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!
I’ve always been drawn to difference. Hailing from a quintessentially small white New England town, on the edge of my adolescence my restless soul began to grumble about the lack of human variety in which I was swimming. To which my Dad would chuckle something along the lines of, “How do you know anything about human variety? You haven’t been anywhere yet!”
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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.
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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At the onset of my nervous system disorder four plus years ago, I became intimately connected with the spring phase of my gardens. It somehow served me to meander around and stick my face inches from the earth, securing ring side seats to nature’s first pokes back from dormancy. For the fifteen or twenty minutes that I could anyway. Dizziness, lightheadedness and light overwhelm would drag me back inside all too soon – where I would then be overwhelmed by the darker setting to which my body could barely readjust.
What I remember though was the awe at this phase of unfolding. Never again was I going to miss it, to dismiss it as subtle or to only turn my attention to plants once they became more “obvious”. I recall last early spring stumbling upon something I had forgotten I planted stridently spearing itself through the earth. “You came back!!” I literally gasped in wonder. It hadn’t owed me that, or anything else. But yet there it was.
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
Drawing lines in the conversation amid social invisibilityA couple of months ago I took myself to the dentist. Fitting in a tooth cleaning while the Covid infection rates remained low, I found myself in what felt like a surprisingly normal conversation.
In an innocent exchange of “work and business during Covid” stories, I shared a slice of how things were going in restaurant world. And the hygienist shared how thankful she was to get back to work in July. Staying at home with her toddler had not been good for her mental health. Read more
My mindfulness meditation and breathwork video is now live, just click on the link below.
It touches on some of the practices that have been useful and continue to be useful to me throughout my infertility and then childless not by choice journeys.
The practice session itself is short, about 9 minutes long, so it’s accessible for beginners. So glad to be sharing this with you all, & I hope it serves you in some way. #worldchildlessweek
You can check out WCW’s other offerings on their FB page. So many great posts this year. I’ve been inspired by all of the writing, and by so many people speaking up and out in such a frank and honest way.
infertilityhonesty 