Tag: #relationshipgoals

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Travel

cravetravelblog

Why do we travel? What makes it so interesting? I am sitting in Crave restaurant, it is a local hangout in Ansonia Connecticut, the most upscale and only choice in my mind. Not because of the upscale part, but because the food is consistently good no matter what, and it just feels good. Not sure what about it accomplishes this, but it does. 

Anyway I am sitting in a new and different perspective. I am by myself facing the street. I can see the antique shop across the street, some very interesting looking industrial buildings (see picture), and a sign that says Bennet & Walsh Attorney’s at law. There is a 103 on the door, the numbers are horizontal, large black font laid on gold or silver background. The doorway is rounded and the building is of stone. So cool. 

Have I ever seen this before? The answer is yes and no. I have seen it many times I am sure, but if I never attended to it then it won’t be encoded and won’t really mean anything. 

When we travel because we have added this expectation, parameters are set for experiencing the new then our brains are more likely to acquiesce. People are going outside to smoke. Interesting enough this no longer creates a craving in me. That is a realization in and of itself. I remember years where I had a single track mind of obtaining a cigarette and being afforded the reprieve of avoiding whatever social interaction was making me anxious, but escaping into the cool air and polluting my lungs. It wasn’t even the cigarette it was belonging to a group that made me less intimidated, and the escape of it all, and it gave me something to focus intently on, that was not tearing at myself. Hmmm. 

I am just thinking of how we don’t need to travel ever to see new things. We can see new things, or through new eyes anywhere and at anytime. Be exploring with our curiosity versus drowning in conclusion and despair. This is a choice we have at our fingertips at anytime, but it never feels that way. This is a lie. I think anyway. 

Magic is the fact that I used to not know where my next bill was going to get paid from, to being able to indulge myself in simple pleasures that I give myself permission for. To enjoy the moment, a moment. 3 years ago I would have felt guilty for anything I spent on myself, that it should have been going for this or that, or to savings. And now I have created the ability to both take care of my responsibilities and also to be able o experience joy in a cup of a coffee and a flan in a restaurant. Small sips, Savor. 

I have created so many of my dreams already, and yet my human brain rarely registers this. It tells me “Christina we are dissatisfied with your performance, we know you could be doing more.” Maybe I could, but do I want to be? Isn’t that as important a question as any?

Soon (in March) my wife and I will be traveling to the International Women’s Summit in Arizona. I have never been to Arizona, and within the US there aren’t too many places I can say I haven’t been, so this will be cool. It’s going to be warmer, we will need to adjust for this. I am tempted to pack nothing, and to make part of our adventure buying some new things while we are there, but then we will need to bring back luggage, hmmm. 

What does one see in Arizona anyway? What are the famous things to do or visit? I guess we will have to do some research. 

I think I have spent most of my life thinking something has to be grand to experience it to the fullest. It must be a grand gesture or trip of a lifetime, but the possibility for magic moments are held within the everyday also. We can go to an area we never have been before even where we already live, and look around, be alert. 

Anyway back to my notes about writing my memoirs. My beautiful wife got me this pencil set for Christmas, and it IS marvelous. She has infused them with her belief in my capability to do the things I set out to do, and if that isn’t magic I don’t know what is. 

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Hamilton: What will our play be called ?!

Thank you for seeing me in this way, for delighting in me and in us. It has literally saved our emotional lives. We had our physical lives before you, but our emotional ones are taking such beautiful shape now. And I want to write about it. I want the world to know your bright love. And I what we have created here. 

The image suggests perhaps a playful post about our experience in the city. Wouldn’t that be a more pleasant read ? Perhaps it would, but it wouldn’t be written by me then, at least not tonight. 😉

This blog post is a letter I wrote to my wife tonight. Whether or not all things are meant to be shared I think there is always a power in it for someone. This letter bled straight from my fingertips, it fell onto the page in waves of truth that couldn’t make their way out fast enough. A catharsis. Isn’t it always. If someone else has a different experience with those words who am I to stop them.

Clicking publish has always been an act of bravery…. one I never gave myself much credit for. Warning it begins with graphic Crohn’s Disease material exactly as I experienced it.

