Dear Readers,
After all this time I’m finally able to offer you some yoga! Wanted to let you know about Afterward Honesty’s very first yoga offering this coming Sunday May 8 from 12:00 – 1:15 ET. Get the class description, sign up and other info when you click the image on the left. Hope to see you there and over at the blog on Afterward Honesty!
Hope to see you on board over on my new platform,
where I’m looking forward to supporting childless health and wellness through yoga offerings and webinars
Hop on over to…..
Why I Love Rudolph
My unexpected childless holiday tradition
For a long time, I could not have even conjured the possibility of sitting myself down and taking in a holiday tv special. These potentially glorious childhood throwbacks naturally reeked, for a good many years, of what should have been.
Well Dear Readers, look what December dragged in –
Meet my new and expanded platform,
I’m happy to share that, coming in 2022, I’m going to start offering yoga workshops, yoga classes and webinars for the purpose of exploring and supporting the experiences surrounding involuntary childlessness. Along with the occasional sassy blog post you’ve all come to know and…..well, I’ll let you fill in the rest!
We’ll be kicking off with a Your Breath As a Resource Workshop coming this spring.
So what can you do right now? A few things:
It’s been a long road to get to this point, a road that has involved a pile of obstacles followed by soul searching and intense descision making – both practically and existentially. I feel good though that I’ve assembled something that accurately reflects what I have to offer and what I hold near and dear.
So what’s going to happen to Infertility Honesty?
I’ll be posting one or two more pieces this month, at which point I’ll be tenderly packing things up and exiting formal writing and posting on this space. I will however, be keeping this site up for your viewing pleasure – or pain – or entertainment, or whatever the case is for you. I mean really, who am I to judge??
While this is not quite yet goodbye to this spot, I just want to take this moment to say that Infertility Honesty saved me. And that includes you, Dear Readers. For that I’ll be forever grateful.
Revelations and Reflections On a Healing Trajectory
Photo credit: Geoff Colley/Shutterbug
Once upon a time, I gleefully passed out Halloween candy as a wide eyed new homeowner.
This occurred for a couple of years before the friction between my envisioned future and actual reality started to grind. And it culminated amid my ttc efforts with hurriedly drawing the blinds down in the wake of an unexpected onslaught of trick or treaters in 2012, hardly 36 hours after hurricane Sandy left town. Seriously.
Read moreAnd what precious little separates us
The day after the fierce flooding caused by Hurricane Ida here in the northeast United States, I had just so happened to have a consultation scheduled with a solar company. A sobering, “too little too late” synchronicity? Perhaps. But given the years – long absence of it in my trying to conceive and healing processes, I now revel in any remnant of synchronicity that comes my way!
As I took the virtual call, I was fumbling through assimilating the events that had occurred a mere thirty miles from my home while feeling mildly comforted in taking a step that would perhaps contribute a drop to leveling off the climate crisis.
Towards the end of the call I inquired about the benefit to the environment.
“You care?” The representative said in a facetiously caught off guard tone.
“It’s a quaint notion, but yeah, every now and then…” I shot back sarcastically.
As he went on to connect the dots between solar power and burning less fossil fuel, he also shared that almost no one ever asks about the environmental benefit when looking into going solar.
“Well, that’s strange,” I thought. I mean, of course people want to know the ways in which THEY will benefit, as did I. It’s only human. And, if infertility and childlessness have enlightened me to anything, it’s the human tendency to be disinterested in other people’s suffering. But what about one’s own potential suffering due to the climate crisis? Why would that not be of any concern?
And then I remembered – there’s also the human tendency to fail to see how easily other people’s suffering could (or could have) become their own. Or as I inwardly have been referring to it, the “It Can’t Happen To Me” mentality.
Read more
Reflections on what’s missing from a year of headlines
It was early on in the pandemic that talk of grandparents not being able to see their grandchildren started to become part of the daily swirl.
I was genuinely moved by the grandparent heartache at first. I could, all too well, relate to the plight of having something close to your heart to which you expect free access ripped from your existence. Even if only temporarily. I actually shed some tears on behalf of this not asked for angst.
At the time, I was six years out of multiple fertility treatments rendering no baby. Like most people who spend merciless stretches in the trenches of trying to conceive, or in other circumstances hoping for parenthood, I had formed surprisingly deep and influential bonds with my unborn.
By the time the pandemic hit I had come to a point in my grieving and healing process where I was able to hold some space for life’s more meager infractions. “Fertile world problems” I’ve come to refer to them as.
Fast forward one year, and past endless headlines blaring the pandemic discord and disturbance heaped upon the parented and grandparented world. Much of it entirely justified and important to air. It’s what has been missing from our conversation that stirs concern.
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Life is strange. Not that I had to tell any of you that. It’s an obvious truth that just needs to be plainly stated sometimes.
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On questioning ritual and getting differentAround four years ago, in the fourth year coming out of treatments, I found myself in a vehement phase of mourning. The pull towards expressing my love and losses through gardening continued to grow more fervent. It was then I created our candle and flower ritual to mark the conclusion of our final failed attempt – and to chauffeur me through winter in the absence of gardening. I was pulsing on a regular basis with the need for physical symbols that could mark, prove and memorialize. Read more
The psychological trajectory of non parenthood is not a flatline
Over the past year plus now, I’ve been on an expedition with my body. I enlisted in physical therapy due to a shoulder injury, which then spanned, at my urging, to a fuller body physical therapy program to address scoliosis. Between that and osteopathic manipulation therapy sessions, I notice slow but steady improvements. It’s hard, consistent work. And even though my present musculoskeletal issues would likely qualify as minor, I’m choosing for now to keep trekking.
Characteristics that shaped my infertility experiences have resurfaced and this puts me on alert. My persistence, ability to commit, need to see what’s under every rock and general fire – the very things that screwed me in baby making land – have re-emerged within this plight. A scoliosis body carries with it a whiff of mystery, it’s conceptually akin to a Rubik’s cube that never quite gets solved. I remind myself that I am now also equipped with a much softened expectation of cause and effect, an awareness of persistence’s dark side and an honorary PhD in that which we don’t control. With all that, I think I’m ok to keep going.
I’ve gotten the idea along the way that I’m not your average patient. Much of this is due to my alignment based yoga practice and training, and the heightened body awareness that renders. But underneath the surface I feel there’s something else. Read more
And other pandemic deja vusWell folks, here we are. In a worldwide crisis with no known ending. A crisis that entails a major loss of control, an utter disruption of our normals and a smashed view of the future. We are dealing with a disease that was initially not taken too seriously, a condition whose effect on individuals is intensely swerving and has the capacity to leave major wreckage in its wake. And all in a situation where social isolation remains one of the few ways to lessen bad outcomes, where much time and energy is expended re-learning daily life basics.
We’re fumbling our way through a global pandemic. And for me and many like me, it all feels so familiar. Read more
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