The Sum of My Parts

Mali has written a brilliant blog post again entitled "The Rest of My Life" and I've been wanting to write my own answer to that question posed in Lisa's blog, but I've been busy, so I only have time to type this down now. Before I start, let me also share loribeth's post on the same topic.

A few years back, after deciding on surrendering to life without children, I felt the need to find something "grand/noble" to fill my life as a result of not having children. I think this stemmed from the fact that many people would automatically say, "You can always adopt" whenever we said we couldn't have children and I have read many people who accused infertiles of being selfish for trying out treatments "when there are so many abandoned children out there". As if one needs to be like Mother Teresa if one wants to have children but can't. So I definitely felt the societal pressure to find something big to do with my life when the baby thing didn't work out, but I never really started searching.

In the first place, I was lost, grieving, sorrowful, and I had to deal with so many emotional storms that I couldn't think straight. We did make one rash decision during this journey because I was so angry with our empty arms and after learning that lesson, I decided not to make any decision when I'm angry. I had to take time to enter that place of pain and process my grief along with all the emotional storms inside. After all, the only way to handle grief is to grieve. 


The first things I did in order to move on were probably these:

1. Finding small things that bring me joy and doing things that bring me joy.

2. Tapping into my inner child (in my case I try to build different kinds of snow creations in winter, the photos of which you can check out in my main blog).

3. Writing down the things I've been learning during my infertility journey and rebranding infertility as a guru instead of an enemy and truly believing in it.

Only after doing the above and after getting farther away from the rows and rows of buried dreams (after doing grief work for a longer time) did I start getting clues on what I wanted to do. It's not about finding big, grand dreams, but for me it's more about being more focused on what kind of woman I want to become now that I know I won't be a mother. 

I owe Michelle Frost a HUGE thank you for her eloquent words in the comment section of one of my posts in this blog (for some reason I have a hard time trying to find that particular post to link here). In that post I was talking about leaving a legacy on earth and she said, "Amel, YOU are your own legacy." The words knocked me off my chair. I was wondering why on earth did I ever try to separate myself into different parts/roles because I was talking about leaving a legacy as a blogger. But in truth is that I am the sum of my parts and my legacy to the world should be the entirety of myself, the whole of me, everything that makes me who I am. Her words were like soothing balm to my soul at that time. THANK YOU for knocking me off my chair, M! :-D One's pain can truly blind one so much to one's full potentials.

Anyway, one thing I want to focus on these days is being an encourager. A few years back a blogger friend of mine told me that she said I excelled in encouraging her and her words stuck in my head. Sure anyone can encourage anyone they meet, but I want to do it with more awareness these days. I want to be more intentional in becoming an encourager. Just finding this one task has made me more purposeful in life. Life is more exciting this way! :-D What other things do I want to focus on? I haven't figured them out yet, but I have time. :-) It's exciting to try to figure out what else I want to/can incorporate in my life. It's like a mini adventure. :-D

Other than that, our life continues just like before. I think I once wrote about how it feels like we're a couple of empty nesters because of the shift from wanting to have children/preparing to have children mentality to life with no children. The only difference is that we have no children. These days I no longer worry about making future plans that may clash with the possible pregnancy, so we're trying to live life to the fullest and enjoy life as a complete family of two. 

Oh, and every now and then I try to educate people about infertility and its effects, but it doesn't come from a place of pain anymore. Meaning I share infertility links not because I need people to validate my pain (like what I did in the past when I was still hurting so much), but because I simply want to share awareness of the different shades of infertility. This is probably the biggest change compared to life pre-infertility. Infertility is now a part of my life and life has never been the same after that. These days I have an infertility survivor badge etched in my soul.

These days we're trying to save money for our old age, because we probably won't be able to rely on any relatives to take care of us if we ever live that long (considering the possibility of not being able to live on our own anymore), so ideally we should have some fund for our old age so that if we need to pay people to help us with something, we can still afford it. However, I also try not to think too much or plan too much because life is so full of surprises (but I still love saving money for rainy days LOL!). We would love to be able to pay off our house loan and also do some renovations in the future, but in the meantime I can say that life is good. It's beautiful. I'm content. And summer's coming. :-D 

Will

A while ago a friend talked about writing a will in her FB page. She and her DH has an adopted child (mind you, she can't have her own children due to hysterectomy and for a long time Indo people and her relatives thought that she would never get married 'coz they thought that no Indo man would want a woman who couldn't bear children - and no, the hubby isn't Indonesian). Anyway, she said that she had written a will on what to do if she and her DH died for some reason. She wants to make sure that the relatives would know their wish concerning their child.