I had a stomach episode tonight unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I thought I was going to have you have to call 911. I almost screamed for you. Literally. I had visions of me passing out and dying on the toilet. I woke up doubled over completely, and I mean completely. I hobbled to the toilet. I didn’t know if I would vomit or faint. I felt like all 3. I felt like I was going to have to poop but didn’t know what thing would come first. It felt like I was being ripped in half. My shirt was completely soaked, completely, and contrary to the scary fast heart rate I will have usually during an attack my heart felt like it couldn’t even beat, it was low 50’s. 

I just held on and tried to breathe deep as I could through the waves of pain and head swimming until finally I pooped literally probably 3 toilet bowls full. It wasn’t all at once. First was getting the hard part out, and then a ton came. 

By the time I was done I was left shaking and freezing and now I’m more wiped out than you can ever imagine. I just can’t even quite describe the pain.

A couple of things happened. One, I felt a tremendous wave of compassion for V and guilt at not feeling more present. It’s like I can’t weather watching her suffer and I must because I’m mom. What a confusing thing. And two, intense fear that having not taken my injection even for a week has thrown things into some terrible state with my health. What if?! And what if V is in for a lifetime of chronic suffering with her tummy that impedes so much of her adventurous self. My god that will break my heart. And then that I really do love my kids moment. Well of course I fucking do?! How could I ever be so unkind to myself, ?’ To not give myself this benefit of the doubt. 

And then I think of the good thing that I’ll make sure she is safe and supported forever. Never scared she won’t be able to support herself. And then the realization that I’m a steadfast supporter and provider and that I’m creating / have created that from scratch. 

And this is literally what a profound RE frame in thinking looks like. I’m strong and proud and safe and I’ll keep my family safe, not some impulsive person hanging by a thread.

I’m creating something beautiful in myself and for others and it’s my story. My legacy. What I want people to say about me, when they tell my story like Eliza did for Hamilton. What will they say?! We all wonder what people will say.

This makes me think of you: do you know all anybody says is nice things about you?! I always wanted to be that person, but I make too many waves, take too many risks, and don’t think enough about how I’ll make someone feel. You think too much, and I not enough. If you take us both you have the perfect person 😉 boastful? Perhaps. 

I make people uncomfortable, but do it with good intentions lol. Don’t they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions;) I make people uncomfortable by pointing out what is so readily visible to me, that for others it takes them a lifetime if at all to notice. A gift and a curse. 

I wonder if V felt a fraction of how I felt just now. If she did I feel terrible for her. I’m gonna root around in your magic bag of goodies, the bag leftover from our dead dreams (to be dramatic and truthful) and see if I can find some life giving electrolytes in the form of Gatorade to settle this tummy. It’s feeling like knives are raking it currently and I can’t be out of commission this long. 

If anything happens to me babe please tell my story. I need my story told. The need is getting fiercer now. I need people to know how hard I fought just to be ok on a daily basis and my kids to know how strong their love makes me. They are the fuel to my fire, and everything that makes me the person that I am.

Every person I’ve ever helped has them to thank. 

And I have you to thank. You’re such a source of comfort to me. Speaking of…. I’ll need to restock our sick supplies. We were so fortunate to have all these. Though the reason we do and they are unused is still excruciating. 

Babe I know your process is different but please know that if this didn’t happen I might not in some really profound way have truly known how much I want it. How I want to enjoy the tiny new life that we create rather than ever viewing him or her as a burden. And my life has already been so heavy so long, any small thing sometimes does feel this way. But in part due to experiencing this loss with you, I know even more profoundly how much each second even is worth. 

I do in a fucked up way feel it is meant to be this way. This sense that everything does happen for a reason, and not that that’s just something we say to make sense of things when they are too fucked up. It makes me believe in destiny and magic. 

Does that mean we couldn’t have done without this toll to our hearts, this wound, and these scars… of course not. 

But life would not hold as much meaning without the whole picture, the whole journey, and my life now is beyond filled with meaning. 

While I don’t plan on going anywhere soon, I am satisfied with my life right now. I need you to know that. I don’t regret for me or be sad for the rest of my unloved life ever, because I have lived it to my fullest already. I do want more of course, immense amounts more. But if it wasn’t in my cards I didn’t miss a thing. I knew exactly what I was doing. 

I want you to find the same feeling, but in whatever way Or path that’s meant for you. That’s my dream for you, never give in to self defeating thoughts, ones that lack compassion for your full journey. 

