Of joy and loss

As I write this post my body is shedding the last of the tissue that built up over the five weeks that I was pregnant. When the nurse called to tell me the news that my pregnancy test was positive, I was in shock. I had totally convinced myself that the test would be negative. I had even spent the better part of the weekend mourning another lost cycle. I made the nurse repeat the numbers and the results three times.

This was a frozen cycle - to transfer the one embryo that had been frozen since my first IVF cycle back in March. The good news began when they called to let me know that the embryo had survived the thawing process. Really the good news began when I made the decision to share my cycle with my close friend and to ask for what I needed - support transforming what would be a very clinical procedure into a sacred and spiritual experience. I made a choice that I wanted this cycle to be different and it was. I put out what I wanted and people both friends and strangers showed up. And it was a beautiful spiritual experience.

And then I was really pregnant - the embryo found a home and began to grow. The numbers were jumping up and up just like they are supposed to do. When you go through IVF they monitor your numbers every two days. But then the spotting started and I had to go out of town. I decided not to worry. Then at the next blood test the numbers stop going up the way they are supposed to. And the fear began. There was a small chance that things would right themselves but they didn't. So the monitoring turned from an excited waiting until the first ultrasound and heartbeat to an anxious waiting for the numbers to start going down so that we could rule out an ectopic pregnancy that would have required either medical or surgical treatment. Tuesday night the bleeding and cramping began. I chose not to take pain medication because I wanted to be present to the loss. I was exhausted and sad and overwhelmed and I wanted to feel all of it.

And now as the last of my lining is shedding and the overwhelming sadness is passing, I am able to find the things I am grateful for and the things I have gained through this cycle. I am grateful to learn that I can get pregnant. I had reached a point even though I had only been trying for a year where I wasn't sure how much longer I could continue trying without some success. And though it ended in a miscarriage, it was still a success in some important ways. And I am grateful that my body was able to recognize when the pregnancy was failing or the embryo was too damaged to thrive and it was able to shed the cells by itself and begin to renew. I am grateful for all the love and care that the universe has provided for me. I am grateful for the way my heart has been opening up to let others contribute to me and support and hold me. And I am so grateful for the strength and confidence this experience has given me to continue moving forward in my pursuit of motherhood.

So now I am taking the time to let my body finish shedding the cells meant to support a pregnancy and build itself back up. I am going to rest and figure out my next step and continue to open myself up to the love that there is for me to give and receive.

Embracing the New Year.

Tomorrow in synagogues all around the world we will read the stories of infertility reprieved - twice. For the past five or more years, I have chanted the story of Hannah - the barren woman who prayed with all her heart and soul to be granted a child so she could demonstrated her love of God by raising the child to serve the Divine. Her story is a parallel to the story of Sarah - wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. Both women wanted a child to express their love and to fulfill their destinies and both had their wombs closed. Both women were tortured by the fertility of the other women in their families - Sarah by Hagar her maid and surrogate - and Hannah by Penina her cowife.

I've been thinking about whether or not there is a Hagar or Penina in my life. Certainly in the past year, many friends have gotten pregnant and given birth. And as the year moved forward and more and more women I knew were achieving their dreams while mine ended in blood and tears each month, I felt jealousy, anger, frustration with God, with my body, with myself. And yet, I was also happy for them, for the miracle of their stories and the continued proof that women my age and older were conceiving and giving birth. Certainly, I have not been actively taunted by these women as Hannah was - but then I think that perhaps it is part of the perception. Clearly the text says that Penina taunted Hannah - but we don't know the content of those taunts. Perhaps the taunt was simply that each year Penina's easy fertility felt like a taunt, a barb, a showing off to the infertile Hannah. I have had moments over the past 16 months of feeling that another's fertility - hard won or easy - was a personal affront. Rationally I knew that was not the case but Rationality is rarely present when emotions are high. Yet as the months passed the feeling of personal affront, of some kind of divine Judgement of me, eased. The personal feeling of loss that comes up each time I hear of another pregnant friend or relative hasn't dissipated completely. I'm not sure that it will until/unless I am able to conceive, carry to term and give birth to a healthy child of my own, but I am now able to separate it from the true joy I feel for others. I have taken up a practice of silently wishing good health and an easy time to every pregnant woman I see. Offering my own silent blessing to strangers and friends alike reminds me of the miracle that it is and that is available.

The stories of Sarah and Hannah are both a source of prayer, inspiration, hope and pain for me. Especially the last few years, as I come to the holiday still childless and unsure what this new year will hold for me. This year I am at the beginning of a new cycle. It feels somehow appropriate as though all my cycles, spiritual, reproductive, emotional are aligning. I realized this morning as I pushed against what felt like a huge weight just to get out of bed that I am anxious about starting this new year. That for me holiday means family and loved ones and it is a painful experience as the new families are called to the Torah that I am still just a witness.

