Thanks to everyone that responded to my survey last month. I loved hearing from all of you.
I thought you would be interested in a summary of the results:
Question: Where are you on your fertility path?
Responses:
37% – Made the decision to live childfree
18% – Trying for > 3 years
15% – Trying for < 1 year
11% – Experiencing secondary infertility
11% – On a break but plan on trying again
4% – Thinking of living childfree
4% – Trying for 1-3 years
Question: How do you feel about your fertility path?
Responses:
31% – At Peace
27% – Grateful
12% – Stressed
12% – Alone
9% – Confused
6% – Stuck
3% – Lost
0% – Confident
I also wanted to say Happy Holidays! I can’t believe how quickly they are approaching. I also wanted to share something that has come up for me this holiday season.
I have not been allowing myself to enjoy and be fully engaged in Christmas. The holidays seem to shine a light on our losses, at least that’s how it’s felt for my husband and I. The loss of what we thought our life would look like, the loss of the child(ren) we thought we would have, and the loss of both of my husband’s parents, all seem to be front and center during the holiday season . . . so we made excuses and hid from celebrating Christmas like we used to.
This year feels different. I no longer want to hide. I want to enjoy and fully engage in Christmas again. A big part of my healing has been to consciously choose my path in life, instead of unconsciously letting life happen to me. I realized I could consciously choose to enjoy Christmas again. Although, what I also realized was that I was also hiding from my grief during this time of the year. This was a definite aha moment for me. Why was I allowing myself to grieve during other times of the year, but not during Christmas?
What I know is that we all process grief in our own ways and on our own timeline and that is okay. Now that I have the awareness that I’ve been hiding from my holiday grief, I can choose to work through it on my own timeline.
Some ideas I have on how I can honor and work through my grief include: journaling, meditating, talking about it with my husband and with people that I trust, buying a special ornament in honor of our baby that we lost, incorporating Christmas traditions from my in-laws, allowing myself to cry and feel the sadness, not push it away, allowing myself to feel the joy and happiness of the season and not feel guilty about that.
How about you? Could you be unaware that you are hiding from your grief? If you are, maybe some of my ideas will resonate with you or you can come up with some that feel right to you.
So far I’ve meditated, journaled, decorated for the holidays, cried and talked about it with my husband.