If you did ever lose me I want you to live on for me in the way I would have. Carry my legacy and be for my kids what I would have been for them. You are up to that task. No one is as well as you or I wouldn’t have picked you. They will need you forever. 

I don’t plan on going anywhere, but we never plan for that so I want these words down. I don’t care what laws or rules or fears or whatever. We have something very special here and blood relation has nothing to do with it. We must trust that. You are an irreplaceable part of the kids healing now. You’re already written into the story. And I would never want to let you be snuffed out in the event of my demise. And anyone who would try would do so out of ego or pride etc, finally able to have their kids back from my evil clutches you know 😉 but you know better. 

You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Yes little ol you, it’s true. That’s a truth. And it couldn’t be without you being so much more than you see when you look in the mirror. That distorted perception is your only enemy, it kills more dreams than a semi-automatic with unlimited rounds. 

I hope my kids will delight in my letters someday when they are old enough to read how my mind worked. Find, keep, and appreciate them all, because they are who I always really was inside and kids know so little about that.

I’ll never know much about who my parents really were inside, so much is a mystery, especially my dads side, and my mother’s, a tragedy. So for them to have this insight. To know my mind intimately. Incredible.

Wow so all this feels like a product of a near death experience. Listen honestly. It may sound dramatic, but this episode was no joke. And all this sweating and gross (being on prednisone and scared) the past couple of weeks has been really humbling.

There is a level of acceptance I am at, that wasn’t there before. 

My disease has carried a large piece of denial for the longest. I wasn’t willing. I’ve been in as much denial of it as I have how damaging my childhood was to me. I am reaching a stage of acceptance now, and it’s making me so much stronger. So much more at peace and strong. Someone that you will feel proud and safe to have a baby with. Someone stable that will enjoy that adventure with, not resent it, or fear it, or feel guilty about it because I already have kids.

That is at least the take home I’m recognizing from this tragedy. 

I will get to move forward without a doubt in my mind, and for me, that’s like having rebuilt an entire nation after its downfall. I’ve been a shaky entity bordering on panic for as long as I can remember, to be emerging this strong, still, solid force of love and compassion is unbelievable even to myself. 

I am surprising myself a lot lately. The strong I always identified as prior was a sort of forced kind of strong, a necessary one. This strong now is the accumulation of weathering storms with a sense of grace rather than a frenzy or a panic. 

It’s a strong I am satisfied and proud of, not one thrust upon me without my consent. It’s a soft kind of strong, and I can’t wait to hold our baby in these new arms made of this.

Every time you grace me with your vision of seeing the loving child inside of me. I can see when you see her, I can see her too, and it brings powerful healing. You bring that to me. 

Thank you for seeing me in this way, for delighting in me and in us. It has literally saved our emotional lives. We had our physical lives before you, but our emotional ones are taking such beautiful shape now. And I want to write about it. I want the world to know your bright love. And I what we have created here. 

What if someone else could find this place (when they couldn’t before) because of our story? Or was able to believe in their dreams?! 

Bliss. 

My tummy has burning remnants of the suffering I just went through and I can’t even be bothered to focus on that. I’ve too much shit to do with my one life. Thank goodness because otherwise I’d crumble into a little ball of stress and worry and take days to recover. 

I don’t have days anymore to spend in that way, there’s too much work to be done.

Every word on every page for every day of my life…. are for you….

Now I am going to curl up as close to you as I can and let your breath lull me into a deep relaxation, and help the pain melt away. 

All the love in my heart 

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A birthday tribute to my wife …

It’s my fourth favorite person in the worlds extra special born day tomorrow. Who’s keeping count right?! But I’ve learned over the years I need to be my number one, closely followed by my children, and have now been blessed enough that now we are 5. Still soon to be 6…. that dream floats evermore back into the picture daily. Thank god for our natural innate resilience.

Just 5 humans trying to navigate a painful and divisive world with the biggest of hearts and fullest of enthusiasms.

So I just want to take some time to honor this new addition to our family. She’s new old. We have a new love everyday, that feels like it could/should have been there my whole life. The depth goes that far.

My dearest Courtney you walked softly into our lives, as if on a bed of Snow White powder, silently, and yet the foundation we are laying together is molten lava stream of concrete that has hardened into the kind of solid ground healthy families thrive on. We created this out of a place of deep love for love itself, and for the creation of the family we always dreamed of.

