A friend sent me a link to an interesting article about holding space for someone else, but at the end of the article, I found out that there was another link about holding space for yourself first before you can hold space for other people.
The first article reminded me of the struggle I had with jealousy, grief, anger, etc. in the beginning of my infertility journey. At that time I felt the desire to fight them and chase them away, but after some exhaustion and failure, I began to wonder if I was actually supposed to just embrace them as they were without trying to fix/change them and whether the act of embracing them would enable me to be less judgmental when someone else was experiencing those (ugly) feelings that I tried to keep at bay.
Anyway, here are the two articles:
Haven't been blogging or blog-hopping. Been busy with work, being sick (yeah, I finally couldn't avoid it in the end), busy with life and some travel plans this year. I'll catch up on blogging later.
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In the beginning of my infertility journey, when I wore the badge called "infertile", my close friends' reaction took me by surprise. After that one year was up, their reaction made me think that I wasn't supposed to call myself an infertile (just yet) and it made me wonder if I jinxed myself if I used that term to describe myself. For me at that time, though, it was more of a clinical term. I needed a term to call myself so that I knew where to find more info on what to do next. That meant reading a lot of infertility blogs out there for my research. After a while, though, that term began to grow on me. I got used to it and other people started to get used to it, too. So from then on I wore that badge while I tried to navigate life in all its complications of wearing that badge. I clung to that badge, trying to find connection, understanding, support, and direction.
After we decided to turn to childlessness-not-by-choice road, slowly the title on the badge turned into "infertility survivor". The further away the healing took me, the more endearing the badge became to me. Funny how the old badge called "infertile" had a totally different feeling to it. I wasn't ashamed at that old badge, but that badge carried a whole different world to it. That badge contained so much confusion due to the roller-coaster ride that we went through each month. That old badge was a mother lode (pun intended) of chaos and brokenness.
These days, though, I've felt another shift. These days I no longer wear that badge daily. I even forget to put on that badge sometimes. I've just realized this recently, especially after talking to a mother about her challenges the other time. She openly told me stuff that made me felt privileged to be the listener and to my surprise, my "infertility survivor" persona didn't appear. Instead, when she was confiding those private stuff to me, what appeared was just "Amel the human being". That way I could respond to her accordingly. In the past, sometimes the infertile/infertility survivor persona automatically appeared and it took every bit of my power to take a step back and focus on the other person's story first instead of focusing on my pain/grief/needs.
Anyway, I can't believe it's almost the end of March already! Where did time go? However, I do enjoy the coming of spring (I've also been enjoying some Easter chocolate LOL!) and afterwards summer to Lapland!
