I’m back! Not just online here, but really back. Back in the fight! I can feel myself grasping some hope and making some plans and wanting to thrive, not just survive this period of my life. Theoretically, I am 6 weeks away from beginning the intense process of IVF in order to grow our family. I’ve taken the past two weeks to cry, scream, complain, question, squirm, scream, and cry some more. There have been moments of grace within my grief where I find myself undeniably grateful for this life I have – I am after all married to the love of my life and we have an amazing daughter, a silly dog, friends, and family galore. We have a home and an income, education, and dreams. I am grateful and I feel fortunate for my life. And. And I’ve learned that there can be an ‘and’ to those statements. I can be grateful AND devastated. I can be overflowing with love AND desperately sad. The reality for me has been that I know our family is not complete and yet we have not been able to change that. Not on our own. Not with the fertility treatments we’ve tried. And all along we’ve been told that the reasons are ‘Unexplained’. Unexplained. We know now that IVF will give us some explanations and I am ready for them, or at least I am preparing for them. I needed these weeks to grieve and to squirm and to feel all the pain. To say out loud, ‘I don’t want to have a baby this way!…I wanted to do it on my own!…I hate that it’s come to this!…I’m terrified!…What if I can’t do it!?’ There’s so much fear, so much pain. But, ‘still I rise.’ Those words by Maya Angelou. She just gets it. Even after she’s left this earth, I feel her words as though she’s just whispered them in my ear. More recently this theme has been echoed by Glennon Doyle Melton as she proposes that we must first go through the storm, the pain…and only after – only after the storm and the destruction can the rising begin. Today, I feel these truths and I understand them. I had my storm. Now I rise. What’s my next step? Taking better care of myself to get ready for the ‘good fight’ that is IVF. For the future storms that will require more rising. I will show up to it and I will get myself in the best condition I can be in, so that I can truly fight for this child that I hope will join our family.
Thanks for listening-
Jessica