Menopause and Infertility

So hey there loves.
Yesterday was menopause day, aka CD 366. One full year with no period.

The past year has been filled with chin pimples and fading hair, skin that is thinning everywhere, showing the impact of gravity and estrogen loss.

As someone who lived, it seemed, cycle to cycle for so many years.  A late cycle would bring hope then torment and sadness. The year before last was a year of long periods, of wondering more than once if maybe, just maybe........ but then a panic would set it, what if? and what if I had a loss? And I think that might have happened but I did not check with sticks or temping... just waited things out.

Once, my first long cycle, I was sure I was pregnant. And the mixture of emotions was profound.  Amazement.  Fury. Hope. Fear. and then, when the bleeding started, such immense loss.  And then, the next time, I mostly felt loss, that I was officially out of the zone of possibility, no way for a good outcome even if... and to feel my body changing, to see it changing.... well, some changes are easier than others.

So today marks perhaps the first day of not wondering.
A feeling of in between. No longer that.  Not yet wholly and fully this.

Maiden, mother, crone. and the middle one holy moly mo-cro.
I am both.

not a day goes by where I don't feel wonder, even if it is wonder and madness.

So here we are.  in the middle of the middle.

As above, not always, as below

So here we are.
April.
Snow still up over my boots, but a serious melt happening right now. The sky is full of clouds saying rain soon, rain soon, rain soon, as if that is a surprise. The earth is heavy with water right now, while on the other side of the earth, this rain, this snow, this water would be traded for gold.

So here I am.
Kate.
Snow still up over my boots, and life happening both above and below ground. Above ground, I turned 50. Della is growing fast, and teenagering already, and Doug is nearly ready for his seasons away at camp.  And I am not ready for that, not really. But here we are.

Below ground, I feel a little more stable. New medication holds the wolves of panic at bay. And I am returning slowly slowly to something that feels more like I used to. At least more like I used to.  But different. I'm different. And I can feel the change in my bones.

I do not want to live wary. (I choose this word, not warily)-- I do not want to live in fear.
I don't. I don't want to live waiting for the wolves to come and steal my happy, steal my autonomy, steal my sense of safety.  I don't want to feel as if my grip is tenuous. I want to feel strong and rooted and ready and able.
And I am shoring those up, digging deep, nourishing myself, and trying not to freak the fuck out when a windstorm comes and shakes the whole thing down and down and down.

I want to tell you about parenting and how, at 50, I am still panging with whateveritis that hurts when pregnancies are announced, and when little ones are passed, arms to arms, and the beginnings, so sweet, leave a longing.  I want to tell you we talk about adopting and how, here I am, knees and soul creaky, imagining and not being able to imagine. Not with this child, not in this lifetime, and then I feel bad for feeling that. As if I should be open.  But my openness is to not knowing what will come. Right now my heart is open in the direction of a family member needing extra love. And maybe that is what I am built for, yes, extra love-- here and here and here and here.

I want to tell you I am working hard at work that pays me with people I love. And I want to say that that is enough. But it isn't. I want to be creating more, writing, learning, self-directing.  My financial fear is still in place, month by month, we make it. Have more than most on the planet, and yet, we are of that group that is one emergency away from catastrophe. So for now, I kiss the ground in gratitude, and make lists of things I want to do when I have time, when I allow myself time.

I want to tell you I am taking care of my body, eating well, and walking and spending time outside. But my last two foods were potato chips and potato chips, and I walked to get them at the kitchen counter but I don't think that counts.

I want to tell you that I am flourishing in this post infertility era, this mid life, this amazing life, and I am and I'm not. there is no post-infertility. there is no post loss. there is life after, yes, but it is never "post", it does not recede. it rides shotgun. and I have come to realize that is what this is. a companion of sorts, a thing that is part of my experience that is not undoable.

