about "flawed coping mechanisms" can't help reminding me, though, of my last post about habits of avoidance.

I've been taking it for granted that my desire to be a parent was obvious. Otherwise, why be here at all, right? But I'm feeling the need to clarify: the avoidance that I battle sometimes is NOT a sign of losing interest in motherhood, or of feeling that the path there won't be worthwhile. It's just my own type of "flawed coping mechanism." After all, it gets hard to stay focused on things that hurt.

Years ago, I did do all the "right" TTC things: kept up a positive attitude, did fertility yoga, exercised... but not too much. I ate a low-sugar, low-dairy diet … but not dairy-free, because that one study suggested that some whole-fat dairy might be a good thing. I took all the CCRM-recommended supplements (still do). And I carefully visualized things I hoped were happening each cycle: healthy eggs growing, embryos implanting.

I always struggled, though, when it came to picturing a baby. Was that allowed? I wanted to daydream about it, of course, but hesitated to get attached to any one image of gender, age, or race. I knew from the start that odds were bad, so I needed to stay open to fostering and adoption. Who knew what my child would really look like? It wasn't as simple as picturing my eyes and my husband's chin combined.

So I stopped picturing anything. Eventually, I stopped bothering with the myriad of diet and lifestyle rules, too, and just did the best I could, which is pretty good on most days. But sometimes I need the motivation that comes from actually picturing my dreams.

The image came when I was talking with a counselor two years ago. She was saying something about welcoming the child who was meant to be when the time was right ... and although I don't believe in "meant to be," the part about welcoming that child opened something in my heart.

In an instant, there it was: an image of me standing on the sidelines of a soccer game with a little girl right in front of me. Maybe ten years old, mousy brown hair, lean body tense with concentration. My hands resting on her shoulders.

Maybe it wasn't a soccer game but field hockey or some other sport instead. It doesn't matter; I know nothing about sports. And that's kind of the point. I was there for my daughter.

Even today, two years later, I can't picture this scene without crying. (There's not much that makes me cry anymore.) It's not the image of the girl that touches me, because it's not really about this particular dream-child. It's the way my hands rest lightly on her shoulders.

Is she tense because something happened and she ran back to the sidelines for comfort and support? Is she tense because her whole focus is on getting back into the game? Either way, I'm there right behind her, hands ready both to welcome and, when needed, to let go.

I don't know why I haven't let myself picture even this one vision lately. (OK, yes, I do: fear of more disappointment.) But I need to let it back in, to allow myself—in the midst of worrying about the what, when, and where of treatments—this one lovely reminder of why.

Happy Birthday, Blog

It was a year ago yesterday that I took a deep breath and—with very few expectations—hit "Publish" on my first post here, which was written in the middle of the night, in the middle of a sleepless week. Looking back, I'm surprised that it was coherent. It still does a good job of explaining why I came here.

And what is it about blogging that's made me stick around?

• Fluidity:  Mainly, as mentioned in that first post, facing the reality of difficult emotions helps me to keep them fluid. It keeps anger and sadness from congealing into bitterness and despair.
• Release:  This is hard to explain to those who haven't felt it, but it feels like there are just things I have to say. In daily life, I'm not a big talker. I especially try to avoid overloading friends with TMI about TTC. No-one wants to be a bummer. That's not to say that I let it all hang out here … just that no-one has to come here, you know? So I don't feel guilty about focusing on the same basic topics, which take up a huge and important space in my life right now.
• Clarity:  Writing makes me more mindful of emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and patterns that are normally just below the surface of awareness. The more precisely I can describe them here, the better I can see and respond to them "in the wild."
• Guidance:  Without really setting out to make it happen, I now have a record of what's helped and what hasn't during this very hard year, which can serve as a guide the next time I'm feeling lost.
• Connection:  When I see how many people struggle with similar feelings (if not the exact same circumstances), it helps my heart expand rather than shrivel up in self-pity. I don't have to take it personally. It's not "my pain" or "my joy," just pain and joy, things I share with absolutely everyone.
• Support:  Other people's posts have given me such good food for thought. They've led to new perspectives, posts of my own, practical tips, books and articles to read, questions to ask my doctors… Thank you all!
• Warmth:  Reading a person's blog is a little like visiting a room in her home. Personality comes through not just in words, but also in the layout of the place, the pictures on the wall, how often she's there, who else drops by… I get to know someone better in her own space than when she's one username of hundreds or thousands on a forum.
• Acceptance:  I tend to publish posts when I feel about 95% done and ready to move on. Completing that last 5% would take longer than all the rest and turn something fun into a self-absorbed chore. I can always go back later and make a sentence more precise (hey, it's not journalism) or write some kind of follow-up. My writing, like everything in my life, will always be imperfect and unfinished, and that’s OK. 

