Infertility made Me a Better Me
I still remember an article a friend of mine gave me to read after my ex- boyfriend broke up with me. The article was about change and about how when something ends that creates space for opportunity. I read it over 10 years ago and I don’t remember the exact words, but I know how they made me feel: free and ready for adventure.
I hadn’t done a lot of spiritual exploration at the time, I was in my early twenties and had not started my yoga education yet. Yet, that piece of writing gave me a new perspective that I have treasured to this day. It was showing that endings can be new beginnings and that they are simply creating space for more.
The breakup pushed me to look within and embark onto my spiritual path. I got certified to become a yoga teacher and learnt to embrace that everything in life is in transition.
Yet, when I encountered one of the biggest transitions of my life, my early menopause and unexpected infertility diagnosis, I crumbled. I felt like lost a part of myself.
I could feel the ground trembling under my feet, the heart breaking a little inside my chest and the fire subsiding in my belly. There was an immediate shift.
An infertility diagnosis can be so hard to take in. It took me months to process it and even now, as I write, I feel those emotions coming back. So I take a deep breath. I remind myself that it is all a cycle of creation, sustenance and destruction and that life flows in unexpected ways.
It might sound a bit cliché, but time helps heal. But I also think you need to do something with that time. So if you are navigating fertility challenges or have been diagnosed infertile:
- Allow yourself to feel it all, be broken, cry, scream. Feel all your emotions and let them come to the surface. Don’t feel guilty or weird for what you feel. It is all welcome and it is all ok. Accepting the way you feel right now will help you shift that energy
- Be in proximity of whatever/whoever makes you feel held and nurtured. That could look like spending some time in nature, or with family and friends. Just remember that nature won’t ever be judgemental or make uncomfortable comments, so if you feel your close ones would, then just go for a walk in the forest instead!
- Find a community of women who get you and have been through similar experiences. Sometimes, it is only through direct experience that we develop the emotional intelligence and understanding we need to be of support to women who are going through fertility challenges. Make sure you connect to them.
Slowly, you will see that the part of yourself that you lost with your infertility diagnosis is transforming and evolving, and eventually it will come back to that spaciousness it had created by abandoning you in the first place.
This makes me think of Kintsugi, the Japanese art in which broken vases are fixed up and put back together with gold. Infertility can feel like breaking up into a thousand bits, but if you are able to pick up the pieces you can restore a version of you that is resilient and even more beautiful than the “original”.
With my infertility diagnosis I shattered, but after having healed I started using my story to support other women in their journey. Now I feel like an upgraded version of myself. Without having lived the grief for the loss of my fertility, I wouldn’t have discovered this version of myself. A woman who has found her calling into support other women with difficult journeys to motherhood.
I feel a bit like a Kintsugi vase! And I am here for you too, to guide you through that process of putting back the pieces with shiny gold and create a version of you that you love even more.
