The Missing Woman

So, I have been trying to think of what to write.  Sometimes it's easier to pour out what I'm feeling than others, I suppose that's normal considering the subject matter of my blog.  I have felt pretty good all in all since realizing I wasn't pregnant.  It was more heartbreaking than usual this month because I had really, truly started to think I was.  But, the temperature dropped and the next day...well, you don't need all the details.  Let's just say I spent that day curled up on the couch, staring into my book or the mindless nothing that was on TV.  It was hard, harder because we had been starting to talk about how we would break the news to my parents and to his.  We were starting to dream out loud, a dangerous, wonderful thing.

I have a vivid memory from the those few days when I thought I was pregnant.  I had walked into the bathroom, and looked into the mirror.  I wasn't especially made up or wearing anything specifically pretty, but I had to catch my breath because there, staring back at me in the mirror was a woman I realized I had not seen in a very long time.  She was smiling, broad and unforced, her face glowing, her green eyes gleaming as if with a secret joy.  It was the me that had been missing for a long while; at least that's how it felt to me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't go around mopping all day long, I smile, I laugh, I joke, I do all those things. But this was different.  I realized in that moment that it was the smile of a woman unfettered by fear and sadness, who had just set down a burden she had been carrying for a very long time.  I had never realized until that moment, just what this process was doing to me, the life it had been leaching out of me.  

Yes, for all that I have been determined to view this positively, to find meaning in it, I also have felt like a road weary traveler who has been carrying a pack that is sometimes just too heavy.  I don't think it discredits all the meaning I have struggled to find in this, perhaps it makes it more powerful and precious.

It feels like a cruel joke in some ways, those few days of joy.  Like a starving man being ushered into a dinning hall, and being shown all the delicacies there for the taking, only to be tossed back outside with nothing in his belly.

I want that woman back, but I am struggling to find her in the midst of all this, the routine of fertility starting up again.  I have accepted with happiness the fact that my acupuncturist says the signs I was feeling is good, that it means the treatments are working.  I have steeled myself to see this next cycle as the "one", the time being ripe and ready.  And even as I believe that, and have found a measure of peace, I am plagued by tears the last few days.  Why?  I have no idea.

No one signed up for my life group at church, and maybe that's because they're scared, maybe there are half a dozen women there that know what I am feeling, that want to be in a group like this but are nervous to sign up.  Maybe.  But on the flip side of that I'm aggravated that they don't just call me, I won't publicize who they are for crying out loud!  It has made me feel even more isolated, more alone.  There is no one, absolutely NO ONE who knows what this feels like.  Who understands the way my mind goes back over everyday of my cycle when my temp drops, looking for the smallest thing that could have caused me not to conceive, and finding a dozen or so small, inconsequential things that don't mean anything in all reality, but that my mind and heart latch onto as a possible reason.  With that comes guilt, and a feeling of helplessness because in the end I realize that I don't know the why of it, that there is not one single thing I could point to that I could abstain from and it would make me pregnant.  I've cut out a lot, changed a lot, added a lot.  What more can I do?

I did run into an old friend and his wife at the mall this weekend, they had struggled for two years to conceive their adorable little boy.  It was a relief to talk with her, and for those fifteen minutes I felt I had a comrade, someone who had fought the battle and won.  The down side is they live over an hour away and are moving in a month.  But hey, it was something, right?

So for now, I do what I can. I meditate and pray, I try to be thankful for all the wonderful things in my life, I work on my novel, I work on film and TV projects, I take in the splendor of spring and hope our little one will make it's presence known soon so that the missing woman can come back again.

Train tracks

Just finished watching the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun." and there is this wonderful scene where Diane Lane is mourning the emptiness of her life, and the stupidity of renovating a house that's too big for her small life.  The man she's telling this to relates to her the story of how the railroad tracks over the Swiss Alps were built before there was ever a train that had been built to handle the steep climb, but they built the tracks believing one day it would happen.   It's used an a way to tell her to keep going, build for what you want in your life and someday it will arrive.  I was crying at the end of the movie, because she got what she wanted, her "train" came.  I was thinking of it in relation to all this.  My acupuncturist has told me that she sees so many women that come in wanting a baby for themselves, and that until the ego is put in it's proper place their baby can not come.  I have examined my own soul, and prayed and I don't think that's me; but I do believe that I had to come to a place where I felt secure enough in my acting career that the thought of having to take time off to make room in my life for a child was not such a scary enterprise.  I finally feel at that place.  I love to act, it is like air to me in some ways, the creative outlet is vital to the way I have been made to function as a person, and I don't think that God would create me with that and then expect me to put it permanently away. But I do think He had to bring me to a place where I would be willing and at peace with taking time away from it.  And I am there, for the first time it does not scare me as it once did.  God had to lay the tracks for our baby "train" to be able to ride smoothly on it.  Sometimes the things that happen in our lives that are so unfair, that make us cry and wince and yell in pain are the tracks being laid for our hearts desires, and sometimes that train doesn't look anything like what we would have made it to be, but it doesn't mean it will be less fulfilling.  If I know God, it will turn out to be more so.  