I have worked hard over the past year to release myself from feelings that I have been abandoned by God, that my lack of a partner or a child is somehow punishment for something I had done to offend. But, I have realized that in fact, I have had a large role in creating my life as it is which means that I also have the power to create a life that is more reflective of my soul. That I can be more open to the love that is and continue to take risks - perhaps even more - that I might get what I want. Which doesn't mean I ignore the sadness - the feelings of loss that come up for me as these holidays approach and I am once again shredded by the gap between what is so and what I wish, want to be. But I think perhaps this year if I can really give myself the gift of feeling all the emotions of love, sadness, fear, hope, desire, joy, strength, weakness and inspiration then I can enter this new year more truly connect to myself, my core, my soul and thus God and everything. More connected which is something that can only be good.

Shana Tova

Yes, No, Maybe, I don't know

I'm on vacation this week. I decided to repeat what was a lovely vacation at the beach last year the week after labor day. It was a great weekend with friends but the weather has now turned colder and over cast. So instead of being on the beach and playing in the surf or kayaking in the bay, I am sitting in the condo writing and musing.

Yesterday, the man I just began dating came to visit for the day. He drove the 3+ hours each way to spend the afternoon with me so we could see each other and talk. It was great that he came and it made me recognize how much he wants this to work. We talked about a lot of things - about what each of us sees as possible or wants. I stated what I needed from him to try to make this work with the parameters. I've spent so much of the past five years shut off or only superficially opening myself to the possibility of relationship. I know that taking the risk is the only way to figure out if something is what you want. There is a part of me saying no - disappointed but recognizing that what we want for ourselves may be too different and it would take too much compromise on both sides for it to be compatible. His lifestyle is different from what I have envisioned for myself. But then I also think that some of this NO is coming from my old friend FEAR. It's about cutting my losses early so I won't get hurt in the end. It's about being more comfortable with the hurt I know of disappointment and loneliness than the risk of some future heartache or even bliss. It's the addiction to predictability that has me wanting to run.

Fortunately it's countered by the YES - that isn't as much about M and the possibility of a future together as it is about me wanting to take action in service of my desire to find a life partner. It is a yes to the possibility and reality of love in my life that is real rather than the fantasy I have created of what that is or will look like. I went to see "500 Days of Summer" with a friend the other day. I enjoyed the back and forth of the film. Towards the end there are mock interviews with his friends and boss about finding love. His best friend says his wife isn't necessarily the girl of his dreams. That the girl of his dreams would be taller, more into sports, and have bigger breasts. but then the character say, "She's better than the girl of my dreams. She's real." I've spent so much of my life rejecting some and pursuing others because of the man of my dreams that I've wound up single at 40. And now that I know this and can see the patterns, I want to change. Exploring things with M - wherever that leads - will bring me one step closer.

So I feel like I am finally embracing the land of I don't know and learning to live here with confidence that I will know what I need to know when I need to know it and that the key is to honor and listen to my feelings and then share them with M and others so I can keep moving forward. It's not unlike the fertility stuff. I can hold out a vision of what I want and desire - a child to be a parent to be blessed with the gift of carrying and giving birth to that child myself - but there are no guarantees that is only taking each step of the journey, each small or big risk along the way and then evaluating where I get to next and how I feel about it. It's a really uncomfortable place to be but perhaps discomfort is part of the bargin of being human and living.

Diagnosis and the single factor

Once it became apparent that I wasn't getting pregnant easily, I began to wonder about the single factor. How much of the challenge I am facing is that I'm single. Even before I started trying, but once I was 30, I began to wonder if the fact that I hadn't ever gotten pregnant despite the more than I'd care to share # of times I'd had unprotected sex. (Yes, I count my lucky whatever that I am also disease free given my at times totally irresponsible behavior.) Certainly in my early twenties there were a few scares but no unplanned conceptions- funny how age and perspective shift can change your evaluation of something.

Here I am 15 some odd years later and every missed cycle or unsuccessful attempt has me wondering if I've always had some underlying issues or if the biggest challenge is that I'm single and trying to get pregnant using frozen donor sperm. When I first started, I was sure that I'd have no trouble and would be pregnant after only a few tries. I went full force forward into doing two IUI's - no drugs - per cycle the first two cycles. After neither of those cycles worked, I dialed back to one IUI per month till I used up the six vials of my original purchase. For those of you using known donors or married to a fertile partner - the cost of one vial of frozen donor sperm not including shipping averages between $400 and $600. If you want to use a donor who is willing to be known - i.e. a child you conceive with that sperm can contact the man at age 18 and the bank will continuously send you health/lifestyle information - it is usually $100 more than other vials. Granted in the grand scheme of having a raising a child, a few $100 more seems like nothing.

I began this post more than 6 months ago. I had just met with the RE I have been working with for the past eight months. She diagnosed me with Endometriosis and petitioned to move straight pasted hormone stimulated IUI to IVF. Her reasoning was both that I am working with frozen sperm and that the hormones can make the endo worse so IVF is a better option. My hormone levels are all still very good - though the more I learn the more I realize that FSH and LH and TSH etc are only vague indicators and the quality of the eggs is more the issue. So we proceeded blithely ahead with the first round of IVF - okay not blithely but I certainly knew less than I do now. The hormone shots and the testing was stressful but not terrible. The waiting and the expectation followed by the spotting and the definitive negative pregnancy test were devastating. I wasn't sure I could continue. I just felt so sad and cosmically punished.

