Sunny and fine, with a top of 21 degrees, currently outside 11 degrees at 9am. Planning a big day in the garden, catching up on a LOT of weeding, and a good deal of sowing: peas, spinach, turnip, tatsoi and pack choi, maybe even some cabbage – all of which I sowed a month ago and has been eaten by something. I keep thinking if I just try again, this time it might work. Sound familiar? Lol.
I got 169 garlic cloves in the ground yesterday, and plan for more today, if I get the above done plus citrus fertilising and worm juicing the plants in the shade house. Oh, and potting on of the plants I got given for my birthday. I feel like I have been out of the garden for more than a month. I probably have. I really miss it. But at the same time, I have discovered that I am not so caught up with everything in there needing to be perfect and under control, which is also nice. If I don’t get tatsoi and turnips and spinach to grow this season, oh well. If I don’t get all those things done today, never mind. I can see the garden en masse will survive. So I am having more fun with it instead. Yesterday I came in when I had had enough, and didn’t make myself plant every last garlic clove I had, just so I could tie off on the job. That felt like an achievement in itself.
DH is away playing aikido for the long weekend, and I am revelling in being home alone, keeping my own hours and doing my own thing with nary a thought for anyone but myself. I have deliberately been taking it easy because I know I need some serious recharging after two back to back IVF’s and the next one not far away (I am back on the pill after period arrived Friday, with a view to begin meds at the end of this month).
You know TTC talk is never far from the surface on this blog, and here is a theme I want to further expound on for a while: Letting go of ‘hope’, because it seems very present in my life right now.
Yesterday I got a text from my BFF who thought she was pregnant, but had bad pains for the last two weeks and then got a very heavy period. This makes loss number 5 for her and she is now at the point where she is feeling like a baby might not be in her future. She has always been very hopeful, even after her stillbirth/late miscarriage last year. She is always saying to me “don’t give up hope” after each loss I have. Now I think she is beginning to see that there is a next stage in this program. The one where you begin to dabble with the reality/possibility that it really might NOT happen for you. And to face all that this means for your life, hopes, dreams, future. And this point is a big deal in this journey. Maybe even the most important. Certainly it was a turning point for me.
I don’t think most people understand where I am at right now. There seems to be a general sense of ‘stay positive, and it will happen’ and maybe people just need to feel like there will be a happy ending, I don’t know what it is. But they don’t seem willing to share in my notion that it might not happen, and they seem to feel uncomfortable that I feel ok with that. It is like by feeling ok that children might not come, I am somehow abandoning those children, or willing them NOT to come, or deliberately killing them or something. Being despicable for ‘giving up’. These are the feelings I get from the positivity camp. That you HAVE to believe, or you are a bad/lazy/neglectful/surrendering kind of person. That you shouldn’t give up hope, or ELSE.
But or else WHAT exactly? Or else I will be outcast? Pitiable? Or else, without that hope, I will have nothing in my life? Or else they will have nothing to say on the topic and won’t know where to look, so to speak? Why does Aunt Jane need to KNOW that it WILL happen for me? Perhaps I should ask this question of the next person who offers this point of view. I am truly intrigued. (BTW, if any readers can offer ideas on this, I am all ears). Perhaps I just need to stop arguing my corner with them and just say “I am sorry you feel uncomfortable accepting my position”.
On this journey, I started out with certainty. Then doubt crept in, but hope stayed. Years passed and I’ll skip the details because you all know them by now. I sat on the fence between hope and despair for a long long long time. It was not a happy place, and being in that space while miscarrying repeatedly was very very hard. Facing the deep grief over and over again is difficult enough, but trying to resuscitate hope from the ashes began to be more and more impossible. I just didn’t have the strength. So I had to do some very deep soul searching (of which I’ll skip the details, because again, you’ve been through that with me already) and the biggest question was “on what do I want to spend my emotional energy?” To realise that I had a CHOICE about where I spent it was probably the biggest awakening of my life.
And I discovered that I didn’t want to spend it on hope anymore, because it seemed like a waste. I was losing, not gaining, from spending it there. I wanted to spend it, instead, on becoming grounded in the here and now. On being grateful for what I had, on being aware of every moment, on developing and broadening my emotional responses to challenging situations. I wanted to spend it on coming to terms with a future that might not include children, that was rooted in being content with who I am RIGHT NOW. And to do all this required moving away from the idea of hope, because I could see that I was using hope as a rescue boat. That things might be shit today, but one day, I might have a child, and everything would then be ok. Waiting for life to really begin.
But being able to let go of hope, in the sense that I was using it (confident expectation), enabled me to save myself. I got off the fence, and committed myself to a side. And that side was the right decision for me, because I feel stronger than I ever have before. I’m not desperately flailing around waiting to be rescued by a child. If a child comes, then a child comes. And I can see that would not be without its own set of challenges, to which I would yet again have to adapt. I am grateful for all that I have and plan to continue to be so, and to make the very most of it. And when I feel like I have spent enough time, money and energy on various options that might bring a child, then I will go through that final grieving process and I will still be whole. I won’t feel unfinished, I won’t feel like a failure, I won’t play the ‘what if’ or ‘why me’ game. By letting go of the need to believe it will happen for me, I won’t feel like a victim. I DON’T feel like a victim.
By letting go of hope, I am able to see my feelings for what they are. On the last IVF cycle I felt disappointment. I processed that and I am through it. I didn’t tangle it up with hope, and start thinking about “oh now this means I will probably never have a genetic child” etc etc. I can separate the outcome from the process, because I truly have let go of the outcome. And THAT is the most freeing thing there is, on this journey. What will be will be, and I will spend my energy processing how I feel in each moment of that being. I am not spending energy trying to maintain an illusion.
All I need to do now, is get a handle on being ok with other people’s opinions. To accept that they can’t understand that in not ‘hoping it will still all work out’ I am coming from a position of strength that I worked hard to achieve. To see it as their problem if they want to keep me in the victim role, for whatever reason. It will ‘work out’ whether I have a child or not. I am ok with that. Why can’t THEY be ok with that? Why can’t I yet be ok that they are not ok with that??
This is a long winded way of saying that I think my BFF is going to be able to finally be ok with me being ok with thinking it will not happen for me, because she is now having to go through this process herself. And it will be (selfishly perhaps) comforting for me to have her understand where I am. It will also be very helpful for her to have ME understand where she is coming from, and what she is going through to get there. I am not sad, nor happy, that she has to go through this, because it is just something she has to go through, and very likely, although it will be hard, it will bring her some peace of mind and spirit.
I want to make it clear that I have not been talking about accepting the fact that I (or she) will never have a child. That is not yet certain, and may be the final step, and a hard one. But accepting that I (or she) may not is the penultimate step, and one we must take in order to prepare ourselves for the final, should it arrive. Like studying for exams, it will make that future step easier. It also makes it easier in the now.
I don’t feel I have lost by letting go of hope and facing the real possibility of childless future, I feel like I have gained. I wish others could see that. But the best I can ask for is that I come to find a way to accept that they might not.