I want to stay and write all day, I ache for this ache ache ache for this
but now, the timer is going off, the one that keeps me on track (HA HA HA HA HA)
and, coincidentally, also means my egg is ready to eat. the one I have boiled and will peel and will imagine it is anything other than what it is.

the space in between

where have I been
busy, yes,
moving, yes
and being
yes
and trying to find my way.
minimal childcare and the new old house and art shows and client work and managing my own ongoing grief work and anxiety.

i asked my new therapist about the grief, the why now, the what the hell, the why, the why, the why
and she said that grief does not have a time table.
it is not about calendars
it is about when you are strong enough

strong enough to come apart
strong enough to weather the storms, I guess. bend, not break. or break and mend. or break and make patterns with the pieces and call it art.

so this has been hard, strangely and unexpectedly.

grief and shame and oh
wow
just so much of that.

and a vulnerability, raw, perpetual, just below the joy.

so I find myself laughing
I find myself
I am painting a little but not as much as I need to (4 shows in 2015!)
not as much as I need to for me

still finding my way into my new identity as  Kate.
not Engineer.
or Director.
or Scientist.
or Professional.

just, Kate.

I told my sister today, light can't get in if there are no cracks.
I hold my hands open, a bowl, to welcome the light.

wishing on you all, and us all, peace and fullness and hope and laughter, health and wellness and humor and moments of bliss. i send you big love.

angels singing

Della pooped on the potty.


That is the angels and gold dust and unicorns and rainbows part of the story. The rest of the story is this:

Poop withholding is an evil bitch.
It is a sneaky stealer of heart and soul, energy, enthusiasm, hope.
It is a killer of days, an eroder of moods, a shortener of fuses.
It is a lifestyle unto itself, with its own rhythms of happy and fearful and sad and crazy.
It is like labor in the prolonged badness of sensation and the only way out is out...
It is like my experience with infertility in that it started smallish, with an acknowledgement that things might not be working as it does for "other people"--
then it was like infertility for me in that I began with a whole lot of NEVERS. I will never use a suppository on my kid, EVER. That one gave way to, ok, this once. This once. This once. As I tried, as we tried, to address this horrible thing.

Into the weeds with this side story:  When I was little I had the opposite problem-- with colitis, I had nearly no control over my bowels, and spent hours upon hours in pain and on the toilet pooping. I had horrible invasive tests before there were fiber optics that made instruments flexible. I have turned out ok, but I cannot say that did not impact me, hugely, deeply, badly, in ways that take ongoing healing.

So yes, I said NEVER to suppositories.

So, one by one, my Nevers were breached, my hope was dashed, my fear increased, anxiety up, stress up, my child in pain and in fear and inconsolable.
Potions, powders, oils, eye of newt, massage, reiki, pressure points, rewards, gold stars, ignoring, attending,
nothing

just an awful storyline that would reset to zero with a forced bowel movement, a horrible prolonged horribleness that I will not even try to describe.

then one night the suppository failed.
and then it failed again.
and I felt hope leave, in a big whoosh followed by a wave of fear and outofcontrolness, anxiety, sadness... since this was the nuclear solution. the one I held in reserve as the thing that would work no matter what.

then I read an entry by some person who called himself the poop whisperer (I cannot make this up) saying, suppositories/enemas, same time each day, until new pattern is established.

well fine kind sir, but since I could not bring myself to do the suppository thing unless Della was in acute duress, and it had failed more than once (different kinds, different failure modes)-- WTF?  So the next morning, loins girded, we tried *one more time*, and it worked, she pooped, and off we went with the time zero haze of happiness that we can hold until day 3 or 4 or... yeah..

So last night, after a day in which Della had been showing telltale discomfort, the familiar run up to the whole dramatic horribleness, we were about to take action- butt medicine (thanks to Dooce for the name)-- and Della chose to try the potty instead.

Ok-- I had not mentioned this before in this note but Della was pathologically afraid of pooping on the toilet. She regresses to diapers when she feels any belly feelings to avoid it.  All that I had read said for the love of all that is holy UNCOUPLE potty training and poop withholding since it is too complicated to do both if the poop part of potty training is not enthusiastically embraced by the kid. It was not. It was rejected so firmly and with such trauma that we decoupled.

Until last night.
Faced with imminent butt medicine, she chose the potentially lesser of the evils, the potty
and then
no kidding

She

Pooped

In

It.

