Connections

I recently joined a new blogroll.  I thought about it for a long time - whether or not I was going to request to be added.  You see, it’s an IVF group.  Don’t recognize the acronym?  It stands for invitro fertilization.

So, you may ask, how do I fit in to the IVF community?  I’ve really struggled with how to explain it, but here goes….

For those who IVF and other fertility treatments don’t work, adoption is often one of the last routes to becoming a parent, so my connection to the community is as a birth mother.  But, when it comes right down to it, I feel my fit has more to do with our shared sense of loss.  I feel an affinity for those who have experienced the devastation of miscarriage and child loss, often more than once, and the final realization that they are not able, for whatever reason, to become a biological parent.

As I’ve been reading other bloggers in this blogroll, it sometimes feels as though they’ve looked right into my heart and are writing on my behalf.  Our shared sorrows and struggles on a day to day basis; our feelings of inadequacy, fears of rejection, our lack of focus.  I hear my voice in the words they share, so I asked to join.  

It offers a sense of ease within the unease...

From Nothing to Something

There were many times as a child and young adult I just felt nothing.  This is a skill; a skill I cultivated long ago.  I learned to remove myself from the here and now and go to a grey, dull place.  A place where there literally is nothing.  Many people learn to do this as a way to cope, as I did.  I don’t want to go into the reasons why I learned to do this, suffice it to say I was not the first and I won’t be the last.

Unfortunately after a while it becomes an automatic response.

So when I was preparing to place my son for adoption I knew that it would haunt me all the rest of my days if I did not stare it in the eyes and work through the pain.  So, I made a conscious effort, and an actual plan, to process and grieve his loss and not to go to that place of nothing.  I think this is how I’ve made it to today with less “fucked-up-ness” than I would have had otherwise.

Here, today, in the now, I am continuing to make a conscious effort to find ways to replace that auto response with something better, something healthy.  I am clear that I want to feel and experience everything I can.  I want to see the people around me and share their world, and I want to share mine.  I want to experience the good and the bad and feel it now.  I don’t want or need to block out the negative because I now have to tools I need to get through to the other side.  

Of course that doesn’t mean I always use them, but nobody's perfect, right?

Light in the Forest

The days roll by like a whirlwind… 

Not one goes by that you don’t enter my thoughts…   

Sometimes you linger there...

Others, you seem like a melody floating on the wind, familiar yet fleeting;

here and gone. 

I often feel lost in this grief; lost and alone…   

It lay coiled deep in my gut; heavy, taught, warm – a serpent curled upon itself. 

No beginning, no ending, just a mass of roiling muscle. 

I remind myself I am not alone.  That many share your loss, and that despite moments of seeming disability, they pass and I go on…  life goes on…

I glimpsed you like a ray of light in the forest

soft, golden, fleeting

you cast shadows too

yet they hold no meaning for me.

As you play your music

I hear the past,

see the future,

feel the moment…

I feel the moment.

Dappled leaves flutter gently in the breeze

you walk with me… hold my hand

gravel crunches below my tired and swollen feet

road signs are trees and boulders; you’ll find no words here.

The rain and sun have conspired to nourish my soul

I smell salt in the air, and change to come

the trees that bow to the prevailing winds still grow strong

I will too.