Rainbows

I have journaled or blogged for most of my life, but the motivations for doing so have varied over the years. My current blogging space/identity was created in 2013 when my husband and I had been trying (and failing) to have children for about a year and a half. I recognized this as a major life crisis and took steps to deal with it, one of which was connecting with the infertility blogging community via torthúil. It was a significant part of my life until the past two or three years. 

I interacted with a variety of people in this community over the 5 to 7 years I was most active, and they resolved in one way or another, most by having a baby (-ies) but sometimes without doing so. I don’t follow many people anymore, but there’s a few I read, including one who who was not able to have children despite years of trying multiple strategies.  Recently she wrote a blog about reframing the concept of a “rainbow baby”. A rainbow baby is a baby who is born after pregnancy loss or the death of an infant (sadly both of these things often happen to mothers who have difficulty conceiving, though they can happen to those who don’t as well.)  However, Finding a Different Path discusses what a rainbow looks like for those who did not have any children in the end. She quotes a recent book:

Sometimes a rainbow is a child, and sometimes it's the renewal of vows, a career milestone, a new sense of self, the ability to self-love.

I started thinking about this with relation to my own story. I never lost a pregnancy to my knowledge (if I ever did it was very early, before I even knew). And I did in the end have two children, though not without many years of anxiety and uncertainty. 

My “rainbow”, as my friend defines it, would be living my life without the relentless focus on my body and biology. During the years we were trying to conceive, I was so focused on the physical possibility of having a baby that it became very difficult to envision any kind of life outside of that, even the life with children that I was trying to achieve!

I see in hindsight that this was a very materialist focus. My body and what it could and couldn’t do was the most important influence on how I saw myself in relation to the world. One of the few ways I pushed back against this was by refusing to unequivocally label myself “infertile.” My blog name, for example, is an Irish word that means “fertile”. But overall I would say I was the most cynical, atheistic, and materialistic in this phase of my life that I have ever been. Never completely so, but tending toward that way more so than not.

 Particularly before the conception of my eldest daughter, I was very focused on “means to an end.” I did not want to do anything unethical, but neither did I want to think too deeply about any issue beyond the fulfillment of my desires. If other people that appeared decent were doing something to conceive, whether that was IVF or egg/sperm donation or IUI, then that was reason enough for me to consider it.  Did I know there were aspects of all these actions that were complicated? Yes. Did I want to look too closely at any of those issues? No. 

But my point is not really about specific assisted reproductive techniques. It is more about my overall focus. Even when we were not using ART (and ultimately no form of ART got me pregnant) I defined success in terms of processes in my body and the degree to which I could submit them to my will. The fact that most of the time I couldn’t get my body to do what I wanted didn’t stop me from trying or from seeing it as a somewhat faulty machine, for the most part. Where there was disappointment or sadness, it was also not too difficult to find ways to blame others: infertile/sub fertile people and our challenges are often misunderstood or overlooked by the people around us. This is true, but fixating on this also blurred out the ways that I myself was adding to my own unhappiness. 

What shocked me out of this mindset? Honestly, it was the conception and birth of my children, especially my eldest daughter. AJ was conceived, bizarrely and unexpectedly, following our one and only IVF cycle, which was canceled midway because my body did not respond to the powerful drugs that were pumped into it. A emotional rollercoaster followed, where I had bleeding and believed I was losing the pregnancy, but ultimately didn’t. My world shattered. One message emerged starkly from the chaos:

YOU. ARE. NOT. IN. CONTROL.

Although a baby is a joyful event, this is not an uncomplicated joyful message to receive. Other than my two amazing small humans, my life is now about learning to live with this knowledge. If I’m not in control, what is? How do I negotiate with it? How do I steer over choppy waters in strong winds? What would life be like if I stopped mainly viewing my children as results of a biological process and more as gifts of grace? Obviously they are both, but which story is closest to the truth of who and what they are? I would have to say “grace,” especially as I move away from the obsessive process of trying to conceive and towards a desire to understand life as a meaningful whole.

After the storm, a rainbow. And a whole new road to take.

Invite beauty into your life

It was interesting to read this paragraph today, because I had just been thinking about a piece of art I want to buy, though I’m not sure when or where I will put it (I have a fair bit of organizing/donating/selling to do, though slowly making headway through it.)

This is what I’ve been eying:

Why this image? It brings to mind the poet Caedmon, and his poem about the creation of the world.

Caedmon’s story is one I first encountered as a child, and then even more memorably in university when I learned to read it (sort of) in the original Old English.

Retold as a children’s story:

My account partly explaining how Caedmon and Hild have entered into my story is linked below. I say “partly” because I don’t ever feel like I can fully explain why this story means so much to me. It has a way of continually inviting me back in, pulling me into  complex root systems, seeking, seeking some unseen well of water.  I did a bit of a deep dive in university with my long poem  “A Gift of Bones,” but I’ve never felt like this has exhausted the potential. If I pay attention, I feel like pieces of my life are always returning to this story. 

Caedmon and Hild reflections

What happens if I invite it in? 

Easter memories

Back in 2006 I was 26 years old and living in Athens, Greece with my aunt, my dad’s sister. I had the opportunity to visit the island of Kefalonia for Easter break with a family friend. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and one of my favourite all time memories.

I wrote about it on my old blog here. I’ve mostly archived this blog but I keep a few favourite entries online.

Easter in Kefalonia

I think of my trip to Kefalonia, along with the trip a few weeks later to Scotland, as transformative experiences. Catalyst moments. The transformations had been underway long before the actual trips, and would continue long after (arguably still continuing, along with transformations begun even earlier). But sometimes a particular experience acts as a kind of plot device in my life, allowing me to see the structure of it more clearly. Or it allows me to pull something half-realized out of that mist and be specific about what it means.

I did not write all of my impressions of Kefalonia in the blog entry above, which was adapted from an email to friends and family and written mostly in a breezy style. Some years later, recently engaged to be married, I revisited the experience and wrote more personally about it.

Fogsail An Dorus

Some places are just.....very special. They are more than what meets the eye. Kefalonia is one. I don’t know that I will ever go back, and anyway the “me” that returns won’t be the same as the one who was there before....but that’s ok. It’s as it should be.