I do not pretend we are out of the woods but I do know this: we won the lottery again with this happening Ever.
She is happy. We had cake. We sang and lit a candle and danced and hugged.
She is comfortable.
She is not in fear or in pain.
I felt like a weight of a bazillion pounds just rolled off my shoulders (at least for now) and I am *hopeful*.

For any of you out there with this withholding issue, hear me now: I feel your pain. I wish I could say I knew what to do, a magic pill or protocol. I can say this: soluble fiber, and magnesium, prayer, and the fear of suppositories.

And for me, at time near-zero, I can breathe. And tonight, we'll ask her to sit for a while while I read to her maybe, and then, chocolate chips... and I can be hopeful that we can create a new normal for all of us.

non-linear: on eventual child-led toilet training

Oh my good god/goddess/all-that-is, just when I thought Della would never potty train in any way, ever... she did.

Backstory: Over a year ago in daycare she was using the potty there. She would occasionally use the little one here. But just occasionally.  We always celebrated appropriately, and I thought it would just be that way. Then she was pinched by a toilet seat at daycare, and that was that.
The end.

We live in a small carpeted apartment. The whole, let her go nekkid thing was never going to work. Also, while she is smart and wily, rewards (stickers) were of no interest. Not even chocolate chips...
But then...
Suddenly (and I do mean suddenly), a few weeks ago during a visit at my sister's, something clicked and she just started using their toilet.
Not that it has been linear-- a week of perfectly perfect perfection then a strong desire to be back in diapers... somehow (like her momma) taking a few steps forward and a few backwards, maybe afraid of letting go of being "little".
A few pees in pants when distracted, and then days in underwear with no issue. Then a few days in pull ups again...
and
well
wow. It is happening, finally, but non-linearly, and this is all about bending my knees and riding out the bumps without freaking out. (But why can't you use the potty today? You used it for the past week? what the heck?)-- well, it comes down to poop.
Poop.


HOLY CRAP PEOPLE, this child is textbook retentive.
We're talking hours of intense crying, arched back, tiptoes, terror, holding it in with all her might. Don't touch me! MOMMA! horrible ness. She does not want to sit on the potty ever when she feels anything like anything that may mean poop is moving.... WILL NOT. Any sensation associated with it causes fear. It is horrible. HORRIBLE. I hate it. I do not use the word hate lightly.

We have had to take action (aka "butt medicine"/suppository intervention) once to avoid a trip to the ER one late evening when I thought they might actually need to go in there and get it out.

This has never been easy for her, but lately it has been just increasingly dramatic in terms of withholding and fear.
So she will only poop in her diaper (fine, I just want her to poop)-- and we are now supplementing with some good soluble fiber after an epic fail with
-all things food (prunes, plums, pears)
-all things gummy (fiber)
-all things that are miralax-ish (thick, slippery, salty, eww)
-all things small and chocolately and bear shaped, and magnesiumy (she ate them but not happily, but they did nothing)....
-all things small and fake-watermelony (HA one lick and it was over, salty badness)

so
we are doing what we can with our camel of a non-drinking child.
No juice passes her lips.
So water, yes, and yes we are still nursing but let's leave that alone for now, shall we?

We hide the fiber in a few bites of chocolate pudding, feel like heros, and spend time in prayer that she will poop before it becomes too painful and just reinforces the horrible cycle of badness.

So today, I celebrate the good: she is at daycare in underwear. Wow.
and today I celebrate that she pooped yesterday, so we can all just relax.

rose colored glasses

Hello world.
here we are in January, and I am sitting at my desk having just cleaned the living room as much as I could in one hour.
One hour to take the tree down and vacuum the billion needles from the carpet, to push back, pile up, drag, dust, and make a dent in the squalor that just happens, magically, when I am not constantly tending.

It is rather horrifying how fast things turn to shit, and also just what "clean" looks like now-- proving, truly, that everything is relative.

I was so wanting to "finish" the job, but the job, I think (I know), is unfinishable.

This is about progress, and then holding it or returning to it, or something. But this is not, apparently, about truly cleaning or truly finishing.