I’m so proud of us. You’re a mighty, quiet, thoughtful, kind, soul, who lights up a room with her smile. People just love to be around you, and I consider it a constant gift that I get to be the benefactor of a large amount of these moments.

Whether you are generously rubbing my back at the end of the day because you know how heavy my walk in the world has been, or cooking a meal that risks you great criticism for my ever changing teenage children’s tastes….. you do it with loving kindness.

You see yourself so often as less than what you are, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to show you your powers. Great healing powers, they are immense.

No matter what else you do with your life from here on out, please know you have saved us. This is not dramatic, rather it is true. You’re gentle with our hearts, when much of life for the kids and I has felt intense.

Your gentle love is an intense space of healing, and I’ll love you like the grateful stray dog I have always felt like, that’s found her forever home.

And finally now this is all ok. It was never supposed to be different. I was never supposed to be more than what I was when I was, and neither are you. We just are.

And this life with you in it is bliss to me.

So I hope your 35th year lends to you feeling as special as you make us feel everyday.

It is fitting we get to experience Hamilton in Broadway together to celebrate. I remember watching you see Wicked and it was one of the most ground moving moments of my life. I knew you felt with your whole self, and I knew that’s what I wanted and deserved.

Thank you in a million little ways….

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Bronchitis and Snowy Reflections

There’s a certain permission that comes with being sick that it seems you (I) can find no other way. The permission to sit even slightly more still, even for a second. Which has allowed me to reflect a lot.

I’m recovering from bronchitis and had no idea it could lay me up so much. But here I am.

The snow is finally cascading down today, it is almost a relief existentially; climate change as it is and all. The flakes are ice coated and making a tiny crunch sound as they topple and flit here and there.

I’m just sitting here marveling at how much has changed around me, and it really does seem like all I did was blink.

I’m sitting in the kitchen part of our finished in-law portion of the home. This has been a dear friend and roommates kitchen, when her and her son lived down here, and her second son was born in this home, about 4 years ago. It’s how I paid my mortgage, and also how we both stayed sane. I was less anxious living alone, and we have become a sort of family to one another. Seeing the other through bests and worsts.

It’s brisk down here, but I’m wrapped in a warm red blanket, and sitting in and oversized brown lazy boy recliner. It’s interesting to get this kind of perspective on the home. Not a space I would normally sit. I could pick apart its imperfections: the low ceiling, white tiled floor, the basement like feel of it all. But what I’ve been doing most today is marveling at how far I’ve come and how blessed we all are.

I don’t think I ever even set my sights high enough to home ownership. I think I had planned on a retail job (management if I was lucky), and a small clean apartment, the kind I sometimes saw my friends in when I lived in Oregon.

I’ve been moving through life so frantically, so panicked that simplicities are now what I long for. What comes when you enjoy what you have like it’s the best thing on earth. My ability to hear for example or to taste, to appreciate the finer details in any mundane thing.

My wife and I recently were deciding if perhaps we might move to Milford or Fairfield Ct, out of the valley, up into a different class (and tax bracket). Funny how the important things to me about this move are still in the small details.

I would like taller ceilings, the feeling of room and space, a wood burning fireplace for smell and ambience, and a very nice bathtub. I’d like to see some woods or nature out my window. Bookshelves, many many bookshelves. Mahogany and teakwood smells and feels. An office so my papers and documents are not constantly strewn about. And we have the means to get into this nicer home now, but only to be stressed or house poor again seems not the right way this time. So we may just refinance and fall in love with all we already have! For a couple more years at least anyway.

Perhaps poor the love into this home and choose to see it in a way that serves us, rather than trumping up dissatisfaction as a means to motivate us into an action that may not even end up with us any happier in the end.

Tomorrow we are all as a family going to see Hamilton on Broadway and stay overnight in the city. Another extravagance I never would have dreamed of before. Some of us are not feeling so hot, hopefully that can be mild so there’s nothing taken from our experience.

I have found myself ahead rather than behind, perhaps not as much as my dreams could imagine, but then my dreams always were very expansive anyway.

It’s interesting the creaks and sounds down here. Now a part of other’s memories who have occupied this space. It’s housed a woman post recovery and pre-discovery. Another who was fleeing a bad roommate situation and stayed over here. Our home is a space of comfort, warmth, shared meals and affection. How could I not have seen this before?!

