I Am Owning My Story

I was always a light sleeper.

Always worried that one of my pets would get hurt in the night.

Always concerned with the details of the next IVF protocol; what the results may hold, what our chances were, what the next hit would be.

I worried about making it to the next round, the next step, the next milestone, certain that if I never made it as a mom, I would ultimately be nothing.

A non-mom is no way to live by society's standards.

I have offered nothing to this world. 

I cannot grow anything within me.

I have no purpose and should just back away in shame.

To say I was unhappy during those trying days of uncertainty in the midst of failed cycle after failed cycle would be the understatement of a lifetime.

Often times loved ones around me would try to give me the standard pep talk.

It will work, Tia.

And I often, so very often, would combat it with the shielded response.

But it might not.

Call it intuition.

Call it whatever you want.

But there was always something nagging at me, deep down inside, and with every forceful grasp at the next layer of mountain I climbed, I always knew we would likely not succeed at this.

This wasn't what we were meant to do as humans.

We were not destined to raise our own children.

And that intuition worried me to my very core.

And then we stopped trying.

We stopped treatments.

We stopped.

Just. Stopped. Everything.

I finally let go of that mountain I kept a tight grip of, and fell back into the clouds.

My head stopped spinning.

My feet, once grounded in impenetrable cement, moved again.

My body yearned to run, to leap, to do anything that didn't involve sitting in another chair having my blood drawn.

My mind became laser focused and my vision narrowed.

And my heart expanded ten-fold to the immediate loves in my life and everything I have been cultivating for the past decade.

And I realized that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Worry faded away, and the little annoyances and frustrations of daily life seemed so trivial in comparison to the storm we just walked through.

I slept. Deeply.

And continued this pattern each night.

And still do to this day.

Embracing my life, just as it is, has freed me from the criticism and judgment that I was putting on MYSELF because I THOUGHT that's how society viewed me.

And to be honest, society might still view me that way.

As nothing.

As no good.

Because I'm a non-mom.

But I can assure you that I simply raised my middle finger at the criticism, and kept looking forward, kept walking. 

Because none of that worry or judgment matters, really.

Sickness and death and despair will happen in the future.

But I now know that ultimately, when the dust settles, I am resilient.

I will continue to put one foot in front of the other, and keep walking forward.

Because life will go on.

And I will not fear the variables.

I will not fear the what-ifs.

I will not worry about failing.

Failure, you see, is just another part of life.

You MUST fail to succeed at something better.

To try a different route.

To keep pressing forward.

Only the strongest take failure and turn it into a positive, rewarding aspect of life.

And I can assure you I fail every damn day.

And it's glorious.

I get to reinvent myself as often as I want.

I get to try again.

I get to keep going.

So, when people ask me how I'm doing these days.

The honest answer is....I'm doing amazing.

Free from worry and embracing failure and watching how resilient I am.

Focusing inward and erasing the judgment and comparison and simply ENJOYING living.

THAT is the spice of life, folks.

Everything else is just....details.

Details that will eventually fall into place.

Most of which I can't control or manipulate even if I wanted to.

Those types of expectations are what causes worry, anyways.

The expectation of how life is SUPPOSED to go.

Life is SUPPOSED to go exactly as it's going.

We're living our best life, don't you see?

When you remove the comparison and expectations, all you're left with is the stuff and situations and destiny you were always meant to live. 

It's good to try new things.

To take chances.

Because you might just fail.

And then you take that failure, turn it into a life lesson, embrace what happened and move forward wiser, and lighter, and with more ease.

So, my dear, infertility did so much for me, even if it didn't give me the baby I thought I would have.

It gave me my LIFE BACK.

And I will be eternally grateful for all the failures along the way.

Thanks for reading. XO