So, fueled by warmed up tea and honeyed up toast, here I am. Needing to return to workwork but after a truly aggravating day yesterday work-wise where I discovered that the website I am working on looks like shit too, not even in a living room way, well.
today will be about starting over.
But. Not quite yet.


I wanted to say that
Little miss Della is a fierce companion, and she is every bit the mini teenager with stubborn righteousness that is both fabulous and maddening and
oh
she is so tender.

I know my tenderness and am surprised by my fierceness.
I know her fierceness and am surprised by her tenderness.

this is about staying open to what is, not what I think I know, or what I want or wanted for me or for anyone... this is about this moment. this joy. this fierce tenderness and tender fierceness. this is about a million kinds of love. this is about taking notice of what is working with such intense gratitude. this is about taking notice of the ordinary moments that are truly extraordinary.  this is about reveling, it really is.

I posted the following images on facebook but realize that my incremental updates have been there of late... but I am pulling back from that particular soul sucking vortex, not completely because apparently I am addicted to seeing other people's lives through rose colored glasses... but pulling back, yes, to better appreciate and revel in my own fabulous imperfect reality.
So I will leave with you a few things that make me very very very very very happy-- no rose colored glasses necessary.

Best. dad. ever.

Journeys: the day after

waking to a flat cloudy sky

the long dark morning of late fall, the slowest dawn

a stillness

it hits me that it was not a dream

my grandparents used to live on long island sound, on a bluff with a view out over the water. one cold winter, the sound froze.

and where there had been motion, there was suddenly a jarring stillness.

yesterday when I came home, alone, my eyes moved to all of his places-- seeking a glimpse

the kitchen under the highchair

the strange spot on the shoes by the door

the closet

the bed

the bathroom rug

the tub

all night my eyes kept vigil, seeking the tell tale slink or flicker of him.

"I see his tail" Della said once. And then said she was just pretending. But in that moment before she confessed, my heart leapt, as if.

as if.

today, I am busy and grateful for the busy. but my eyes seek the motion that has always been. the quiet company. My friend Lorraine reminds me that he is here differently now, and "here" has expanded into everywhere. But my eyes and heart ache for the familiar, the furry presence, the small reassuring movements of breath and tail and whisker.

non weaning, yes, another update

after that shitstorm of emotion, that instantaneous shift that I was clearly not ready for...
well,

she's nursing again.

so.
what does it mean? it means I got a front-row preview of my actual process, and while it does suck, I will live.
tears don't kill us, thank god/goddess/all-that-is
but oh! there is grief
and gosh darn, how much I don't want to slog through that.... but I will, and I will live, even if it is astonishing in its complexity

but since i am in the habit of looking for hidden gifts, it also means I got a glimpse into what it might be like to sleep without the weight of my not-so-little-one slung across me, and, well, in some ways that will be nice. hello deep breath, I remember you.

it also means that I am aware of the fact of my own complexity, and at least I can practice (and practice and practice) self compassion...

thank you for your kind support while I struggle my way through this

on not weaning, part... heck, I've lost count...

So.

Yesterday Della woke to a stiff neck. As a reminder for those of you who might have missed some salient points, we co-sleep (a most excellent plan that helped us survive her infancy, and a most shitty plan when it comes to making or even envisioning changes), and are still nursing especially at night since I am like an all-dessert exhausted buffet.

So, her stiff neck was horrid. A full hour of shocked horrified tears, full blown, so very sad and horrible to not be able to do anything to help (no! don't rub it. no! no warm compress...). She tried to nurse to soothe, and each time she tried, it hurt really badly and she cried harder (not good for either of us).

Her neck THANKFULLY improved as the day went on, but a midday attempt at nursing still hurt, so...

We tend to nurse to wind down before sleep, but last night.... no. She said she was done.

And then we went to bed, and for the first time ever, she fell asleep next to me and not on me, and I cried hard and lay awake for hours trying to come to grips with this sudden change.
I was not ready to have it break off like that, associated with pain, and Oh, it was bad for me.