It’s everything I ever set out to create, and so am I. Not a single thing lacking. What a delicious discovery to stumble upon as I am sitting here listening to a different angle of the home I’ve occupied for 7 years.

This chair is very comfy, yes it would look nice next to a roaring fire, but I can imagine one just as easily……

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Connected

*I guess we are all one phone call from our knees. *

I don’t think I could have bargained for all the gratitude this experience is bringing me. I can’t feel it too much yet, everything is just so painful. But I know that it’s there, and growing, and that this experience has already profoundly changed me.

If I do it right it’s going to make me realize all the things I take for granted each day. It’s going to make me realize what a gift and blessing my kids are in a new way.

We need to hit the refresh button on life often folks! Not just when bad things happen, but consistently. Not just once a year. Refresh, open your eyes, and look around at the landscape of your life.

My God I could have never imagined this. I never believed I would trust or love myself as much as I do now.

I would have never believed I’d be here living out my dreams. Here I am.

It’s interesting to choose a person early on because of a hunch and an intuition and then watch them unfold and get to know them with faith and trust the rest of your lives together. Love grows as you go through things. We have been through a lot this short time together.

Prior to this I moved quickly into love also, this was a need based approach it wreaked if desperation and seeking a buoy in the ocean with sharks swimming around. I’ve finally climbed onto an island and am relaxing. I did not purposely use those people. I didn’t even know my own bs as most of us don’t, until hindsight affords clarity. Hurt people hurt people. It isn’t nearly the intentional process believe I don’t think.

Now if you realize this is what’s happening and you don’t do something about it that’s a different matter.

Love now:

We know one another’s soul, and yet we learn new small things about the other each day. We become more and more familiar as time moves on. A confirmation of the original hypothesis. The other times were disproving and they were as devastating a loss as any for both parties.

Life is a learning playground is it not? I’ve rarely seen people set out to harm another, that’s a different category all together. But I’ll tell you what I still scan myself often and thoroughly for signs of being what I came from. I still take any feedback that could be construed as negative about me and make sure it’s twisted into that either way. This is one of my greatest areas of work.

Am I taking up too much space with my big feelings? Am I selfish? Am I like them? Do I make people uncomfortable with my rawness, and is that the same As the chaotic discomfort of my beginning. It is not the same. Thank God!

As I work for Vivint I’ve been meeting lots of people who lost their loved one recently or within the last few years, and my empathy as a person grows. After having something like this I get it. I’m already aware of the depth of suffering I’ll have when I lose it. I’ve never been able to cruise along in blissful ignorance, though I’ve often envied (probably falsely) those who have.

If you had told me two years ago that this year I’d be spending trying to get pregnant with the love of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. If you would have told me I would get so close to this dream after so much hard work, and then lose it suddenly and have to push it back again significantly, I would have told you I wouldn’t make it through something like that.

And yet here we are.

The courage of my wife astounds me. Her grace and kindness and gentle soul. Some people are just made angels from the very beginning, and others have lives that make them need one. We are the perfect match. Blissfully she seems to feel it’s the other way around. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.

I am able to know I can be kind and unselfish when things are hard because she believes me to be that person.

I am trying to put this into practice with my children. Coming from a life of hyper vigilance and a huge lack of trust this has been very difficult. I’ve been RE wiring myself as long as I can remember and it’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t know what this work is like to understand the profound exhaustion that comes with it.

I am not exhausted from my children. They are my reason for getting this far. But over the years if you looked at my life you might have thought that, or that I valued my romantic relationships above them. Something I’ve long been accused of. I knew I needed a certain kind of love to heal parts of me, so those parts didn’t damage them. I had the foresight to know this.

And foresight is serving me again with this tragedy we are currently experiencing, because I can already see how the awareness it brings is challenging me to love better.

To my kids: I know it has taken my entire life to become a whole loving person that you deserve. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for you. I think the only redeeming part is that your lives will be better for it in ways you may only ever see when you’re my age. Distance brings clarity. I hope your lives end up as full as mine has been. Full of adventure, challenges, new experiences, real feeling, and the love I worked so hard to find, and to help you connect to it.

I’ve worked to connect with others and myself despite incredible connection difficulties.

And now here I am a connected and real person and boy does it feel different.

During times like this for a small moment I wish I could still be safely disconnected from my real feelings. But that never worked I always felt separate from the humans like that. It was terribly lonely.