Laughter

Lately my moods have been all over the place ... a fact that doesn't cause too much concern, actually. I figure that I'm still on the right track as long as I feel something other than that drained, depressive feeling that ebbs and flows.

Yesterday started with a sob-fest, after hearing a sad song that brought back memories, and ended with me laughing at a DVD of Bridesmaids. I always go for the Serious movies. Then, red-eyed and sniffling afterwards, I swear that next time I'll watch a comedy instead. This time was finally that next time. Bridesmaids was the prescription two friends gave me this week.

In the years they've been married, they've been through more than anyone else I know: major losses (different from mine), alcoholism, homelessness … then hard-won sobriety, followed by bad luck and—while doing everything right—more homelessness for months on end. I've seen them feeling very down at times, naturally.

But they can also LAUGH—also more than anyone else I know. When they're together, it's clear that their humor is a habit; they tease each other back and forth over little things like a couple of high-school friends. At the opposite end of the spectrum, nothing is too big and awful to have something funny hidden in it somewhere. I think their ability to just let go and laugh sometimes (OK, often) is a big part of what's helped them to keep going.

Another friend just returned from visiting loved ones in Cuba. In an email, she wrote, "The trip was magical, as is life when we allow it to be. In Cuba, there is no other way ... By necessity, people live in the moment and work with accepting and going beyond external circumstances with humor and love."

I'll be honest: I'm not great at the humor thing. It's the first ability to disappear when I'm feeling anything less than good. Not only does it feel like a stretch—at a time when I most want to contract and curl up, protecting my soft spots from further injury—but it feels almost morally wrong. Like laughing at a situation means accepting it.

And yet … that IS sort of what it means, isn't it? That’s exactly WHY it's so healing when I let myself let go.

Accepting something doesn't mean condoning it, just recognizing that yes, this is what is real. How can I ever hope to reach the Point B I'm so fixated on (or anywhere else I might want to end up), without first getting familiar with the landscape around Point A? I also have to acknowledge the scary fact that many important things will always be out of my control.

This week, in a context totally different from the one here, I heard one person give another this advice: "Keep telling your story. Just keep telling it, until the horror fades." It's true. The more I tell my story, the more the visceral horror fades, and along with it, the sense of dislocation ("This CAN'T be my real life!?") and being stuck at a dead end. It's possible to uncurl, stretch out a little, look around. It's even possible to laugh—not to cover the grief, but to keep the fear in my mind from shutting down my heart.

According to this article:

The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic ... Heroics are often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that's pretty extraordinary.

When we're able to do it sincerely, from the heart, laughing in the face of disaster can be acceptance and uprising all at once (see Tig Notaro). It's immensely courageous.

I need more of it in my life.

ICLW Thanks

As my first ICLW comes to an end, I'm already looking forward to the next. It's been enlightening, healing, busy, and fun. I found some wonderful blogs to follow and got so much food for thought. In fact, there are ideas for many more posts swirling around in my head now, along with topics to research, questions I should remember to ask my doctors, etc.

I even managed to, you know, keep up with the commenting part. It shouldn't be a surprise, but secretly I wondered how this week would go, since it turned out to be busier than expected when I signed up. And, as always, the regularly scheduled depression was there to interfere.

I tried to comment on every blog that I read and to go down the list randomly, not just picking situations that seemed to have the most in common with mine. And I'm so glad. Before, I might have turned away from those who wrote a lot about their supportive spouse, pregnancy, or existing children. (Sorry—it's just a self-protective thing.) I might have resented women whose TTC odds seemed better than mine. And I would have missed out.