Midnight, she turned and nursed one side.
3am she nursed the other.
(Engorgement pain is no joke, and I was surprised and grateful)

Then, this morning, we're up and going and I guess I won't know where we stand until tonight.
I do know this: change is part of every moment, and while some of this is about me holding on to things I will never do again, and a kind of closeness that is one I have never experienced, and a connection with her that I know will transform, but this I know... this transition is one of the most fraught with emotional complexity that I have ever dealt with philosophically or in real life.
This is really, really, really, really hard.

good intentions and the unintended consequences of Yes

So, I had good intentions.
Before Della was born, before I knew who she was, I imagined creating a world for this new being that was full of yeses.
I imagined making the kind of space that would allow for free ranging (with supervision of course) but without the million navigational "nos" that I had seen others use.

Yes, a fantasy, a FANTASY created by me, kate, with no prior experience with kids.

So, I tried yeses.
As many yeses as I could.
I yessed whenever possible, and sometimes spend energy making a no situation into a yes situation just so I could stick to my oh-so-innocently-conceived party line.

Then, inevitably, the Nos came.
They had to, right?
and they were met with shock.
And defiance.
Really? No? What does that even mean? (I could hear her infant brain asking with stunned surprise).

I had one of these too during my teenage years. A clear memory of a No that came out of left field, the shock that came with it, and the hurt that felt as if I was not trusted.

(I know so much more now, I know that was not the case, sometimes limits are protective in other ways).

So here we are, navigating a sea of Nos that corresponds to 2 and a half, an unbelievably willful child with a clear vision of what she wants.

And I confess this:
I have, in the past 3 days, begun to use 5 chocolate bits as a once-a-day outright bribe. Nothing awful-- I say-- standing at the top of yet another well-intentioned slippery slope. Nothing bad--I say-- since I am just trying to get out for a walk, or wait a few hours before nursing (another post for another day on not weaning)...

And I am aware as I am doing this that the solution that feels the most harmonious right now, may simply screw me in the near future.

I did not realize how much of parenting is survival in the now, and regret in the soon.

Journeys: the way this has gone

Driving up north on Route 3 is a slow rewind through spring.

Back to buds and near bare branches

back to just the gentlest haze of color on the hillsides

snow in the shadows

last week I drove up, 4 hours each way through fog that broke open into ragged-bottomed clouds, the bluest sky, then the hardest rain.

I was looking for a cemetery that I did not find.

Instead I found myself pulling off the road without choosing to, into a gravel parking lot, taking a right turn at the bottom down a dirt road.  Into a smaller space, where my fingers turned the key, opened the door and then I was walking thorugh the woods on a path from my memory

through it, I guess

drawn by it

to turn down a path obscured by a fallen log

through the scent of lemony evergreens (hemlock?) 

the first time I ever walked those paths without a fishing pole, without Jeff.

down to the river, down the bank,

hands into the cold water by the falls.

A large water bird flew down the river, fast and low. Black and white and silent.

The day pulled me apart in ways and places I did not expect, and had me laughing, and swearing, as I went down each of a hundred roads, over a bridge (YES), up a hill that turned just so and opened up (YES, said my body, HERE) only to find that no, it was not the right place. the lump in my throat gathering so much unexpressed and inexpressible

sadness

frustration

loss, and lostness

I drove and drove and drove. I drove for two and a half hours, down roads, up roads, across bridges.

Rain so hard I could barely see.

Rain so hard it turned the dirt roads to muddy slides

I felt my tires slip a million times and each time felt a very different depth of alone-- I was not anywhere that anyone would find me and my signal had been lost 2 hours south.

Then I simply ran out of time.

Drove home.

Could not have been more exhausted.

***

Yesterday, I drove up again. Armed, this time, with different information. My first trip triggered memories, memories of a specific stone, one that was insanely easy to search for on google.

I went with a map, with a plan.

Back through the craggy mountains at franconia notch

back by the old man in the mountain, who fell the year Jeff died.

back up and through and beyond into the strange wide open that is the great northern woods.

I drove to the cemetery on the map. 

Found the stone of memory.

Left the twig of hemlock taken from the fishing spot. Left the pinecone. The stone is of Mettalak, the last of a tribe.

But it was not the cemetery. It is not the one, all those many winters ago, where I stood by the side of the road and threw snowballs laced with ashes over a snowbank too high to climb.