I am connected to my self and currently my suffering too, and to the Universe, and to everything.

I am grateful for that. Thats what the smile below is about. It’s a different approach at times to this grief. For me great grief also brings great gratitude I have any of this at all. That I have someone to be sad with and lose something so important with. And we can try again for this, but this love is a once in a lifetime love. It’s the kind that always helps me love myself more, and I needed a lot of that.

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The unthinkable

*also please don’t tell us it was early or it will all be ok, tell us it’s ok to express our journey as we see fit, and that you will hold us through our pain.*

What they fail to tell you when you’re a survivor of trauma, huge life transitions, and vicious ongoing self-development; is that you won’t hit a place where human suffering becomes less. Unknowing of this you will keep searching. Maybe the beauty is that you search anyway.

There is a certain amount of entitlement that a survivor has. They almost expect that if and when they have worked hard to turn their stars around that life will grant them a time to sail peacefully. Perhaps I am not capable of sailing peacefully, because I’m too determined to fill every page. I fill in the margins, and the back, and the top, and then I make notes around that too.

My best friend calls it defying gravity.

We thought we could defy gravity with science and this time again is not the one for us. Again.

It has however allowed me the opportunity to view with extreme clarity the many changes in myself that have occurred over the last two years. It has allowed me to know I won’t shatter into a million pieces. It’s allowing this unique look at my sensitivity. I thought I was Teflon before, and that was all wrong. You are not Teflon until you have experienced unspeakable loss. And even then soft can never be Teflon, you may think you are, but you are not.

I thought I experienced suffering before, but this is an entirely different ball game. This time I’m attached to all my feelings. This helps me understand why the body has such elaborate defense mechanisms in place, because we humans have soft skin and tender hearts for a reason. We are meant to connect with others and to commune with our innermost voices, and yet so many of us become so different as a result of the world we live in. It is not a place for soft skin and warm smiles.

This inevitable contradiction blinds me with pain on a daily basis.

I was working so hard to be able to have time to relax with family, and now again crisis takes precedence and our time off together becomes grieving. This is one of the worst parts. Thinking of getting back into the swing of work, or talking about it without crying.

Watching her is the worst part. Watching her wonder if she could have done something differently. Watching her wracked with sobs. It cuts through me. And now we wait to see if her body will expel is naturally or if we go for a D & C. Wondering if our donor and her are in some way incompatible and thousands of dollars are wasted. Wondering if we can’t have one at all. If we will. If I even think I could make it through this again.

This isn’t just one loss, and “it’s early”, and you have more frozen embryos. This is a year of waiting to exhale. Focusing, surrendering, sacrificing all our time to relax and play together for appointments, needles, injections, tests, poking and prodding and at the end all that hard work is supposed to pay off.

Except that isn’t how the world works. Also while I know I’m angry right now the word Yale means nothing to me. Perhaps I’ll write out experience in the next blog post because I need to get it documented anyway. Just because a couple of nurses are kind does not make it comprehensive or a good experience. After the bleeding we were told to go back on Monday for an ultrasound, they didn’t have an apt Monday (even though we were told). No communication that this was a necessary appointment, that if one twin was lost the other might follow.

Except we were elated by that tiny heartbeat on the screen. Ok good we have one. Not at one point did anyone even know what was happening in there. With our chart or file. No one has checked on her. Our Dr does not care, we have ten doctors.

We had to decide frozen or fresh transfer at 5 pm when I had clients all evening and then no one knew what was happening. A lady called my wife and said you’ll need to discuss this with your husband. This is a fertility clinic for crying out loud. They aren’t used to same sex couples? We had been attending a year and you don’t know us? It was so frustrating, but we let ourselves block it and so many other things out because eye on the prize.

A doctor who was seasoned and knew what they were doing would have warned that mono di twins might be different, the heart rate was in the lowest end of the spectrum. Yet we came home with an ultrasound picture and hope in our hearts. I think they could have known at that time if someone was paying attention. Yale is a fertility farm and we were cattle. I’m furious. I kept chalking up my frustrations to normal things on my end, but looking now at all the dropped balls.

We are going to take our 4 remaining babysicles somewhere else. Norwalk I think. I’m done. I wonder if they see too much extreme hope and extreme suffering and have had to desensitize themselves completely?

