Pardon my absence. Been away on a holiday and has been battling flu ever since I arrived back home. Still not feeling 100%, but I want to write nonetheless while it's still fresh in my mind.
The trip to Indonesia this time has made me surer of the childless-not-by-choice path that we've been walking along. It's also made me realize that there's now quite some distance between me and my buried dream compared to three years ago when I last visited Indo.
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This time around, just like last time, I knew some people would ask the question (because it's just the way the culture is in Indo) and prior to our holiday I was sort of curious and anxious about my reaction, though by the time I arrived, I had already forgotten about my curiosity and anxiety because my head was on a holiday. (chuckle)
Anyway, two neighbours said, "Hurry up and make babies." I managed to explain to the other one that we're fine just the way we are and that there's no use forcing a wish if it's not God's will (I find that this line works like a charm for religious people - not only for Christians, because my neighbours aren't Christians) and she took it quite well. I didn't explain anything else to the other one, though, because the last time around when I said we were fine just the two of us, in a very shocked state she immediately replied, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I'll keep praying for you."
So this time I just smiled and chuckled. A similar thing happened when I visited the church where we got married. Two women who were at our wedding asked me, "Do you have kids? Why not? Are you using protection?" Cue confused faces when I said "no, no kids" and "no protection" without any additional info. They both just replied, "Ah, maybe not yet." To which I just smiled.
The difference between three years ago versus now was this: three years ago those words still had the power to make me feel that what we have was "less than". Three years ago I just wanted to say "Whatevaaahhhhh" to them (in a cynical,
pretending-not-to-care tone), but this time around the second I heard their responses, what automatically popped out in my head was their idealized versions of how life was supposed to be. Either that or their own fear (that this kind of life that we're leading is one of their worst nightmares).
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During our holiday I also spent some time with my nephews and I talked to many mothers about their daily struggles (most of them have two kids already) and watching/hearing the daily struggles made me feel these things:
1. I'm getting less and less sure concerning how good of a mother I could have been if my child wasn't the angel child that I was (during TTC) probably wishing for. Not that I was always sure I could be a good mother, mind you, but back then the primal drive to become a mother trumped all the other worries/fears/thoughts.
Other than the fact that kids in general can really push your buttons, some kids are tougher to handle than others and some kids have more problems that you can't really handle without the help of experts. Add to that is the lethal combination of the outer world that doesn't understand your silent struggles, the outer world who judges you and excludes you/your kid. Because to a certain extent, you can't really choose the kind of child that you're going to have. I remember someone once told me that she hoped that her child would have a similar personality to the father instead of herself because she felt that she was a more difficult child.
2. It's a crazy jungle of child-rearing out there and I feel less and less interest in jumping into that kind of jungle anymore. The cons of having children have outweighed the pros by a few miles now.
I believe this is mostly due to the fact that the distance between me and our buried dream is quite far now, but it's interesting to note the shifts. I definitely feel much freer now. It feels like this trip has made me found more closure in regards to my buried dream.
That said, though, watching/hearing the daily grind of parenthood makes me understand more the existence of all those slogans and quotes concerning the importance and value of parenthood and I do admire those who are up to the task.
I'll end this here. Will catch up on blog reading later on.
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
I've been reading about grief cycles for quite some time now from different women across the globe. I remember being frustrated every time I felt that grief was knocking on my door again. I just wanted to say, "Not againnnnn?"
I've been wondering about grief cycles in my own experience lately. I don't think that each cycle is the same, though. I think that if we allow ourselves to open the door, sit a while with that grief, listen to it, and give it room to share its wisdom, we'll learn different things each time because there are so many different layers of losses that we have to deal with in this type of journey. And I feel that each time the cycle starts, the starting point is getting further and further away from the point of origin.
I also think that each time I learn a new trick on how to deal with the grief wave as it comes. Sometimes it's a learned trick that I've honed for a while, other times it just comes out of the blue (natural self-defense instinct), other times I come up with an experimental tool to deal with a new wave of grief.
All I can say is that when I switch my perspective into "What can I learn this time (about myself, other people, or whatever)?", I can even feel excited about inviting grief inside (may be kinda weird to put it this way, but I'm telling it as it is here). It's like grief is an old friend coming for a visit and I'm looking forward to getting some insight. And we can even enjoy a relaxing chat over tea and sweet buns. :-)
In this post I'd also love to share some brilliant links:
1. Ten Things I've Learned About Trauma.
2. You Can't Please All The People All The Time.
3. Why Miscarriage Matters When You're Pro-Life.
