8/15/2012 2 Comments It's Time To Get RealI just came home from another fantastic visit with my sister and her beautiful family in Philadelphia. Every time I visit, I come back with a new perspective on life. My sister and I live so differently, but we are so much the same. We can talk for hours on end. Our conversations jump from one thing to the next and if anyone heard us, they would most likely not be able to understand a word.
One night after dinner, the conversation comes up of children, IVF, adoption, the next step for Joey and me...yada yada yada. I knew the topic was coming and I thought I had come to a good place about it. I was just finally being able to talk about it without getting emotional and with a clear(er) picture in my head of what my future is going to look like...and then I talk to my sister. She is someone that I can be completely open and honest with. I know although she feels bad for me, she offers me advice without the sadness fogging up her brain. She doesn't speak to me out of pity. She doesn't push her idea of her perfect family upon me. She truly wants me to make the best decision possible, whatever that may be. She doesn't make me feel guilty for wanting or not wanting to do IVF again, or wanting or not wanting to adopt, or just being okay as a childless family. But what she doesn't want me to do is sit on the sidelines and watch my life pass me by. Which I'm starting to realize is happening. She always asks me the REAL questions. The ones that nobody wants to know the answers to, including myself, because they're much too deep and sometimes brutally honest. Why am I so scared? What is truly holding me back from making any decisions? What is my reasoning on why one option is better than the other? And why are you even considering not having kids at all? She's asking questions that I thought I had answers to and then when someone actually asked them, I realized that I don't have any answers at all. Empty. She proceeded to play devil's advocate with all of my made up answers and gave me a book that will help me look at things from a different perspective. In the first couple pages it reads, " I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives - those fountains of inconvenient feeling - and toward the rantic enticements of what our friends in the Greed Business call the Free Market. We're hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we're falling away from our families and our neighbors and ourselves." When I read this, my eyes filled with tears. I'm realizing that I am one of these people. I'm ignoring myself for the convenience of not dealing with me. I'm wrapping myself up in other people lives, sticking my face in books and magazines, taking classes, shopping and filling up my time in any way possible for the convenience of not having to think about my life, where it's going or what will be. What I'm becoming is a shell. I'm starting to understand what I have to do, I have to reach. I have to dig and think and really invest some time in myself and in my thoughts. This, I know, is the only way answers are going to come to me. I know they're not going to come easy and I already know I will start thinking and then stop because it's just too much, but if I really want to be a mom, even if I possibly want it, it's going to require work. Today as I sit on the airplane, alone in my thoughts, I start to cry. I cry because for the first time I've allowed myself to be present within my own mind and this, my friend, is a scary place to be. My thoughts are overwhelmed with pros, cons and what ifs and answers, scary brutally honest answers. Answers that I don't want to hear and answers that just lead to more questions. It's so overwhelming, all I can do is cry. But it's in this moment I remember sitting on my sister's couch and feeling my unborn niece's hiccups or hearing the tiny yawn of my nephew in the backseat of the car and I can feel that this is true bliss. Something that I want, but still have to figure out how to get. My Random Thought: I'm not sure how I was able to be "alone" in my thoughts in the airplane. I was stuck on the runway for over an hour with the woman behind me talking (as loud as possible) about giving birth to her triplets and how her mom is going on dates and kicking her daughter and her cats out of her house. And even worse, we when took off she started yelling "Good Lord", "Ewww ee", over and over again until the plane was in the air! All I could do was laugh.
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AuthorHi! I'm Janet, a 35 year old wife, friend, daughter, sister, aunt, event planner and lover of life. My amazing husband of 9 years, Joey, and I struggled with infertility for 4 years. I welcome you to read my stories as I share my sometimes crazy thoughts on our journey through Archives
June 2014
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