Welcome, Peace

It’s Monday and I’ve dropped our daughter off at her pre-school and I have some time alone to consider the weekend and the week ahead. I’m drinking my decaf coffee with a splash of almond milk and I am overcome with the realization that I feel content. I am not used to this feeling. I want to embrace it, hug it, hold it tight and beg it to never leave. But I am too content to beg even. I cannot attribute one or three things to this welcomed peace. It has to be more than a hundred reasons. However it is here, I am here to greet it. An old friend who’s left me too often without saying, ‘good bye’. I realize that infertility has robbed me of such peace. And effectively, it has robbed my family of it too. It permeates every aspect of my existence and I have felt such resentment for that. In this moment, this clear and free moment, I am experiencing it differently for the first time. I am able to see some ‘silver linings.’ I believe that’s called perspective. Something I struggle to maintain through the increases in hormones, subtractions and additions of various doses of different medications all entailed to get me closer to my baby. Perspective has been replaced by survival. It feels wonderfully free to step outside of survival and actually live. This weekend I was able to dance carefree in the kitchen with my daughter and my husband…I put on my swimsuit and joined them in the pool at a friend’s birthday party…I solved the problem of cooking on our cooktop with a dutch oven and a large frying pan (you just turn the dutch oven 45 degrees, turns out)…I found myself allowing my husband the space to feel tired and worn out. I felt flexible and strong and brave. I was alive. Many other wonderful things happened this weekend and I was able to witness them and truly be a part of them. I have to hope that I can maintain some part of this as we slip into the next part of our medical adventure to conceive our baby. I have to hope. For the smiles on my family’s face and the joy I see in their smiles as they recognize that light inside of me getting brighter again.