It wasn't. 

So said my body that felt no sign of him, did not feel him in the way the road had been worn down below the grade of the stones. 

So said the sign that noted the road is closed December-May 10th. 

I could not have driven that road.

It was february and the road would have been impassable.

There has been no simplicity in this journey. And that moment, there was an opening back into curiosity.

The wind was howling and the amazingly bright clouds were moving so fast their shadows felt almost tangible.

I got back in my car, and decided to drive back in a different direction, taking different roads, wondering if I would trigger more body memories that could help me navigate. 

Eventually I turned back onto pavement, and I immediately realized I'd turned the wrong way, and I heard, no it isn't. So I drove a mile at most, back to a cemetery I had found last week. One that said yes in every way except the lack of the stone that I had remembered.

But this time, I knew it was the right one. 

I got out and walked.

I looked on the ground, for what, fragments of bone? my wedding ring? I put a stone in my pocket.

I got back in my car, and turned toward home. 

It is high there, and the mountains fall away in all directions, and the light and shadows were moving so quickly with that wild wind, there was more than I could see.

Dark pines are nearly black against the spring green of new buds,

and the hillsides, that amount of open, 

I pulled off to let a truck pass, and to my complete surprise, cried a different way than I usually do about this. It was about the beauty, I guess, and my luck at the gift of just being able to witness.

Witnessing the shadows moving so fast, the light, on that hillside, that one. The one with the bright spring buds, the ones with the dark pines.

infermentality

yesterday, apparently, was pregnant lady day at the GYN

I was the only non-spouse or parent there without a burgeoning belly
a non stress test was sending the whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh of a tiny determined heartbeat into the hallway
nurses were happily announcing, Another labor check! while handing off manilla folders bedecked with hot pink post-it notes

If I had been someone else
If I had been my earlier self
it would have been sheer unadulterated hell.

As it was, I felt like an imposter. I felt other. I felt--- I felt my infertility acutely... and felt, something like shame?

As I have said a bazillion times, I am holding the brass ring.
I know it, and revel in it, even in the midst of 2 and a half year old 2 and a half year olding....
And yet, even with the ring,
even with the best thing ever
I fear there will always be this otherness, this shame, this tentative outsiderness, this longing, this whatever-it-is. This infermentality.

time whooooshing

Where does the time go?
WHOOOOOOOSH the week is over.
Today each hour was just about a minute long, and feel like I HAVE SO MUCH LEFT TO DO

I know I am not alone in feeling this way-- awake hours are short, unfettered hours are rare, this is a bonus day for daycare because I was going to be away at a workshop but my wrenched knee modified my plan
and
well, even though one could argue that this is all bonus time, apparently it was bonus time with an AGENDA in all caps, and I did not/could not/am not fulfilling my own expectations.

PHEW. What a lot of pressure.

Della is growing so fast I feel dizzy with it. The grasping of me of time wishing things would slow down so I can remember how she looks and acts right this moment...this moment. This one. This one where she wakes in the middle of the night to announce that there are no horses in the house, but we do have a zebra, John, but there are no tigers.  Or that Vika pushed her in the mud. Or that she likes Shout on Fresh Beats.

I want to remember that she thinks the airplane was a skybus
that she says pider for spider, and ornage for orange, and tickle tickle little tar...
she says clappa hands instead of clap your hands (clappa hands, clappa knees, clappa floor, hot cross buns)
and that she shrugs, so expressively, raises one eyebrow, talks with so many "adult" gestures...
and that she is amazing.
Amazing.
Amazing.

I want to remember to breathe her in. To pay attention, and not just move from one logistical thang to the next.  Dinner, dishes, toothbrushing, bed. I don't want there to be serial battles of diapers and pjs and clothes for school and shoes and coat and then the day is over and we begin again with dinner, dishes, toothbrushing, bed.
I want to lie on the grass with her
this person who, I am beginning to realize, may never actually lie on the grass (too much stillness, too many bugs)
I want to lie on the grass with her and look at the sky, and make elephants out of clouds
and talk about John the zebra
and Vika and mud, and
have her tell me what she is thinking, whatever it is, because I feel so incredibly taken in by her voice, and seduced by the secret garden that is this child's imagination.
I just want more.

