Life wants

Forward: I am so feeling the need to move forward, to find adventure, to forget about my troubles...  hey, has anyone seen my ole kit bag? If I can find that, perhaps I could pack them up in there and smile, smile, smile.

Honduras will bring adventure of course, but I think I'm looking for a new life. Or probably just to start really living again. It won't be the first - or last - time I reference Shawshank here, but I know I need to get busy living, because I'm not interested in getting busy dying.
 
Don't get me wrong - I've been living. This whole nightmare, this has been living. After all, as Westley/The Man in Black says, "Life is pain, highness, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."  Yep, I've been living in a big way... had a big dream and I went for it. I haven't had the same resources or luxury of time as others, so I do have some regrets and unfinished feelings there, but we did what we could. I have been living. It's just not the way I want to keep living.

It's so hard to leave behind a dream, though. How does one stop dreaming that dream. How does one find new dreams?  Especially when no other dream seems as lovely.

Well, I guess it's like death... when you lose someone you love, you never stop missing them and you never stop remembering them. There are times you remember them more than others - or something just smacks you out of the blue - but most of us eventually find a way to keep going, despite that crucial and precious missing piece. Most of us eventually find a way to reconcile the grief with the rest of our life. The loss and the pain become a part of us, but no longer absorb us. We're still able to move forward.

Life wants to live fully.


The moving forward part has to happen on one's own time table, though. Oh, sure, there will always be people who want you to get over things when they think you should get over things. (This is not terribly helpful, in my opinion.)

Grief cannot be rushed.

Grief has certainly been a pervasive issue in my life, for a while now. I don't expect that it'll ever go away.

Infertility is, after all, the loss that keeps on losing.

As life goes on, I expect that the loss of infertility will grow and change. Not having kids now means I won't get grand-kids later, for example - with a million more examples of progressive loss in between.

I will learn to manage it - perhaps it will become more of a twinge of occasional melancholy - rather than this searing pain, but it will remain part of me. 

For now though, I'm rather sick of wanting something I can't have. I'm sick of limbo. I long for some change, though I don't know what it looks like. I need freshness. I need the winter of my heart to end.

Life wants to grow. 

Toward that effort, I thought I'd like to have someone objective to talk through some of this with, because as much as I want to move forward, I still feel stuck in the heartbreak. Oh my dreams and oh my losses.

So I went to see a new therapist on Friday. I liked my previous therapist. She was helpful in many respects, but she didn't really ask me enough questions. It would help me more to have the questions asked of me.

So I tried someone out upon a friend's recommendation. This therapist claimed to have experience working with infertility patients. I even quizzed her a bit about this before I met with her. Thankfully, she offers a free 30 minute consultation. During that time, I was able to assess that she will not be a good fit for me. It's too bad because in some ways I would like her.

She asked questions, so that was good. Also, she is one of the few people, who outright acknowledged my infertility as loss. Loss! I didn't have to explain the ongoing loss and grief to her. That felt amazing - I thanked her for that... I truly felt - validated - as they say in the shrinky business.

Unfortunately though, she was pretty focused, without any prompting, on what my mom and dad must have done to screw me up... and how that has led to my infertility. How if I release the stress and messiness that came from whatever difficult beliefs my parents inflicted upon me as a tike, then - only then - might I have the power of creation within me.

HUH????

Which is basically what I said to her...  HUH???

I asked her what she meant. She tried to clarify, but it sounded a little hocus pocus to me. So I said, "Are you saying that my infertility is because of an emotional problem I have from childhood, rather than a medical issue - like PCOS and lack of ovulation?" (I wanted to be sure I understood her clearly.)

She replied, "Well, I'm not a medical doctor, but yes - there is a lot of research that shows that stress and emotional issues cause infertility. So if we can clear up your cobwebs, then I think your body will be ready to create, to give life... after all, our bodies are meant for creation of life. If that's not happening, there's something holding that creation back." 

Um, yeah... it's called a medical condition. It was at this point that she leaned forward with an excited gleam in her eye and asked if I'd consider acupuncture. Sigh. By this point, I knew I'd not go back.

Do I need to say it? Infertility is a medical condition - a disease - not an emotional issue. What other diseases are so easily considered merely a result of emotional baggage, even in such professional settings?

Thing is, she never once asked me about what we've done medically, whether or not I have a diagnosis etc., or how long we've been dealing with this. These seem like primary questions to ask someone who has come to you seeking help dealing with the crisis of infertility and childlessness.

Anyhow, I reckon I don't need to get into all of this here, but if stress causes infertility, why do so many women in war-torn, famine-ridden, and cruelly oppressive environments have children? Why do so many other women in extreme stress situations have babies without a problem?  It's so silly. This is such a fallacy, stress.

Aside from her not recognizing infertility as a medical issue that then greatly impacts emotions and stress and relationships and and and.... and though I'm not a licensed therapist, I just don't think the way for me to try to move forward from the heartbreak of infertility is to delve into when I was potty trained and what not. Here's the thing, my mom and pop... well, we didn't have the most super functional family in the world, but they did alright. They did the best they could with what they had. They did far better by us than anyone ever did by them. Were there issues that still impact me? Sure! So what? Isn't that true of everyone? We deal with it. They did alright by us... We're better off in so many ways than they ever were - and isn't that a pretty good measure of parental success?

For Pete's sake, if only people with perfectly functional families could procreate, the human race would have died out long before it began!! Whatever issues I may have once had about my parentals, I don't anymore. That doesn't mean mom doesn't freak me out and drive me a little crazy sometimes... she's my mom, after all - and that's kinda just the way it is sometimes with moms. I just wish I could have my own someone(s) to freak out and drive crazy, right. It would be only fair. ☺  Well, someone other than poor, amazing Ar, that is...

So...  so much for that therapist. Harrumph!! At least the tea was good and the session was free.

My chiropractor visits are much better though, so at least I'm 1 for 2 with these early efforts for self-improvement.


Life wants for beauty.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)