next stage

I felt pregnant right up until the day my period came. At first I wanted to feel petulant - How could I get so much guidance that led me to believe that this was it if it wasn't? - but I couldn't keep up that charade. I could see right away that I had felt rather manic throughout the past two weeks, and under that came the realization that I had essentially been trying to will what I wanted to happen.

There's a healthy sort of denial, I find, that is not about what I personally want but rather what is ultimately true. I use that to remember that all is well. It's helpful for banishing pain and illness, or for finding balance and ease when I think I need money or props. Helpful hardly touches what it is, really - it's the center of my practice, but more words would only feel less true. In any case, I can't confuse that with wishful or willful thinking. I've always known and said that something as big as welcoming a child is just not going to be in my hands or on my timeline. I thought it was happening now partly because I believed now would be the "perfect" time. But I'm not in a position to know what the perfect time is. All is well. I need to let go.

I'm very intuitive, but my superpowers can get hella scrambled when I'm trying to get a read on a situation in which I am personally engaged. I know this. So when it became clear that I wasn't going to get my wish this month, for five minutes I wanted to despair, to feel betrayed by Guidance and alone in an ocean of uncertainty. But, oh well - that passed. No tantrum today. I feel humbled and happy, relieved of a burden. On to the next stage! I've come too far to let myself believe I'm alone anymore.

i am back. (i think.)

Huh! Guess I'm writing a post. The Bravo site seems overwhelmed at the moment with addicts like me trying to read "Tim's Take" - his blog entry about last night's episode (of Project Runway, of course). I can't seem to get to his comments about Angela and Michael's work, so I opened up my bookmarks out of sheer boredom, and ended up here.

Well, I have been pondering coming back. I'm still not sure I will; I think I'm just sort of feeling it out. I miss the outlet of writing little pieces to share. I still write pages a la the AW, but daily brain dumps, while helpful, do not particularly address the need to create.

Ah, yes. That's the thing, isn't it - the need to create.

I was pregnant when I stopped blogging last May. That pregnancy ended in July. I had been very very sleepy throughout most of my ten-week experience, and the miscarriage was three weeks long and bloody, so I spent most of the rest of the summer getting my strength back. (It's back.)

I found the emotional aspects of losing the pregnancy not unbearable. It was sad and frustrating and terribly disappointing, but my husband and I did not have a particularly hard time letting go once the shock had passed. We moved on, remaining optimistic. We trust that when it's meant to happen it will happen. Being pregnant had been a wonderful time for both of us - peaceful and joyful and absolutely filled with light - and it had been great for our relationship. We both felt the overall experience was net-positive. I think of it as a practice pregnancy. It only deepened our conviction that this is what we really want, plus we both had the chance to witness its obviously positive effects on us and on each other. Gotta count all that in the blessings column, really.

I started menstruating again right away, so we're back on the horse what threw us. And the past month or so has been filled with hopeful signs. Actually, okay - truth? I think we might have hit it again. No, TRUTH: I think we have hit it. I've thought that before and been wrong (ever the optimist), so i'm trying to stay somewhat cool. But what else can I write about? It's pervading my thought, from pretty deep down. I find I can only be cool by not allowing myself to obsess, to neurotically check for symptoms, to keep asking my inner Voice if I am. I have asked already. The answer was Yes.

So staying cool does not seem to extend to avoiding plain-old thinking about being pregnant now, or to not thinking that I am. I do! I just do. I calmly and matter-of-factly just happen to think that I am pregnant. I understand myself well enough to know that if it turns out I'm not (or, more likely and specifically if that's the case, that implantation has not occurred), I'll be fine. I'm good at letting go, when it matters.

So am I really putting all of this out there? Yeah, I think so.

I did decide to not spread the word far and wide last time. It was part of why I stopped blogging. I didn't want to talk about my pregnancy beyond a specific circle of friends. Truth be told, that was largely because I had intuitive misgivings about viability, though I claimed outwardly I was just being practical. I am glad that I didn't have to bring sad news back to my parents and grandmother, who would all have certainly been devastated. I made the right call not putting them on that roller coaster to begin with. But they don't read my blog.

Besides, I ended up telling the rest of my world about the miscarriage as it was happening. It's a different thing at that point--no roller coaster. And I needed the support. So why not write about all this here? I guess I'm back.

In other news, I stayed with my core spiritual practice through it all this summer, even while I had dropped all my other practices. I continue to feel I'm turning a real corner in my life. And as I've considered returning to my blog, I've thought about finding a way to incorporate here more of the things I actually think about most. I'll just leave that dangling for now. Let me just say I want to find a way to be more fully honest about who I am.

One last thing. We have a new kitten! Check out THIS massive sweet-itude:



My husband woke up one day with the overpowering urge to check out a local shelter's website. Turns out they were somewhat overrun with kittens. Huh. Naturally, the next step was to drive over there, just to... take a look. I regained my senses as we sat in the driveway on the very verge of a shelter visit, which at that point was virtually identical, statistically speaking, to adopting a third furry behbeh. "Why are we doing this?" I demanded. "We've been saying since we went from three to two last summer that it doesn't make any sense to adopt another one while we're hoping to bring a human baby home. It's hard enough to keep up with the demands for love those other two snuggle-monkeys make on us all day. Is it really fair to them in the long term?" G was quiet. "What do you have to counter all these arguments we've been making for over a year now to keep us from doing this?"

"Oh, not much," he replied. "I just think it will bring more light to our lives."

Sometimes there is just NO ARGUING with that guy. But do I need to even say it? He could not have been more right. He named her Matilda. She is perfect. She brings so much light it strains my heart a little to let it all in. I will never understand how people can not have kitties.

I don't know how often I'll be posting now, so I may just keep this on the D.L. for now and let whoever finds it read it or not. I have many ambivalent and conflicting feelings about the community aspect of this blogging thing, anyway. Maybe in the spirit of being More Fully Honest, I will write about that sometime. For now I'll just say that I do very sincerely wish everyone who has read and commented here all the best.