Learning to Lean In

Have you ever had a week that caught you off guard, knocked you off your feet, and sucker punched you in the stomach?? That, in a nutshell, has been my week:( 

When I last wrote you my lovely readers, my husband was on his way to Europe to create the little life that was meant to be with us, and I was preparing for a June transfer.  I knew that the first transfer doesn't always take, but I was sure that with a batch of healthy young eggs, eventually we'd hit the jackpot and one would stick. Such an exciting plan!  I started to show pictures of my donor to my friends, and imagine what my little one would look like.  Everything was lining up perfectly, and then- the unthinkable. All of my embryos degenerated.  No blastocysts.  No frozen babies waiting to be chosen.  No transfers.  No chances.    The clinic suggested donor sperm.  It was a bitter loss that I never saw coming.

In the face of this newest loss, this latest closed door, my first instinct was to push back.  I wanted to fight the clinic who offered a guarantee but didn't follow through when it didn't work out.  I went into fixing mode for my husband, looking for ways to improve sperm quality, ordering supplements, emailing past IVF doctors.  I looked up new donors, new clinics, sperm shipping companies, sperm testing companies.  I was in a frenzy trying to push away from this reality, and push into a new one.  But it was exhausting. 

And what if I'm missing the point?  Perhaps there is something I need to learn from this- some way I need to grow from this.  What if the lessons I need to learn are at the heart of this, and instead of pushing away, I just need to lean in and go deep? What does it mean to lean into our struggles?  For me, it means to acknowledge my emotions, to really FEEL them- all the scary,wounded and disappointed parts.  It means to move away from the busyness of doing and fixing and strategizing, and to sit with those parts in silence, with my journal, with friends, and to give those feelings a compassionate space to be.   It means to create a more flexible version of myself who is open to a wider range of possibilities than I thought were available.   

One of my greatest challenges in this process is to release control.  To learn to wait and move with the rhythm of the universe- in a calm and trusting space instead of in a panicked and worried space.  I have seen those parts of myself unfolding already(while my eggs were developing I didn't call the clinic once to check on progress!), but I want to cultivate them further.    In the past I worked so hard to control things.  To create the perfect conditions for success.  To do everything in my power to ensure the outcome I wanted.    I always believed that if I worked hard enough, I could achieve anything I wanted and bend the universe to my will.  But roadblock after roadblock is showing me that I can't control the outcome, and that I only exhaust myself trying. 

I am still taking steps to bring our baby to us, but I am trying to remember to lean into the experience rather than to fight it.  To tread lightly, to act with faith in the goodness of the universe, and to find peace in the middle of the storm.  Namaste.

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