In my post on Hannah, Sarah and Infertility in the Torah I muse on the fact that fertility seems to be something the divine bestows on the foremothers after long bouts of not being able to conceive. If fertility is a gift that the divine bestows then what of infertility? Is it about learning patience and the lesson of not having control? Is it about a need to develop a strong love for life independent of children? I have for the most part moved beyond seeing it as punishment. Certainly in the Torah divine punishment is much more actively dealt out. It is not so much the lack of things as the destruction or threat of destruction. Perhaps it is simply indifference. There are thousands who struggle with fertility issues today and no doubt there were back in the ancient world as well. Sarah and Hannah had their wombs opened but the text is fairly silent on the whys of either the opening or the closing. As an older woman I try to see those texts as hopeful prayers and examples that anything is possible.

Of course Sarah and Hannah were in loving relationships with their male partners. So how much is the singleness a factor for me. Recently, I've begun dating someone. He is far away and has a child from a previous marriage. The relationship is very new and I haven't any idea where it is going or what I want from it. Nonetheless, it had me thinking about what I do want - a family with a partner. It has me thinking about how much I want the whole package. He knows I am trying to get pregnant and is very supportive. Though neither of us is ready to try to conceive a child together - the thought has crossed my mind to want to try if my cycle and our visits coincided. All the work I've done over the past year with my leadership development program, the healers I've been seeing has seemed if nothing else to strengthen my system and make my regular cycles even more so. (So much so that my first attempt at doing a frozen embryo transfer with the one remaining embryo from my failed IVF was canceled because despite being in low dose estrogen which is meant to suppress ovulation - I ovulated anyway.) It makes me wonder if M and I were in a place to be trying regularly without assistance if I might be able to conceive that way now. His one son was conceived when he was already 38. Of course it is all conjecture because we're not in a position to pursue that and I am not waiting until we are. I am grateful that he is supportive of me trying the way I am with donor sperm. Still I can't help but wonder. So I guess for now the singleness factor of my fertility challenges will remain unknown - like much of my other issues. And as I approach this new Jewish year and look back on where I missed the mark and what I want to change, I know that I'm trying to let go of the need to know and to embrace the idea that my fertility challenges are anything other than a combination of factors none of which have anything to do with judgment or who I am. I am moving forward with the idea that anything is possible and that single or not this is my path to travel.

I began this post as a bit of a rant - about how being single might be the biggest single factor in my fertility challenges and about the cost of donor sperm. I don't have any more answers than I did. I have found my way to a place of more calm and self-love but the cost factor and the questions don't go away. I had said that in the grant scheme of raising a child and having a family the $500 or $600 or even $1000 for the purchase and shipping of donor sperm is really nothing. Even when I add to it the cost of medication and treatment - and I am blessed to live in the only state that requires health insurers to provide fertility benefits - it is still minor compared to putting a child through college or raising a child just to get there in the first place. It's nothing.

Though of course it isn't nothing; it's the price of hope and desire. If I knew there would be a child at the end of it, I would gladly spend as much as I could but of course that's the thing about hope and desire - there are no guarantees just the willingness to take the risk with the knowledge that hopefully whatever happens I will be okay.

I am everyone - in my dreams

On and off yesterday, I had this nagging feeling that despite working hard and getting to a good place that nothing was really different. I finished the three courses that make up the foundation of a transformational learning and leadership program. I created two projects, one of which was to organize the people on my street in JP to have their first block party ever. And I've connected with dozens of people around the issue of fertility and the struggle to find peace in the pursuit of parenthood in a world where Kate(mother of 8 through fertility treatments) and Nadya (the "octomom") are pitted against one another for the public to judge and ridicule. I've learned to let go of disappointment and regret more easily.

And yet, I found myself with no plans yesterday and running errands and then sitting on my couch listening to NPR on a hot but beautiful day because I had no one to spend it with and these days the dog is too weak for me to have her as my walking/hiking companion. And I had this nagging feeling that I am really the same. But I pushed it away - calling friends who needed help moving and going to see a moving with one of them after we'd finished.

Still when I got home at 10 pm, instead of going to bed I watched more than an hour of a DVD of shorts. Perhaps it was the final story of a dysfunctional family yelling at one another that I was watching as I was falling asleep or the very violent film that filled me with anger that we had seen, or perhaps they were both combined with the nagging feeling I'd had all day - but this morning I woke from a dream in which I was being evaluated along with a close friend by someone who was a gate keeper you might say to the next level of courses or growth in the center where I had taken my leadership and self expression course. My friend and I answered questions - most of which I don't remember - and then the "instructor" told us whether we were ready or not to move on. My friend went first and was passed. Then it was my turn and I was told that I was not ready. The dream me - exploded with rage - not anger but rage. I chased the woman around the room screaming at her that she didn't know what she was talking about begging her to see all the change but of course even as I did it some part of the dream me - or perhaps through the consciousness of my friend - knew that of course by reacting with so much rage and violent anger I had in fact proven the point of the instructor. The rest of the dream is me rushing angrily out of the center; having the "friend" tell me that from what she saw I hadn't really fully opened up or shared in my class honestly and that what I shared was only the surface; and then finding my teacher and having him placate me as my awareness of failure rose.

