1. The Important Letter.
I've sent my mom the letter via my brother (I asked him to print it out). It ended up being a 4-page MS Word document (plus a paragraph on the 5th page). Still no word from her via SMS to me. I imagine it's going to take time for her to bury the dream that she's been having for us. I hope the other half of my letter gave her comfort, because the first half talked about my honest feelings when it came to our infertility journey. It was REALLY hard to write the letter and I was on edge the whole day yesterday while waiting for the response.
In the end I contacted my brother via YM and asked him how it went. She said that mom had cried. I was so emotional during our chat in YM and I started crying, too. My bro helped explain to her that I wasn't blaming her and that I knew she meant well, but that I'd like to be supported not by her praying about a miracle pregnancy or by her telling me to keep on praying to get pregnant. I have given her more ideas on what to pray on in the letter, so hope that helps, too. My bro said that she must be sad when she read about our struggles and all the feelings that I had during the tough period of our infertility journey. I sent her an SMS yesterday, telling her that I'm thankful to have a mother who prays for me and that I love her and I ask her not to be too sad because we're doing fine.
2. Infertility and Relationships.
Sometimes I feel that infertility is a double-edged sword. When I was preparing to write the letter for my mom, I knew it would crush her, too. I don't want to crush her dream for us, but I felt that it must be done for the sake of our relationship. I began to feel our relationship cracking and I don't want to lose our relationship. I was struggling to try to find a way on how to crush her dream gently and I hope I have succeeded in doing so.
Other than that, here's also something I wrote weeks ago about infertility and friendship:
"Infertility is a tricky thing to deal
with when you have a pregnant close friend whose pregnancy reminds you of your losses. As much as you'd like your
friends to tell you as many parts of their joys and sorrows and as much
as you'd like to tell your friends about your joys and sorrows, it's not
that easy to figure out the fine line. The fine line where you don't
want to burst someone else's happy bubble by telling them that their
stories trigger very soft spots within yourself, but then again you
wonder if you should let them know about at least some of them because
you want them to understand your journey. The fine line where you wonder
how much stuff you should tell your friends about your feelings because you fear that they
are going to hold back sharing their joys because they don't want to hurt you, but on the
other hand you don't want to miss all the lovely moments even if those
moments trigger some pain within your deepest self."
It IS a shame that infertility is affecting those around me this way, but I welcome the lessons that it's giving me (and other lessons that it will give me in the future).
3. I found this article via an FB share and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it for so many different reasons so I'd share it here too: Confronting the Lie: God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle.
4. A friend of mine gave me this challenge weeks ago and I've finally found my word for 2014.
My word of the year is “Disentangle”. I need to practise disentangling
myself from any emotional connection or baggage so that I can take a
step back and celebrate other people’s beautiful moments with them
without drowning in grief when their beautiful moments are the ones that
acutely remind me of what I will never have. I want to disentangle
myself from those heavy weights that make me want to crawl or drown in
my grief so that I can stand up and continue my healing journey.
Here's the challenge in case you want to participate: What Will You Choose For Your Word of 2014?
Last but not least, Happy New Year! Wishing you more peace, comfort, and healing throughout 2014!
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PMS mode here. Just read a post about a blogger friend's friend's demise and she wrote such a beautiful post on her that just made me ache inside. Life isn't as simple as ABC. There are so many people facing their own challenges or "crosses to bear" all around me and those challenges are made even more vivid whenever I get to hear some more details about them.
Lately I've been having lots of conversations related to children or actually pregnancies and babies with some friends.* One is pregnant and another one has started feeling the longing for motherhood. I was really happy when I heard about the pregnancy, but about half an hour afterwards the storm started within. I suddenly felt mellow and sad. I was uneasy 'coz I didn't know why I felt so sad (a different kind of sadness than what I experienced in the past). It wasn't that I started longing to have children again, mind you. Not that.
I actually just realized (while writing this post) that the news and the talk about pregnancy and the other friend's future TTC plan transported me face-to-face with my "dead/buried dreams". As if I were suddenly standing right in front of those rows and rows of buried dreams and I couldn't help shedding a few tears (literally just a few tears, not sobbing like crazy). I was again reminded of how many dead dreams that I had to let go of and I suppose the sight of it all kinda overwhelmed me: seeing not just the buried dream of achieving pregnancy, but also the opportunity to feel the morning sickness, to feel the baby kicking inside of me, to talk about hubby about the details of the baby room, to share the news with my friends and family, to hear their shrieks of delight upon hearing the news, to share preggy photos and USG photos, to give birth, to share baby photos, etc. etc. etc. And the list kept going on.
* Note: This is the kind of talk I want to be involved in 'coz I do care about them with all my heart. And I know they care about me with all that they've got as well.
And on another level, again I couldn't help but think how "easy" it seemed for some people to get preggy. The latest pregnancy news reminded me of my SIL's pregnancy. When I first found out about her second pregnancy, she told me that it was a surprise 'coz she said that "they weren't even so diligent in TTC" though they were trying to have one. Words like these came back to the surface every now and then. The more often I hear words like these, the closer I got to feeling that my body wasn't working the way it should have been (in the past I had not felt this at all, I think - at least I didn't really think that way).
Thankfully, though, the storm lasted only for about 6 hours (yeah, I'm slightly crazy about details LOL!). In the middle of it, I was screaming to God, "Help me, help me, help me focus on others' happiness instead of focusing on myself, pleaasssseeeeee." I also kept on remembering this verse: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (1 Corinthians 12:9)
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That helped, as well as saying this mantra over and over again, "It's NOT about me, NOT about me, NOT about me, NOT about me". I went to bed pretty easily that night, though I must admit that it's bloody hard to try to focus on their happiness without looking back on my own history. And I couldn't help feeling "left out" - because I DO want to share the happiness by sharing my own story, but I have no story to tell except my Mom's stories about her being pregnant with us and my own childhood stories.
But I think I've done a pretty decent job in trying to focus on them and their plans for the future instead of focusing on me (I may have slipped a few times but not too many times). Actually, writing all of this has made me feel SO much lighter. :-D
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How can you stop people who knew you were trying to have kids before to stop infusing you with hope? With success stories? With random pregnancy miracle stories?
Because even though we've told some people that we've surrendered to life without kids, every now and then they still try to infuse us with hope by telling those kinds of stories. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
And I'm not even having PMS now, but I'm REALLY TRULY bothered with it. I talked about it with hubby and he shook his head in disbelief. Then we started talking about different responses that would just shut people up. What would that be?
To new people that we meet along the way, I thought of saying this, "My eggs are rotten, so the doctors say I can't have kids."
Hubby said, "Nah, just tell them that your hubby has no balls." LOL LOL LOL!!!
Then he suggested saying, "Just tell them we don't want kids."
Yeah, next time I'll do that, but what about those people who knew we wanted kids so badly at one point in time? They're the ones that have trouble erasing the dream image of us with kids, even though we've buried that dream already and we've moved on. I find it FRUSTRATING that it's SO hard to make them understand that we DO NOT want to dig up the grave of our dream and live with an empty casket in our household.
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OK, enough ranting for today...
P.S. Just heard that a friend is pregnant again with her second child after several RPLs, so I'm HAPPY for her 'coz she's not that young anymore (41 y.o.), but on the other hand I feel frustrated 'coz this kind of story can be used "against me" - like if that happens for her at that age, then it can happen to me, too. Ugh.