Accepting this is hard, and sometimes I don't want to. I want what I want and that's that.  But I have to look back on my life and see the times I didn't get what I wanted but what God wanted for me and I have to admit it's the difference between plain chocolate ice cream and triple fudge brownie ice cream.  One is pretty good, the other is sheer heaven in a bowl.

I decided, on a whim, to start a women's group in my church for those who have struggled with infertility.  At first I was scared, what do I really have to say to any of these women?  Now, though, I think that maybe this maternal love that is pouring out of me could not only be spent on my nieces and nephews and a sweet ten year old girl who lost her mother a few years back, but also on women who need a shoulder to cry on, need strong loving arms to hold them, and a soft voice to sooth their bruised heart.  Maybe I could help them laugh about the insanity of having their husbands give them hormone shots in their butts, or come to accept adoption as the "train" God laid the tracks for.  I don't know.  It's not a replacement for a baby, that's not what I'm saying because I believe I will be pregnant soon and will give birth to our wonderful, beautiful child.  But there are many aspects to a train, perhaps this group is one that I would not have chosen if I had not had these tracks laid for me.

The struggle to keep believing.

"In order for something new to be born into our lives, we must experience something unfamiliar."-Xiaolan Zhao, CMD, "Ancient Healing for Modern Women".  That quote really hit me the other day when I read it.  It's in the section this author has regarding childbirth, but it hit me in regard to what Dan and I have been experiencing in the last few years.  I'm not sure what new thing is being born out of the birth pangs of disappointment and heartache we have had over the last few years, but perhaps it's strength, or empathy for the women who experience this. Perhaps it will be greater appreciation for our little baby when it comes to us.  I don't know.  Maybe it's been the wonderful opportunities that I have had over the last year in my career, and the wonderful professional relationships we have both been able to form that will bear good fruit in the future.  I try to think of these things as I am faced with yet another month where I suspect I have lost the waiting game.  

That there is a reason for all this is something I am determined to believe.  But, even as I believe in my future baby, I am faced with the inability to see anything in my future except more and more failed attempts.   These days of hope starting to blossom only to whither under the harsh blow of another menstrual cycle seem to have no end.  I know that may sound like faithlessness to some, but I must restate that it's not that I don't believe; I very much do.  But there are times like this when it seems too far away to see, and what's in stark focus is the months of disappointment and a resounding "not yet" from God.  Not a "no", just a "not yet".  I believe one day soon I will hold my baby in my arms, I believe one day soon this will all end.  Sometimes, it is just hard to see it ending.  I suppose this is where I am right now, tomorrow it may be different, or next week, or next month (please God let it be different next month!)

Prayer and meditation does give me peace, enough to keep going each day, though sometimes I fall down and cry and yell, I don't think Jesus minds.  He expects it I think, He does, after all, know me quite well and I am nothing if not a person who is in touch with her emotions! 

The Waiting Game

It's the worst.  The waiting game.  Those utterly annoying, nerve wracking ten days after I (or any other woman trying to get pregnant) ovulates.  I've been meditating, trying to stay calm and talk about how I'm feeling instead of denying it because I'm afraid of it.  I've been reading a book about Traditional Chinese Medicine and how it specifically relates to women, and it's key to express emotion and not let it build up because it can interrupt the flow of Qi and cause problems in different organs.  And actually it feels good to just say it out loud, to admit how I feel and cry when I need to, or laugh or just be.  It's hard, very in fact, but therapeutic.  

You would think after about two years of playing the waiting game, I'd be an expert at it.  But this is one game that you don't get better at, you just get worn out with. 

But, in the waiting I believe; because I have to for sanity and peace, that there is opportunity for growth.  

So, I'm going to meditate, dare to believe that I just might be pregnant, even imagine what I would look like, feel like, etc. if I were pregnant, how would I tell my parents or his, and all those wonderful daydreams that I haven't even dared to think about in almost a year because they hurt too much.  I want and need to believe fully, to be brave enough to let myself dream about it all, even if it hurts when it doesn't happen...yet.

I have to say though, I am really hopeful this time....and it scares me.