And then I woke up stunned and full of residual dream sadness, turmoil and a sense of being on the brink of failure. I lay there for a few minutes thinking about the dream and about the emotions and remembering something that a therapist told me about one philosophy of dream interpretation. That you are everyone in your dreams. Which of course makes some sense since I am in the consciousness of all the characters. So if I am everyone in my dream that clearly that nagging feeling I had all day was a voice I need to listen to and since I couldn't or wouldn't look at and listen to it while I was awake - my inner self - my soul or the part of me that wants and knows what is my highest and best - figured out how to yell or shout at me to literally wake me up. So here I am now awake and recognizing how I was/have been slipping into old patterns and habits and feelings of loss and fear. Not seizing the day or making plans to create a day or life full of the meaning I want - living life powerfully and living a life that I love - (which was/is the promise of the courses I took).

What do I do with that knowledge? A list I subscribed to recently asked us to look at what we believe is missing from our lives and one things we wish we had. Are they the same? If we look carefully do we find that the having of that thing will make us truly happy - or fill the thing that is missing. The question of course resonated with the philosophy of the course I just finished - that I have the power to create my own life and to live it powerfully and fulfilled or not. It is my choice. If I were to answer the question honestly the answer to what is missing in my life is partnership - the opportunity to love and be loved by someone and share my life the highs and lows with someone else to have companionship and a shared future to imagine together. That is what is missing from my life. I suppose others might expect me to say a child - since I am trying to get pregnant. And yes that is something that I want. But more and more I have come to realize that while I am still committed to pursuing pregnancy and want that too - what I really want is family of my own. A partner and a child or two - a family to grow and learn and explore and share this crazy up and down life with. I don't really care how the family comes together - if the children are mine own or some combination of mine and his. I just want that - I want all the love and challenge and hardship and joy that I see around me that comes from that. That is what I see missing from my life the thing I want. So what am I doing to pursue it? Trying to get pregnant - half-heartedly putting myself in the dating game but then not really following through on emails. Riding the roller coaster of fertility and dating someone who lives more than 400 miles away. Trying to change my habits of eating and exercise to feel more powerful in my life. So I am doing something. But I also know that I still have so many "can't" messages in my head. Messages that stop me from acting powerfully to pursue what I tell myself and others that I want. Treating myself and my life as I have taught myself I should based on my past instead of creating the possibility of the future I want and living into that future powerfully.

I've disconnected the cable but I still have the TV and as in the past am able to find crap to watch just to distract me from the loneliness I feel. A step in the right direction but only half way. I swam a mile last weekend after not having been in a pool for over a year and reminded myself how much I love that form of exercise but I haven't made a plan to give myself the gift of swimming. And I've spoken to many people about the project I've created to collect stories from people who are or have dealt with fertility issues but I haven't done enough to follow up on collecting the stories - or revising the website or creating the graphics.

But I am here now writing and confronting and feeling my feelings and that is important. I am learning to take charge and call friends even last minute and not to feel left out if I don't have plans. I am recognizing the power I have to create the life I want. Which sometimes means learning to see what I do have as opportunity instead of lack. I'm getting much better at that - much better.

So I can see how I am everyone in my dreams

• the teacher who told my dream self that I haven't fully enacted my newly found power
• the friend who is both competition and a loving truth teller
• the "dream self" who is full of rage at the others who are telling the truth
• the teacher who consoles and reframes the issue

I am all those selves and now that I am awake again, I can see how to integrate with love and creativity all the different perspectives to grasp again at the power I know myself to have and use it to recommit to living my life powerfully and creating a life that I love. I know it is a challenge and this isn't a pollyanna moment of everything will be all right now - it is a moment of remembering that I am the only one who can create the life I want. I just have to act from love.

In this course, we use the language of possibility to express who we are. We choose a possibility or two or three that resonate with who we want or know ourselves to be and that is how we introduce ourselves in class. The possibilities I chose were - abundance, love and creativity. I am still trying them on and learning to see if they fit and what it means to live my life from the context of being those possibilities in life and in the world - not just for myself but for everyone. Wondering what it means to live life in the context of the possibility of abundance, love and creativity. I think I am learning what it means to live life from the possibility of love - of being love. I am trying on abundance in this time of scarcity and lack - learning to think of it not simply in terms of money and means but what if I lived my whole life - everything I want to create - from the context of abundance. And creativity - a wish more than a context - something I know myself to have but that I have shut down for so long that it is painful to exercise those atrophied muscles consistently and with confidence in relationship to the things I want.

So perhaps the dream, which was set in the context of the course I just finished, was a reminder of who I have chosen to be. A reminder to live my life from that context. That who I am in the possibility of abundance, love and creativity and what is possible what does life look like coming from that context?