The discussion tugged some strings in my heart. Before TTC, even before we were planning to have kids, I had wanted to give away some family heirlooms to our children later on in the future. Once the TTC dream ended, though, I didn't really think about the heirlooms anymore.


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The discussion triggered some soft spots in my heart, so I wrote in her FB page that if I died first, I would love for hubby to be able to give the family heirlooms to my brother so that he can pass on the family "inheritance" so to speak. I don't care what happens to my other belongings on earth or even my money if I should die first, but the jewelleries...They're not particularly expensive, but I know that my Mom had kept them safe for years and years and years because of their sentimental value. I still remember playing dress-up in my parents' bedroom and putting them on when I was a child.

Infertility is a very tricky thing. There are so many unexpected things that can turn my focus from someone else's life towards my grief, my infertility, the things that IF has robbed from me, the holes in my heart. And every time I experience that, I have to learn to forgive myself for doing that ...but I hope that by learning to forgive myself, I can learn to forgive others even better...and I sure do hope everybody along the way who's seen the ugly side effects of IF on myself would forgive me, too.

Note to self: What my other friend experienced that I wrote in the previous post (miscarriage) made me sentimental also because it reminded me of the days when we were still so hopeful, when we would do whatever it took to be able to get pregnant, when I was still paying so much attention to my body and my cycle and my fertile day, when every month I felt "This is the month!!!", when I let myself think about how the baby would look like, etc. etc. etc. It's bittersweet to look back on those days...because I know where we are now - happy and empty-armed.

Legacy

In the past when I wrote blog posts in my main blog, one of the purposes was to leave a legacy for our future kids. After infertility, it hurt so much to think of those shattered dreams, including not even being able to share my blog's legacy with our kids. 

After letting go of those dreams, nowadays I feel that I can share my blog legacy with whoever is willing to listen. I write my blog posts not only for my own sake (or hubby's - in case one of us is taken first, there'll be plenty of memories in a blog form), but also for the sake of sharing stories with my blog readers. So these days I think of a legacy not in the form of leaving something for people who are related by blood to us.

“Language allows us to reach out to people, 
to touch them with our innermost fears, 
hopes, disappointments, victories. 

To reach out to people we'll never meet."

- Simon Van Booy

Looking Backward - Mellow Mood

I've just begun to get to know a blogger friend/expat who lives in Finland and we've been exchanging emails 'coz we have some similarities. I've dug up some old blog posts to send her some of the links so that she can get to know me better (it's more practical that way so that I don't have to write all over again some things I've written down in my other blog).

While trying to find those old blog posts, I reread some of them and in some of them, I came across posts filled with my wish of leaving some legacy to our future kids and grandkids (even though at that time we didn't plan to have kids yet 'coz I just moved to Finland and I needed time to study the language and adjust with my new life), but the thought of leaving something for the future generation had been on my mind. One legacy that I was thinking about was our saved emails - our "electronic love letters". At that point in time, I would love to have our kids and grandkids enjoy the legacy of our long-distance love story. I didn't really have time to think this over because I'd been busy at work.

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However, today (it's my day off from work) I was reminded of this when I visited another blogger friend's blog. She had just posted her weekly scrapbook of her family. She said that she had started to rethink what to put in the weekly scrapbook so that the future generation knew what kind of things (gadgets, incidents, games, jokes, events) exist/happen in the past life that they enjoy that may no longer exist in the future.

Reading that post reminded me of one of the broken dreams I had to let go when we decided to think of the future with kids. I had forgotten that it was even on my mind before we even started TTC and now it has resurfaced. It makes me kinda mellow - mostly because I'm probably a bit shocked of the existence of this "hole" that IF has created. I know I'm gonna be just fine, though...but this just took me by surprise...

Anyhow, another type of loss is the kind of financial/earthly belonging legacy that we're going to leave someday when we're dead. I once told hubby that if I died first, I wanted him to send half of my money to my brother. He can keep the other half as well as my jewelleries.

It's not that I care too much about what happens after we're dead, but it'll just be nicer if the things we leave behind are meaningful to someone, don't you think? Someone who can look at our photos and remember the many memories he/she has with us...someone who, upon holding some of my jewelleries, remembers my stories about where they're from (a gift from Mom, a gift from an aunt, bought by me, etc)...someone who, upon holding our pictures, remembers our love story.

I guess today's one of those days...a day I should spend in mourning over these losses...My mellow mood may also be caused by PMS, but I know I'll be fine in the end, because: