I Forgot....

I have been in my own head and so I am not here...strangely enough.

I am still in my three times a week practice, eating the cleanest I can 6 days a week and teaching myself what I can about how to navigate this life of mine.

 

It wasn't until I received the annual email asking for my opinion or input on a research study some post graduate is doing on infertility and art therapy did I realize that it was NIAW.

I actually forgot!

Like totally forgot....

 

Last year I was mad and made a pledge to not talk about it, as it really felt that I was preaching the choir. We all know about infertility and how much it hurts and what we don't want people to say to us and what a long and personal road it is to regain our sense of self again....
so why tell each other.

I am waiting to respond to the request...
I am not in a hurry to remind my body and heart about my journey through the fire...
sorry post grad, you are gonna have to wait.

photo by: Arthur Leipzig
 

PLUS it is my birthday week! the actual day is Friday and I am feeling beyond lucky as The Barren swept me up last weekend and took me on an all surprise trip....
He had been planning it for weeks and it is so outside his personality to keep a secret, that all I saw was this as a massive gesture of love.
He gave me the gift of a weekend with him, and to top that, my best friend!
WHAT A GIFT time with your best friend, and hubby and music and junk food and love and time, time time...I was feeling so overwhelmed with love over the weekend
that I kept busting into tears of joy...and gratitude and glee.

I looked nuts and puffy eyed most of the time.
My bestest lives 3/4 of a days drive away and so the gift was HUGE.
We went to a concert, got dressed up and watched people dance, ate spicy indian food, played in the city and ate junk food and groaned and made fart jokes into the night.

Now as I come down, and plan a little thing here so I can share some time with the parents....
I reflect on how much I am growing.
So much in my heart and hopes and life
There was a moment over the weekend as we drove from a drink spot to a junk food spot as midnight approached...a moment when I realized that The Barren and I lead a different life than most...and that it is pretty cool to move so freely and openly. My bestest said it reminded her that she needs to get them out more often and do stuff outside their comfort zone.
One of the many reasons I love her....

 

So I think my darkest hours are becoming memories

I protect them still but understand that they are floating somewhere else now.

I heard that I friend is having a baby, after much trouble and heartbreak and I said out to the universe

" let their home be filled with children"

I am happy here

happy heart



Once a year

 

Yep, it is my birthday today.

I am not feeling a whole lot of festive.

 

I have been pulling myself through the week.

I know I have a lot to celebrate and how thankful I am for this life.

My parents are alive and mostly healthy, my body seems to be acting civil towards me,

I have an amazing husband and I am able to explore my art.

I am thankful.

 

I also have this overwhelming feeling that I don't deserve a celebration.

Like I have not done enough to earn it.

It is the battle I have been fighting.

 

All week, and last I was telling The Barren I didn't want to talk about my birthday,

 it was too emotional.

But...knowing me as well as he does,

I have overstressed my beloved, as he knows

I will want to be surrounded by friends at the last moment

and then he will be at a loss.

So to reduce The Barrens stress level I have helped him out this year.

I decided that maybe a cake eating party would make me feel better.

I will report back on that.

I am sending out the last minute invites today.

I also plan on dressing up and

we are having dinner with the parents tonight, and I know that should set me strait.

 

In beginning my birthday reflections,

I think I might go silent next year for NIAW, or not post anything in regards to my infertility.

I hope that this year, I can begin to make a metamorphosis and start to tilt the scales away from

being the infertile woman...and more about being the artist who also has

a body of work about infertility.

 

I plan on making a new list of goals for myself....

and eating loads of cake

with ice cream

Quiet the crazy

Here we are ladies, in the middle of NIAW.

It seems like many of us don't need to be reminded of this week,

 as we live with it daily, hourly, even moment by moment.

This week makes many of us sudden advocates, warriors and spokespeople.

Many of us are reluctant, or fearful of revealing ourselves.

Myself included;
 because after 8 years

I am now working on being something,

someone, other than the infertile woman,

the barren couple,

the sad story.

 

Yesterday I was in a deep dark place, I had a whole lot of crazy swirling in my head.
I had my mean mantras repeating themselves, the destructive ones, the easy ones...

I had a weekend full of my crazy MIL who probably has no thoughts about our last encounter and figures it was just a normal conversation about the weather or a new item of clothing.
 I was not able to tell her how it made me feel and I think that had taken a toll on my mental health. I was not able to make eye contact with her the whole time and it made me feel weak and sad. It built up and when I awake yesterday it was VERY clear to me that
I was going to battle a day of deep sadness.
I have composed a bunch of letters in my head, spoken to myself, with great presence and dignity about how it made me feel and also envisioned whacking her upside the head a'la cartoon style until she came to her compassionate senses.



this is an illustration only, I do not have button eyes

 

None have escaped my head...really
though it was fun to think about picking up the paella pan that
separated us at dinner and hit her with it.

Now, she is far away, and most likely we will not see/hear from her for many more months, or until she calls frantic for us to visit them thousands of miles away, RIGHT NOW drop everything.
We will cross that bridge when it appears; until then I am working on filtering out all the hurt and pain and frustration.
I am better today, I told The Barren this morning while standing naked and wet from the shower: "today is a new day, lets try this again"
it was the start of the day, I was naked and nothing had stuck to me yet!

NIAW makes me remember, that there are other people in this world that have no idea what others are living with, how powerful a casual statement can sit and fester, or how desperately we don't want to think about this week.
 

Empty-NIAW 2013

In honor of NIAW I have decided to post something I wrote two years ago:

Emptiness- containing nothing

Infertility left a hole in me. I was left as shell of myself for some time.

The first sign that something was wrong arrived while I was at work…I got a frantic phone call from my doctor just two hours after my first pelvic ultrasound. “Um… there is a fairly large unknown growth that appears to be in your bladder and we are not sure exactly what it is. So I need to you see a gynecological oncologist, an urologist and get a CT scan in the next day or so”.  I worked at a warehouse and so while she is feeding me a list of numbers and phrases over the phone, I was simply seeking a quiet place to hear all she was saying. When she was done, I couldn’t move; but when I did I shot out the door as fast as I could in hopes no one would see the flood of tears that would be my last for a long while.

I became a pin cushion, I was probed and prodded for months, years…some people were skilled and left no marks, others left bruises, rashes and scar tissue.

I was submissive through this all.

As the months passed, something shifted and I felt nothing; no pain, no joy, no happiness… nothing. Food was not enjoyable; friends were of no comfort. I spent time staring into space, watching the walls be white. I commuted 45 miles to work daily, and often times would find myself at work not remembering how I got there, even though I had driven myself. It took great effort to make easy decisions, like which cereal to buy for breakfast. I was on auto pilot.

I was able to dress myself, bath myself and eat, but I was not there for it.

I stopped expressing emotions; I didn’t laugh, get angry or cry. I was a shell, it was me to all appearances, but no one was home.

“The stork has been visiting- 2007

I visited her at the hospital, and cried on the way there. Mourning as I drove closer and closer...
The night I received her call, I dozed off with my arms wrapped around my invisible baby...wanting so badly to wake from this horrible dream I am in.

I felt like Dumbo's mama watching all the other mothers receive their babies.

I have not slept well and had a panic attack in the shower this morning...feeling as though I would faint. I fought the collapse, because I didn't want to frighten my husband in the early hour.

Sadly, it would have been very easy to surrender to the dark.”  Text from BARREN: life on infertile soil

As my bruises healed I was left with the stark reality of having no external symbols of my pain, my heartbreak, my existence.

How would anyone know what was happening…

NIAW 2013

Here is the start of a week, we all are too familiar with.

Let the headgames begin!

 

 

It is my birthday

image from Vintage Rose Girl

It is my birthday, smack dab in the middle of NIAW...

I use to feel miffed that it fell on "secretary's day" but

I think being reminded of being infertile all week might trump it.

Anyways, there has been enough thick emotional sludge to drag myself through in these last two weeks that I decided that yesterday was the perfect day to start the party.

I sat and had a pity party yesterday afternoon...and then by the early evening I had blown off

enough sorrow to re-focus on some art and my submission to "the way I see it" exhibit over at

The Ladies In Waiting Bookclub site.

I arrived at work this morning, convinced it would be just another day, and my little brother surprised

me and had gotten up early and made me cookies.

They were even warm when he haded them to me.

I am feeling very loved

May this be the start of a wonderful birthday week!

(after the age of 30 you get to celebrate your birthday for a longer time each year,

 didn't you know that? )

Happy Birthday to me

Call for artists and creative peeps!!

For detail and entry info click: HERE

Busting my myth for NIAW

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week, I am busting a myth and taking names!

"You did something to cause your infertility that is why you can’t get pregnant"

According to RESOLVE there are few lifestyle choices that cause permanent damage to your fertility. I think when push comes to shove; the easiest path for most is the “blame game”.

For us the first years of our infertility was my fault; according to doctors and family at least.

I cannot tell you how often I heard that I must be doing something wrong… you must not have counted the days correctly. You must not have kept your pelvis tilted long enough? You probably didn’t have sex enough or at the right times.

If they were not focusing on our sex life; they were offering up suggestions for food, exercise, eastern medicine and rituals. In our physicians, friends and families eyes, this was entirely our fault and we had clearly overlooked something. It quickly became insulting and hurtful.

Well we were rabbits! I have been a healthy vegetarian for close to twenty years, I had never drank, I had never smoked, I took my vitamins, I moved my body, I wasn’t overweight or underweight. I was just your average healthy Jane; nothing remarkable or special about me. We explored non-traditional medicines, exercises, meditations and non-evasive medical treatments that fit our beliefs.

When I finally to complained about extreme pain (I waited several months to do this as I thought I needed to suffer to become a mother), I was told that I was overreacting to having painful periods. It was only after advocating for myself that it was discovered that there was a medical reason for my infertility, and it had NOTHING to do with my lifestyle or lack of trying.

My Infertility came from a combination of a birth defect and aggressively relentless fibroids and cysts. Nothing I could have eaten, taken, or chosen did this. Making love 24 hours a day, 7 days a week would never have changed this. It was not my fault and no one is to blame.

It is this message that is the hardest to still get thru people’s minds. The easiest route is to play the blame game; the harder choice is to be empathetic.

Be tough and make the harder choices.