I'm so happy for you

Monday as I was trying to get out of the office a friend with whom I have both personal and working relationship called. She clarified that she was calling for personal reasons and then said she had some news and that she wanted to share it with me but that she knew that it might be news that would be difficult for me to hear. At which point without her saying it I knew she was pregnant.

I wished her b'sha'a tova- the thing Israelis and other Hebrew speakers say to one another to congratulate and avoid tempting the evil eye. It means in a good hour - i.e. everything in its time. This is a friend who is three years older than me and gave birth to her first child at 40. Honestly I am happy for her. I know how much she wanted this and that unlike the first pregnancy when she conceived after the first IUI, this time she had more trouble.

Even though I expressed my happiness for her, she continued saying that she knows how hard its been for me and that she wanted to be careful of my feelings and that she still wants to be able to support me. I appreciated her support but I ironically, I found her worrying about me upsetting. I wanted her to be able to just be happy in her moment. I trust her and know that she will be supportive of me but I was also happy to let that moment be about her. It made me think that while sharing about my fertility issues has overall been liberating, it has clearly had an influence on how people see me or how they think I will react to their good news.

The fact is, I did cry a little after I got off the phone. I cried out of frustration and probably jealousy. I cried because I want to be truly happy and not have the joy of my friends be seen in contrast to my own challenges. It is still hard to be around. The photo of another friend's pregnant belly on her facebook page - as the new thumb-nail - or the announcement of another birth still gives me pause or pulls me up short sometimes. It isn't that I am not happy for them but despite my wanting it to not be so it is tinged for me with my own frustrated desires. But I guess I want my frustrated desires only to tinge my sense of things - not to spill over onto others. And yet I know and can see that her concern for me in that moment was truly an expression of love and care. One that perhaps missed the mark or maybe hit it square on and this is why it stung.

Sarah, Hannah, Torah and infertility

I've been thinking a lot about fertility and infertility stories in the Torah. For the past three or more years I have volunteered to read the story of Hannah - mother of the prophet Samuel - on Rosh Hashana. Every year - the last two in particular - I have tried to pray Hannah's prayer/promise to God as my own prayer. My own bargin if you will - I promise to give you my child if you will give me a child. Of course we don't live in biblical times and there isn't a Temple cult to serve. I'm not sure I would be willing to drop off my child at the nearest thing we have to that now even if I could figure out what that would be. But I did have the intention that I would raise my child to love God and to love humanity and to serve for the highest and best good for all.

Except I know that my promise was a bargin. It was give me this - which you owe me - and I'll be grateful in a meaningful way. And if I am honest I was pretty angry with God, fate, the universe, myself for that matter, because somehow I had missed the boat that everyone else seemed to be on. You know the one where you meet the right person fall in love and then decide to build a family together. I have an entry from some time ago in my journal where I wrote that pregnancy and motherhood was my due as compensation for all the years of trauma and pain I have endured because I was born a woman. And I have experienced pain and trauma simply for being female.

So how was I going to be able to teach a child to love the divine and humanity and herself, if I went into it thinking it was owed me. That much anger might be hard to let go.

Recently, I was having dinner with a friend. I'm not sure now how we came to be talking about the story of Hannah - it may be because he asked how my pursuit of pregnancy was going or it may have had nothing to do with that initially. But he shared with me his drash on Hannah. His perspective - which was much more elegant than what you are about to read - was that Hannah loved God so much and felt that without a child she couldn't truly give to God and show her love fully. Her child was her way of demonstrating her love for God and without the ability to give birth and return that child to the service of God, she couldn't fully demonstrate her love. LOVE, wow. I had always read her plea, her bargin as sorrow, as pain, as a bargin. Not as a profession of love for the divine and a desire to demonstrate that love. I began to realize how much this process of trying to get pregnant has been a battle for me. A battle and a struggle with a sense of being owed by the Divine. And of course if this is something I am owed and I continue to not get it then clearly I am being punished. Clearly if I am having trouble conceiving it is punishment for something. Not just stupid fate or hormones or timing or whatever. It is a sign from God. If fertility is a sign then surely infertility is a sign too. Or is it? This is the question my friend raised. Is it a sign in the same way that fertility is a sign. - Sarah was barren - God closed her womb - until God opened it.

I'm not sure where I am these days with hannah and Sarah and all the other women in our mythical history whose stories include temporary barrenness. But I do know that I have come to realize that I can no longer see the fertility challenges and the failure of each cycle as punishment from some Divine source. It might be a sign or a challenge but it isn't punishment. And I am learning to move towards love of myself and God and possiblity without attachment, so that I can come one step closer to Hannah's prayer being my own.

open closed open

This is the title of one of my favorite books of poetry by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. This week it has special resonance for me. I have been writing here about my challenges about trying to get my life back to a place of balance. Of how much to be open and how much to be closed and the costs of both.

TV, food, and creating change

When I mention that I want to get rid of my TV I get different reactions. From the funky hippy gardner woman upstairs - I get - "That's great. I don't have one either. I think it's not good to bring in all those judgements and narrow definitions of what our lives are supposed to be like." And I agree and feel more confirmed. But from my young soon to be former housemates, I get, "what if the next person who moves in wants it? I love my TV. I need it to relax." Their response - that TV is an important part of modern life - seems to reflect a certain segment of the population, including segments of my family.

But that's not my point. My point is that I think they interpret my desire to go TV free as a judgement - on them, on pop culture.

It isn't. For me it is like the alcohalic who needs to stop drinking. Early in my life - 6th grade to be exact - just at the moment when I was developing breasts, unsure of myself and my body, I became addicted to TV and food. It's a combination for me. I was home sick for almost a month and I watched a lot of bad daytime TV. This was in the days before cable - or atleast before my family subscribed. At first it was just the TV - it was company. But by 7th grade the food had become part of the ritual. I was feeling all these things - in my body - and experiencing a lot of unwanted attention from boys, from men, jealousy from girls. So I began eating and lying.

Here was my routine - I would get home about an hour and a half before my mom and sister. I would turn on the TV and go to the pantry for anything I could find - at my lowest stale taco shells would do. Obviously it wasn't about the food - I wasn't tasting it - it was about eating to numb myself out. The TV was part of the process as well. I would sit there eating. Shoveling food in as I watched Luke and Laura on General Hospital followed by whatever reruns I could find of old sitcoms on what the old UHF channels.

Until I heard the garage door openning.

Then I would try my best to hide or get rid of any evidence of the food I had consumed. Rushing to dispose of plates, crumbs, plastic wrappers, whatever. Sometimes switching off the TV, sometimes just hiding the food. On occassion I would flip off the TV and rush up to my room on the second floor with whatever I had.

Of course my folks knew what was going on. In a family of four, it isn't hard to figure out what's going on when food goes missing. Their solution - a lock for the pantry door and threats that I lose weight or they would send me to private school or the magnet program newly available in our district. Diets were also a big thing - weight watchers, Scarsdale, etc. though some of that came in high school. Mind you at the time I was 5'2" and maybe I weighed 110 - which for a medium frame girl with wide hips and C cup breasts - is probably just about right.

And thus was born an addiction and disordered eating pattern that I continue to struggle with today. Hence the goal to acheive TV free life. To this day, whenever I am sitting in front of the TV - I crave food. It doesn't matter if I am hungry or not. Sometimes if I am with others it isn't as strong. But if I am alone, it is almost impossible to resist.

So the TV free thing isn't about snobbery or judgement or even a rejection of pop-culture. I enjoy an episode of The Office or How I Met Your Mother as much as the next gal. NO this is a matter of survival. It feels like my life - the life I want to live complete with good health and a successful conception, pregnancy, and birth of a child - is totally dependant on kicking this addiction.

As for my family. Don't get me wrong, I love mine just as they are. But sometimes I wish we saw more eye to eye. In one of my parent's homes there is a TV in each bedroom as well as the den. Evenings are often spent in front of it regardless of how long a visit I have come for or how long it's been since we've seen each other. I get frustrated by that and also use it as a way to blame them for getting sucked back in. Of course as I read back over this post, I realize that I probably haven't expressed my frustration with the TV every night thing. Maybe if I did they'd be into finding alternatives. It really is still up to me to take care of myself. And to set the new goals and then pursue them. So perhaps tonight after dinner, I'll suggest a game or something else instead of TV.

exhillaration!

I got up and sang two songs tonight at an open mic night in my neighborhood! I am a singer who hasn't been singing except in synagogue or at people's weddings, for perhaps the past ten years. This weekend, I decided enough was enough. So I decided to go; sent a text to a bunch of friends many of whom showed up, and got up and sang. It's a big deal for me. Music and singing are so central to who I am and who I know myself to be and yet I have been blocking that for myself for such a long time. I would do it for others when they asked but never just for me because it makes me happy. Tonight I broke that barrier and it feels great. And it also feels like a crucial step to opening the creative flood gates in me that have been blocked and have possibly had something to do with blocking my ability to conceive. (Yes, yes along with all the other things too!) I just had to write that here. To share it and recognize in this new space I am creating through the blog - that I am finally getting mySelf back and it feels good.

new project

As part of a self expression program I am doing I needed to create a project that would contribute to the community. I decided that I wanted to bring to things together that are important to me at this moment - creativity and fertility. So I have created a project to collect stories from women, men, and couples who have or are dealing with fertility issues and use those stories to create a theatrical performance piece loosely following the model of The Vagina Monologues. The Title of the project is - Infertility Stories - In Search of Parenthood. I am planning to create a separate website and blog where people can share their stories but I of course wanted to write about it here too. I'll put a link to that page once it is up. But of course it means I also need to share my own story. So I began writing it tonight. Here is a short, first draft.

I am a 40 year old single woman who has been dealing with infertility issues for about a year. When I first starting trying to get pregnant, I was sure based on the fertility of my maternal relatives that even having waited until I was 38, I wouldn't have problems. Then I did. I realized how much hiding and anxiety there was for me just in beginning to address my fertility issues. And of course everyone had an opinion about it, friends, family, strangers. I also realized how much public perception, a negative perception, and judgement I was carrying into even making the decision to move on to fertility treatments. You would think that bucking the system by trying to become a single mother would have cured me of worrying about what others think but it didn't. So I kept everything very close and private only telling those who I really felt needed to know or could help. With everyone else, I just pretended that I was continuing regular alternative insemination. I had shied away from the infertility support groups run by an MSW through my clinic because I was afraid that most of the women would be married or partnered and I would be the only single person there. Until one day, after my third blood draw and ultrasound in five days, I began chatting with the nurse and another woman who was in the midst of what was clearly not her first IVF cycle. The act of sharing our stories and laughing at some of the crazy things you do while chasing the dream of conception and pregnancy was really liberating. I came to realize how much I had been hiding and how alone I felt. I began sharing with others and being more open. I got to hear the stories of friends and family members who had dealt with this - people I'd known had struggled with infertility but hadn't ever talked to about it. I began reading and search the blogs of others and found a whole online infertility community. People sharing and "talking". I thought what if there was a way to connect all these stories and people by creating a single online place for people to share their stories. And what if those stories could be turned into a "play" about fertility and infertility and the things people do when they are trying to become parents. I got excited about the possibility that this project and the "play" could perhaps have an impact on our culture in the way that the Vagina Monologues have - giving public space to talk about something that is generally considered private and unmentionable. Thus was born "Infertility Stories - In Search of Parenthood". And the beauty of it, is that the process of creating this project is not only connecting me to more folks in the IF community, it is also something other than my monthly cycle and hormone levels to which I can give my attention and my passion.

Six months and one IVF cycle later

I just reread my first two posts today after having been away from my blog for so long that I had forgotten my user name and password. It was interesting rereading my first post, a good reminder of how I am because the last six months have been pretty up and down. I managed to keep to the average of 5 days a week at the gym until the end of March, when I did my first round of IVF. Between the hormone stimulation, travel, and my doctor's instructions, I began a three week hiatus that turned into a seven week lapse. The IVF cycle - about which I had ambivalence but convinced myself would be the solution to my problem - was unsuccessful. Well by that I mean that I produced a number of good quality eggs and three excellent quality embryos but neither of the two that we transfered took. And the hormones they put you on to support the potential pregnancy mimic symptoms of pregnancy. So I convinced myself I was pregnant and was devastated when I wasn't. I used the excuse of travel and work to avoid taking care of myself after I got the negative results.

But here's the thing, the silver lining as it were. One of the things I was most afraid of was that I would be get pregnant with twins. As a single woman who is not independantly wealthy and currently lives in excess of 300 miles from my family, the possibility of being pregnant with twins was terrifying. Now I have one embryo frozen which means I can try again, without having to go through all the stimulation, and if it is successful, I don't have to worry as much about twins (there is still the chance as with any pregnancy that it could split into identicals). I still have to worry about all the other things that one has to worry about as an older woman, but that is one thing I can feel less anxious about.

Before I move forward with the frozen embryo transfer (FET), I am trying to bring even more of my health and body into balance. The IVF cycle really threw things off for me. I have also been aware for awhile of a sense that there is more blocking the pregnancy than just endometriosis and working with frozen sperm. I've felt a sense of being too full of regret, of disappointment, of a sense of being punished for something I can't even remember having done. I've been full of sadness and disappointment that I haven't found a partner with whom to pursue becoming parents together. A sense that I am going after this to make a change in my life and heal and fill something that is missing instead of healing first and then pursuing the pregnancy. I've ignored that sense sometimes or convinced myself that lots of single women feel this way and that it doesn't matter. But now with the possibility of doing FET, I suddenly recommited to wanting it to work and more than that, I recognized that this whole process of pursuing pregnancy has led me to taking on and doing things to heal myself that I had been putting off for years. The acupuncture, the leadership and self-expression courses, the recommiting to healthy eating and lifestyle. All things I have been saying I wanted to do but not doing. I am starting to realize that this path I have chosen to follow is giving me the courage and determination to give to myself in a way I haven't been willing or able to do in years.

I have decided to jetison the TV and the microwave. I'm working towards getting back to a mostly wheat, white sugar, white rice, and white potatoe, dairy free diet. I've given up alcohal except for the occasional glass of wine. And I'm singing again. All these things which I have had in my life that have been good for me and that I'd given up, I'm working to bringing back. And yesterday, working with one of the healers I have added to my life, I realized that when I started it was all about doing it to get pregnant. I can recall being angry with my acupuncturist after the last IUI and then IVF failed because I thought - this is what I am coming here for and if it isn't making a difference then why am I spending all this money. But I realize now that while the desire for pregnancy has been the motivating factor in many of the changes I have made in my life over the past year, it can't be the reason. The changes have to be about taking care of me, healing me, strengthening me. For them to be real and sustainable changes, I have to realize that I am worth it just for me. Doing them may make it easier and more likely that I will be able to conceive, but they will certainly make my life more worth living. I will be awake and alive in a way I haven't been for years. I can recognize that the pain and disappointment I've been carrying for all these years, has had me sleep walking through my life. Not fully convinced that I wanted to be here and looking for someone or something to "save" me, redeem me, fix me. Yes of course I've had moments even extended moments when I have been more awake and more connected to my purpose and my passion. But for the past five, possibly ten years, I've been mostly trying to get through, to survive.

I feel I'm waking now, shedding the things that have been poisoning me and more ready to be alive. I know it is a process and even as I write this, there is the voice in my head warning me not to publish it, not to share this post, because I will look like an ass when I revert back to old patterns. I hear that voice and I am aware of the past and the shame that keeps me thinking that I need to continue to hide until I have it all perfect and fully in place. But I know that nothing is perfect or immutable. That integrity has room for screwing up - the key is to take responsibility for my actions to hold myself acountable so that I can clean up whatever places where I've messed up and then let it go and move on. I'm learning to believe that, to be that, and thus to have more compassion and love for myself. And I'm aware that if I don't love myself, I won't have room to truly love and nourish and respect a child. So that's a synopsis of the last six months of my roller coaster ride in life. I hope to be writing here more regularly, now.

I am finally getting back into it now with renewed commitment to myself.

staying the course

Nearly six weeks ago, I commited to getting at least 30 minutes of continuous exercise a minimum of 5 days a week. I have managed to honor that goal and I am really proud of myself. The goal is about changing my lifestyle and getting healthier. It is also about trying to lose all the weight I put on over the past ten years of neglect and riding the diet roller coaster. Trying to do this with a positive non-diet approach. I have lost about 5 pound since I started but yesterday I made the mistake of getting on the scale at the gym and it told me I haven't lost any more weight in the past two weeks. Of course it sunk my mood and pulled me right back into that diet mentality of exercising only to meet a goal. It dampened my commitment a bit and made me feel a little hopeless which is objectively ridiculous but nonetheless true.

Here is the thing about my current commitment to fitness and trying to lose weight. I am about to start IVF after 5 attempts through natural IUI (intrauterine insemination) my fertility doctor has decided we should move on to IVF now. I am lucky enough to live in a state that encourages health insurance companies to cover fertility treatment so ironically the IVF will be covered while the IUI was not. The thinking on my doctor's part is that I am 40 and while my fertility hormone levels are all excellent, insurance companies have their actuarial tables and at some point they would probably cut me off because of my age. And of course my numbers will eventually change. So she encouraged me to seize the opportunity to do it now. Pregnancy suddenly became even more real than it had been and I realized that I was risking a very hard pregnancy and everything else if I didn't try to lose some weight and get into better shape.

taking the plunge

About two years ago perhaps more, I took a workshop on creative non-fiction - memoir style writing. I loved it. I had always loved writing - well until I had to write a dissertation and used it to torture myself for four years. Writing became a chore. I have always been an editor in process, endlessly going over and rewriting before I had finished my thoughts - in fact I just did it now. So over time, any writing, not just for the work, became tedious. I was always thinking about the audience rather than about expressing myself first. Journal writing, poetry, whatever it was I would have to spend hours psyching myself up to sit down with the computer or pen and paper. This course helped me get passed that, to some extent anyway.

I've dreamed in past about writing for an audience wider than the few academics from my field who read the paltry few articles I ever had published. I thought the course would give me a means to getting out some of my writing, sharing some of my stories. But the perfectionist in me, the woman who loves well crafted prose and beautiful phrasing, wanted it to be right the first time around without the need for the painful process of editing and revising. Ironic really, given all the self-editing I have done in so many areas of my life.

Enter the blog option. First put into my head simultaneously by my workshop instructor and a dear friend. It's taken nearly two years since then but here I finally am. I don't really know what this blog will wind up being. A collection of writing and stories from my past and my present. An online journal I share with strangers and perhaps some friends? But since starting the process of trying to get pregnant as a single woman, I've had things I need to express and writing is the means of expression with the lowest threshold for me right now.

I turned 40 nearly two months ago and at the time many of my younger friends asked me - how does it feel? In some sense that is a silly question - a change in a number doesn't really make a different. Except it did. At first, when I realized that my body's clock wasn't cooperating to give me the one thing I wanted for my birthday - to be pregnant - I felt all the things they tell us we should/will feel at turning 40 - women anyway. But once I got passed the initial feelings of loss - loss of having spent so much of my life single, loss at waiting so long to begin the process of trying to become a parent through giving birth, etc., I realized that what I felt was comfort and ease. A sense of being present and a calmness that I've only felt in snatches at earlier points in my life. I have come, over the subsequent two months, to realize that the possibilities for me are still endless. That transformation is only a commitment to myself to pursue the things I have always wanted but never allowed myself to really go after. Hence the subtitle - taking the long way round - adapted from the Dixie Chicks song. I really have been taking the long way, but finally at 40 I can see how many advantages that has. And I can allow myself to commit to the journey that is mine - and enjoy the scenic route since that is where I am anyway.