I hope we'll fly kites and play in the sand and laugh a lot
and not just spend the warmer months in transit or knee deep in logistics of laundry, making lunch and coordinating schedules.

I want ease, I want to allow it, make space for it, hold the space for it, honor ease the way I have historically worshipped "busy" and "productive".
Can you imagine anything more important than being here, truly Being Here Now?

I know this to be my truth, and yet I work in opposition.  I keep cultivating the busy, the rush, the intensity of overfilledness, overexpectation.
I wonder when will I give myself permission (and learn to sustain it) to be as I know I want to be?
BEING, not DOING
More being.
More breathing.
More seeing elephants in the clouds.

Surfing the longing

So here I am, luckiest person in the world and I *STILL* twinge uncomfortably with news of someone's pregnancy. WTF? Can I just grow out of this please? Can I just be happy for me, for them, for all of us who are so lucky?

Oh yes, I wish it were different. I wish I were totally emotionally unhooked. I wish I knew that there is no conservation of fertility law, where someone's pregnancy means someone else will wait. I wish I knew with every certain fiber of my complex being that where I am is exactly where I want to be.

Months ago, Mel wrote one heck of a piece on traveling with her ghost child that left me teary and stunned.

I remember at the beginning of the whole IF journey doing some hard work with visualization, and imagining very clearly two children, two "spirit babies"-- a very spunky girl (boy howdy was that on target), and a very shy boy a few years younger who kept hiding behind my legs.

And I think sometimes, a usually very quiet part of me feels that he is missing... somehow, somehow... that somehow there is a piece of our family story that I imagined coming true. Othertimes, oftentimes this is not at all in my awareness; I am fine fine fine with no longing at all.

Believe me, we have our hands and hearts full.
We have the most amazing child in the whole universe.
We are blessed beyond measure, beyond imagining. I am not actually missing anything. I am full to overflowing. Logistically, financially, physically, energetically, it would be *so incredibly challenging* if we had more than one little one.

And yet, there is this whispery recurrent ghosty longing.

If we map this longing, I bet dollars to doughnuts it is a 28ish day cycle, landing smack dab on trigger day. I'm just sayin'.

So it comes and goes. Whispers and wanes.
Like grief I guess.  Yeah.  Just about exactly like grief.

3:3, percussive reset

Well then,
now where were we?

Ahh yes, percussive restart.
Barforama
Yes, it got me too. I thought I would *die* and I wish I were exaggerating.  Worse than labor, and kidney stones. I felt well and truly poisoned, and very very close to passing out many times.  But. Done with that and expecting a rapid recovery. Della is much better, although still off her food, and Doug, who was last to get it and had a different version, is tired as can be but is ok.
Somehow, we are ok.
Tired tired tired with no stamina, but ok.

But The Dread was exhausting and draining and the experience was intense and frightening,
and now, it is over and I feel nearly giddy
and would dance a bit, you know, if I could imagine lifting my feet off the ground. I'll jiggle and weave a bit now, sitting. It feels safer.

On a very plus note, after a few months of increasing discomfort and panic, culminating in a trip to see a new counsellor for some EMDR once I identified my triggers as triggers...I took action.
I made some hard choices as the year wrapped up about how I can best and realistically deal with my financial situation and feel relieved. I realize there might actually be a balance between what my brain knows sometimes and what my heart needs, and this time I feel I found it.

I also did some creative collecting this weekend-- a few opportunities to gather some images as fodder for my paintings.

It was fabulously foggy, with snow, and wet bark, and mmmmmmmmmmm
texture of corn fields, and dried weeds.

yes, I know I am nutty, but this stuff actually feeds me.

And for once? I allowed myself to be fed, to take the time to notice, take it in, and actually grab a few snapshots so I can evoke some of the same mmmmm in the future.

So-- yes, barfing and decluttering and trying to find some balance, and choosing pretty carefully (in this moment) what to put back in.

I really missed my campfire gathering, but felt I made progress this weekend finding my way back to what I know.