And before that we need a vacation. I’ve missed my wife for a year. We need to give some tlc to us and our relationship, and find a new normal. This dream is just too painful right now.

We have other things to focus on for awhile.

At least I get to know I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through something like this with. Rather than tearing at one another we are careful and kind. The other is sacred to us, and that is an irreplaceable gift in this world.

Back to square one…. again..

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Big Dreams growing even Bigger

*I was pleasantly surprised to find this morning that even though I’ve prioritized some different matters lately, I am still a writer. This is an actual text I wrote to my wife this morning. “Babe I’m not out here separate on my own creating dreams and you asleep in bed. I’m out here trying to reach dreams because of how tenderly you wrap me in every fold of your heart. No one has ever loved me like you do. Not even a parent ever. Don’t you know what that means.”

I love a good blogging on a Sunday.

I was thinking this morning how amazing a thing it is in humanity that we can try on new ways of being in each new day. I think sometimes we forget we can give ourselves this special permission. It’s so exciting to try something you haven’t done before. Upset about your sex life? Do something about it! Go buy an outfit or read a book by someone blessed with the ability to have found openness in that department. Ps they never look how you think do they? We picture kinky sex goddesses and then see the author and surprise it’s just a normal person of average height and size.

Funny before I wrote this sex wasn’t close to my mind, ha. It’s odd how life and the mind work, and these days I am loving not having it figured out. But seriously take anything you’ve wanted to try or be more of. Want to be more adventurous, plan an adventure. Don’t think about it just pack enough stuff in a bag for the night drive away and stay somewhere. Stay in an air bnb, meet new people, eat at a new place. Actually taste your food, rather than eating on the go.

Have kids and think adventures like that are no longer yours? Make whatever you’re doing an adventure. A trip to the grocery store can be an adventure. Try a new sample, pay a person a compliment, drive a different route there and take a walk.

Anything can be an adventure!

A dose of mindfulness can bring magic to the mundane. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow. It’s all in your mind and your story.

Want to try a different kind of job? Do it! Where there is a will there is a way and if we plant an intention and water it with curiosity and exploration, anything can happen.

Many of my important a ha moments and inspiration for dreams have been brought about by movies. Which is really watching someone’s creative endeavor about a story right? So in my quest for love there have been some key movies. Julie and Julia helped me know how I wanted to treat and be treated in relationship. Watching Stanley Tucci and Meryl Streep delight in one another. That movie was more me than I was at that time, and it gave me a road map to my dreams.

A roadmap to my dreams was carefully wrapped in a 90 minute film that many might consider corny or not worth their time, but for me it resonated. A roadmap to our dreams can be anywhere. It can be hidden in the most obvious place. All you have to do is look with the magical gaze of childlike enthusiasm. Somehow I never lost mine. I thought I had, but when I met the love of my life it opened like a dam.

I’ve been blooming with creativity ever since and the courage to accept my dreams that have been laid here before me all along.

Another one of these movies was Cheaper by the Dozen. My favorite line was Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt looking over their high school yearbook and that one of them wrote to the other, “I finally found someone whose dreams are as big as mine.” I think of that line all the time in my current love. And of course my mind that was afraid to accept my own greatness thought well that’s just a movie, and of course in the movies people always have enough money etc. and that was just another way I told myself I wasn’t worth my big dreams. And I held myself back.

So not too long back I wrote about a dream about a cottage on a nudist colony in Woodstock Connecticut. One where I can write naked a jay bird and in my most authentic. A place that is free from all varieties of shame. My shangrila if you will.

But how would I do that? I was behind as usual, which is why my constant inner fairy godmother led me to solar, and here I am. I refuse to give up. So now I am banking the funds for my cottage in the woods. I mean look at this place?!!

Cottage is a bit of an understatement eh?!

Anyway so let’s do a dream checklist? Though I’m thinking of an art project that involves a dream map, and all the places the my roads diverged, and then when I have arrived so far….

Feeling like I belong: check

A healthy, respect filled, glowing love: check

Financial stability: while I often still have fears around this: check

Kids healthy, safe, and know they are loved: check

Education on a career that I adore and am passionate about: check

Writing: check

Self-love: so so much further towards this check than I ever was… in progress as always

Life still being filled with adventure: check

Big family: double check. Double being the operative word here.