Because here's what I learned: we're ALL struggling with pain and fear, just in different forms. Yeah, we know this. But it's one thing to know intellectually and another to read about it in depth, day after day. Those people who "have it better" than me in one way or another? They also spent everything they had on multiple IVF cycles / have a husband who's away from home on military deployments / have a child with a serious birth defect / have a high-risk pregnancy / fought infertility for a decade / need major surgery to correct a uterine problem / lost babies to miscarriage and stillbirth / just lost someone else they loved / and many more situations than I can list here.

So I bow to those people—to all of you—for living through what you have and for sharing your example. Thanks for getting me out of my own head (see link above!) and making me feel at home.

A Small World

I wasn't around this past week because I've been out of town for work.

That phrase doesn't sound quite right. It makes me picture the impersonal glass and chrome of airports, rental cars, and conference rooms. In this case, though, it meant something much different: a seven-hour drive across familiar countryside, bitter cups of gas-station coffee in my lap. At the end was a place where I had lived for many years, which I hadn't seen since the spring of 2010. I've always had some strong and mixed feelings about this town.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The part I want to tell now is the simple part, the part about meeting with my boss, who still lives in the town I left. I didn't think our meeting would be simple. I wanted to explain why I had been missing work, to reassure her that I wasn't just losing interest or, conversely, battling some deadly disease. I wasn't sure how much to say or how to say it. I just knew that this conversation was one that would be best to have in person.

She didn't know the whole story about my years of infertility treatments, three months of pregnancy, or two weeks of miscarriage. She DID know about my breakup and, therefore, had probably assumed that parenthood was now the last thing on my mind. How to bring the subject up?

I didn't have to worry. As soon as we sat down at the restaurant for lunch, we fell right into talking about the subject that was foremost on her mind: the recent loss of someone dear to her. It had been painful and awful for everyone involved. Two months later, she was still in shock. I knew the feeling: desperately wanting not to think about something so painful, but knowing that for now it is the ONLY thing, so needing to think and talk about it anyway.

My boss (I’ll call her E.) asked about the time I spent volunteering with hospice. It was something I did briefly years ago, partly as a way to honor my grandfather (the one in my last post), who had done the same thing himself. I had no great insights to share. I hadn't changed the course of anyone's life or death. I just showed up when I could to change the sheets, hold cups of drinking water to dry lips, and sit with families in the kitchen, keeping watch. That's all I could do with E. We just sat together at our little table as the snow drifted past outside.

We talked about grief, of all things. She seemed grateful to be able to talk about it, and frankly, so was I. It felt real. Then slowly and without any false cheer, the conversation turned toward a baby who had just been born into her family. This was the time; it was clearly my turn.

I told her that the main focus of my personal life lately has been on having a child. No puzzlement from her, just a nod. Then she told a story that blew me away. She mentioned another one of her long-time employees, a woman I had met a few times over the years, and said, "I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here, because she has always been open about it. Around the time when she first started working for me, she was single. Circumstances in her life had just worked out that way, but she really wanted to be a mother and was running out of time. So she had her son with the help of a sperm donor. That was 18 years ago. She met and married her husband later on."

I was dumbstruck. Not only was E already familiar with the concept of single mothers by choice, but she had already hired one, ANOTHER one, back when almost no-one had heard of such a thing! Even in a company as small as mine, I would not have to be the first after all. I would not have to be the odd one out.

I had teared up a little before, when we talked about grief, and now I felt it happening again. I told her a few more details, but not a lot; there was no need to say much. She got it. She just got it.

Again I thanked her for allowing me to work flexible hours recently. It's one of my few perks. As I said, it's a very small company, so we've never had paid health care or even paid days off. But I wouldn't want to work anywhere else, and this meeting—this reminder that we are people to each other first, and business roles second—was a lovely reminder of why.

What Doesn't Kill You

Speaking of facing grief with dignity and NOT the standard decorum...

I just listened again to comedian Tig Notaro's mostly ad-libbed show from last summer—just days after her cancer diagnosis. It took my breath away. Here's how this article describes it:

"A frightfully nervous Tig Notaro stood just offstage at the Los Angeles club Largo while Ed Helms introduced her. The audience of 300 and Miss Notaro's fellow performers that August night had no idea what she was about to do. They had no idea she was going to address the trauma and pain that had been the past few months of her life, or relay the bad news she had received just days earlier. They had no idea she was about to perform the bravest set they had ever seen..."

The whole recording is available on iTunes. A free excerpt of it is here.