Hard to realize just how easy it is to lose sight of things that work when things aren't working.

broken, apart, open

I do not even know where to begin


falling apart
pulling back together
hugging Della maybe a little too long, a little too tightly
trying to guard myself against images and image-provoking language that I know from experience can cause me harm, while also feeling that as a human being on this planet, those kids deserve my brokenness, my hurt, my horror, my attention

I pull it together, and then, stare at the curls that somehow know what they are doing, sproinging up from Della's beautiful head, and I think of all of the parents that will never look down and see those on their child again
and

wow

I just care barely cope.

Today, I feel nearly poisoned. If you told me I ate something toxic I would believe you.

And then I just watched/listened to a video sent by my Reiki teacher, prior to the events on friday, and I have to say I was both surprised and not to find myself sobbing.   The beauty stuck me so much deeper than it would have because I am so broken open.  No amount of intellectual over-ride would let me do anything other than watch and cry, truly touched by the beauty of the music.

How can I possibly turn this openness into healing good? I don't know, but I do know I am going to try to stay more connected to beauty, to my lucky life, to the minutes of thrown food and tantrum, to those crazy curls.... to love, the big loves, the small loves, the whiskers on my cat.

Here's the video.
The name gives it away, but the beauty really struck me.

wolves

last night i dreamed of wolves.
one, in the yard, advancing toward me in spite of the noise I was trying to make, the menace I was faking.
I was just simply scared, but all of my fear filled and desperate arm waving and yelling made no difference.
it came closer and closer, so close, finally, it put its muzzle in my hand, and then we stood there in the doorway, me, stroking the soft fur of this fierce and fearless wolf

it was thirsty so I invited it in.
not much later I turned to find my house was filled with wolves.
fat ones and skinny ones, big ones and small ones. ones with spots.

***
today is rain and dark after yesterday's glorious everything.
light! oh, the light this time of year, low and slanty, setting hillsides into glow as a million million oak leaves turn color from brown to every kind of gold and berry.

fog lifting from every waterway
then high wispy clouds

today is very dark and flat and close
by 6am the sky was not even pretending to lighten
so I've turned on my christmas lights and am sitting in their glow, trying to gather myself for my day.

work has not been working, not as I've imagined it might.
I realized I took a detour this summer, a detour into imagining alternatives that never coalesced into actionable identifiable directions.  so now, several months into the detour, I am returning with panic to what I am already doing, gathering myself, trying to define, refine, communicate.

there are many inherent delights in this mosaic of different work for different people-- lots of stimulation, smart people, ideas, projects to wrangle. but there is fatigue in it too. switching so often from project to project means no sustained push, no immersion, and no sustained connection with co-workers. and there is loneliness in it too: I'm feeling lonely, I guess.  A part of many somethings but apart from them too....

A new creative project for a friend feels like a deep breath.
But I still need to re-organize my other work, and figure out how best to balance everything in a way that makes sense. I've got all sorts of wolves circling.
the best thing about the dream last night was that it meant that I was sleeping after several nights of anxious waking.

complexity: mother's day after loss

This is such a complex time of year.

In this incarnation, I find myself, quite miraculously, mother to Della (among many other things)-- awesome, humbling, knee-shaking, wondrous (among many other things...)

But three years ago, we found ourselves in the midst of a missed miscarriage. The week before mother's day held our discovery that we had lost Sprout, my D&C and a grief that was so large I wondered if I would ever be ok again.
I could not imagine I would ever be ok.
When I think of Sprout, and I do, often... when I think of Sprout my heart aches for what I now know is possible (and for all I was hoping for, and all that I was celebrating and anticipating, for all that I thought might happen)

but then, on the heels of very real grief,  there is this mindbender
this heart-wrench-er
this realization that if anything had been different, there would be no Della
and
that
blows my mind.

So I am sad, yes,
and complicated, yes
and happy with my life, YES
and clearly complikated
and very much many facets of kate as I think of this and feel my way through this,
this time of celebration and acknowledgement that I think should extend to all who are moms and who are waiting for their children
for me, a season of awe
and of wondering what might have been and the impossibility of what that might have meant.