This morning feels unlike every other morning. I feel both healed and like I need rest.
Rest, but what kind of rest?
My favorite type of rest is after a long bike ride in Santorini, or body surfing with Maryanne and Gaidin in Coronado in the summer feeling all relaxed and tingly. I love the type of rest that involves sitting in a cafe to write about the day or sitting with my nephew wrapped in a towel watching the water together after we splash around. I think my idea of rest is sitting back, taking in an adventure, feeling grateful, and spent in my body.
I knew I would have to shift this year. I knew rest wasn’t in my equation. I couldn’t find the pleasure in it. Rest was an annoying means to an end.
Since we’ve been trying to get pregnant, rest has been particularly confusing. Somewhere along the way, I equated the word rest and relax with failing. I detest failing. I feel like being alive is such a gift and wasting efforts or spending time on a project that fundamentally fails feels like being ungrateful.
When someone says, “As soon as you stop trying, you’ll get pregnant!”, what I actually hear is, “As soon as you trick your brain into not caring if you get pregnant, you’ll get pregnant!”. Or, “As soon as you become an entirely different person you’ll get pregnant!”. It’s been a painful inner dialogue. What would it take for me to stop my brain from trying to get pregnant? My answer was to banish hope.
Every month I hoped I would get pregnant and every month I wouldn’t. So after a few years, I stopped trying. I stopped hoping in every way I could. I tried to put blackout curtains in my mind on hope. It hurt. I was so sad. It hurt Mike too. He held hope for both of us. I’m the cheerleader in our relationship, but when I fall and lose all landmarks, Mike will pick us both up.
We have so many well-meaning friends and family members. People see our struggle and want to help. Their kind words were trying to lead me home. Those words “rest/relax” weren’t big enough clues for me. They took away my power when they were supposed to give it back.
Right now, for me, rest is what you do in between rounds of fighting (no pun intended). In between rounds of giving it your all and being your all. Fighting the good fight, hoping, wishing, praying, and then in between, resting in that high vibration. Walk, run, swim, laugh, jump, and rest in happiness.
I didn’t know what my post IVF fight would look like, but I’m proud of myself for being willing to go so far outside of my depth to let go of what isn’t serving me. My chi, my chakras, my vibe, my energy - I’m getting stronger in places I’ve yet to understand.
