shedding the layers

So since I wrote the last post, so much has happened and I feel like I am in a very new place then I was just a week ago. My incredible yoga teacher has been wanting to give me a Reiki session.  I feel that where I am right now, I will take all that is being offered. She also wanted me to go to a shaman healer that she knows in conjunction with her reiki session that she was giving me, both as a gift. Did I tell you how awesome she is?

So last week I went back to back – and let me tell you, it was super intense. The Reiki had my energy moving and I felt its power. It was a beautiful experience. I pretty much floated to the Shaman healer. I don’t want to go into detail about the work I did with her, but know this:

When I woke up that next morning, I seriously felt like a new person. I will share this one interesting part of the session. I had to choose a stone from a pile of like 15 different kinds of stones. I chose the amber one. She told me that the one I chose symbolizes wounded femininity. So there was that.

I had to breathe out a lot of what is holding me back and keeping me unsettled in my life. She performed her magic and when I left, I felt happy. Happy and at peace. I was able to let go of a lot of what is weighing me down right now. All the stuff that makes me sad, angry, devastated, confused, all of it.

I am not done with my grieving, or my anger, believe me, I have a lot still left. But what I need right now, as we go through the IVF,  is to just relax. That awful word that everyone has said will help me to get pregnant. I don’t believe it is what is keeping me from getting there. I don’t know what is keeping me from getting there. I do know that I have been tied up in knots and that is not helpful. There is a mind/body connection and it is wreaking havoc on my system.  So if friends and family want to give me Reiki and bodywork sessions to help me relax, well, then I’ll take it. Because even with my working out, eating well and therapy- even with all of that, I have been holding on for dear life.

So my good friend Gina who I grew up with came to visit this weekend.  I let her cut my hair. My hair that I haven’t cut since the month before Silas was born and died. I had been holding on to my hair as my protection.  It was scary, but I  finally shed a few inches and it felt great. My good friend Angie had a post about that a while back. She went super short and describes it below in such a perfect way. It has always stuck with me but at the time, I just wasn’t ready to go there.

“As the funkified shampoo girl massaged my head, I closed my eyes and remembered the days after I left my ex-husband. I cut off all my hair. And at the time, the stylist said, “Ah, the divorce do.” And she explained how people in transitional times in their life, traumatic and sad times, let go of their old life by letting go of their hair. She said it was an important, cathartic, healing ritual. And as this shampoo girl chatted about this and that, I felt a kind of lightness of being. All of this. All of this crap, I am letting go of it. I am going to leave it on the floor of the salon for other people to clean. My grey hairs and my mangled hairs, the hairs that watched Lucy be born, the ones that hid my face in the depth of my grief, the ones I plaited like I imagined folding my dark haired baby’s hair one day into long braids, the hairs that poked my husband’s face as we held each other sobbing, the hairs the looked sad and drab, the hairs that matted onto my face as I howled into my pillow, the hairs that made me feel fat and useless…all of them. Transition. I am in transition.”

As I move through this transition, I am preparing myself for what is yet to come.

BFN

That stands for Big Fat Negative for those of you not familiar. I’ve become a regular lurker and sometimes poster on the Resolve fertility message boards. It took me a while to figure that one out, even though I have become quite familiar with the BFN month after month. I was hoping for the good ‘ol BFP but alas, bad news again.

It’s been a tough journey to say the least.  An IVF cycle is challenging on the body, mind and spirit. It takes a toll – especially because it’s a super long process and then getting a BFN out of it, well yeah, that’s just a devastating blow.  The days following those results aren’t so pretty either.

I’ve been in quite a funk since then.  We are trying again, but this time we’re doing a FET (frozen embryo transfer). I’m getting good with all the acronyms and there is quite a lot in this IF world I’m in. This cycle is way easier on my whole being- it’s shorter and way less meds.  I’m not poking myself with needles every day or ingesting tons of hormones that fuck with my moods.

Everyone wants to help me this time around so I am getting some Reiki, some other healing energy work, some bodywork, acupuncture and lots and lots of love. I am working incredibly hard to just stay somewhat relaxed through this cycle.  Luckily we have a few Phish shows in our near future, hopefully the healing power of music will help.

We keep going forward because we have to. I mean we don’t have to, we can choose to stop this whole thing right now and just see if my body decides to cooperate at some point in our future. But I don’t want to wait anymore. I want it yesterday and because I can’t have it yesterday, we have to do everything in our power to make it happen. And even that is a crap shoot as we have now learned.

I have placed my entire future on a perpetual hold. My therapist reminded me today that I need to live each day. You would think that is a pretty easy thing for someone to remember to do, especially for a yogi who’s entire mission is to be present. But I am constantly in the future-

“when I’m finally pregnant, then….” and

“when I finally have my babies, then…”

and it’s all I do these days. This funk I am in has washed over me. I am struggling to work, to be social with friends, to even care about anything else going on. When I think about the oil spill, or Haiti or the inhumane treatment of animals, it tears me apart in ways that may even be unhealthy. I can’t go there because it’s too sad and right now my life is sad enough that I cannot even handle it.

But then somehow I manage to get shit done each day. I dread going to work, but then I see the kids and most of the time they make me laugh or give me hugs or tell me they love me and yeah, that’s why I do what I do. Those moments I sort of forget my funk and my determination to be sad. Or I’ll get an email about a new school, or a new business idea pops into my head and then I dive in and let it take over for a bit.

But even when I can fake it, like I feel like I’m doing most of the time now, I just don’t feel the same anymore. I feel pretty ravaged.

I haven’t written in a while because I really really wanted to write about good news and not the same old shit that keeps happening month after month.  I appreciate those of you who continue to read and comment and stick with me. I don’t think I would have stuck with me after all this time, so kudos to those of you who have.

And dammit, I will have good news soon (there is a smidgen of hope still left in there!)