Anyone see what’s going on in here ?! It’s very early to be completely sure, and can we ever be completely sure of anything ? But it looks like we are going to be having identical twins. We know they are identical because we only transferred one embryo from our IVF cycle.

So please sign us up for family of 7 reservation to our colony cottage. Mini-van and sanity checks necessary. 😉

Now just to wait and see if they are boys or girls….

And a fond shout out to the one who makes all these dreams possible my lovely wife. My wife who has endured hormones, injections, and poking and prodding over the last year that I’m quite sure she never anticipated in her life. An egg retrieval procedure, and then an embryo transfer. My wife who is battling through fatigue, 3 x daily progesterone insertions, nervous anticipation, nausea, new aversions and smells, bloating, and all the while enduring a horrific commute and protecting our streets by day and night.

My wife and my kids are my heroes and my biggest inspiration! They are holding down the fort and cooking meals, while I am knocking doors day and night to fuel our many giant dreams.

I am blessed beyond explanation, but par for the course, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.

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Ivf Retrieval Day

It’s retrieval day!!!!

It has been feeling like the (an) end to this journey, but it’s actually just the beginning.

It’s the end of hormone injections and the related symptoms, and the end of a great many questions and nervousness. The end of three failed iui treatments and all the associated emotions. And yet it’s the beginning of an even more intense period of waiting for phone calls from the lab on the development of our little one (ones).

It’s beginning again down a road into a dark forest and not knowing what’s on the other side.

Will we get lost in there? Another gigantic disappointment, another cycle to wait and more hormones before a frozen transfer if this one doesn’t stay? How much of this roller coaster can we take? It’s been such a wild ride. But for the first time in my life even amidst sometimes crushing disappointment nothing feels like life or death.

I never even pictured having another baby, ever.

I spent most of my life worrying I didn’t deserve, nor was I up to the task of the first three. So to find myself standing here, calmly walking toward my next dream with confidence and joy. It is a dream like no other. I’ve already won the lottery, and written the best seller, and recognized my singing voice on stage in a moment of sheer shock and gratitude. Finding my love already feels like all those things mixed.

It has changed me so profoundly I am becoming rewired.

So many of my anxieties are calmed. And this isn’t a momentary high from idealizing something that turns out much differently. This is the real deal. Steady on my feet and walking headfirst toward another amazing dream, one I never saw.

It’s not very often life surprises me.

This is because whenever it did when I was young, and that was often, those were not good surprises. I became hyper vigilant and carefully in control of each happening to avoid further pain. But that has its side effects. And finding this love has surrendered me back into a childlike dreamer I was always meant to be.

I’ve turned my Stephen King movie into a John Hughes one. Sorry Stephen I love your work, I just wouldn’t want to be in one…. again.

And I used to be too fragile to be in the creation of a dream. Any setback would crumble and tumble me, and lead me down a path of dark thinking and misery.

Now I am finding faith and a well balanced way to view reality.

So it’s neither fantastic or terrible, but a mixture of both of those moments on a steadfast bridge of love.

I have a family of best friends on there with me, and I’m finally adjusting to life in partnership and belonging that I couldn’t feel I deserved before. Now I am accepting this as my life, and everything that comes with it.

So here we are…. I’m about to be a “nearing 40” new mother. Here I am, the happiest I’ve ever been.

At another new beginning….with knowing there will still be so many more.

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Time. A most valuable asset.

Time in reflection is so necessary for gratitude.

There was a time that I ordered one meal at a restaurant and split it three ways for my kids. A time we all rented a small room upstairs in the home of a generous woman as I labored through school. A time when we finally got our first real home approx 7 years ago. Nicer and larger than any space we had occupied as a family. There was a time when in this home a relationship didn’t work out, and I didn’t know how I would pay the mortgage. This is when friends who became family moved in and we made it work.

There was a year I was so lost and lonely. Alone on Christmas Eve, I watched The Holiday and cried, and cried the whole day because I wanted that forever family with a person who saw me, didn’t resent me, and is a woman 😉 I never thought I would find that with how full our lives already are. I had been told and shown that a lot of people prefer to create their own from scratch, not learn how to mesh in an already made world. It’s not shame or in need of pity it’s just true.

I’m a lot. I think a lot. Strive a lot. Dream a lot. And before I was loved as I am now I panicked a lot! I wasn’t always kind when I was scared. I own those truths, and I need to live with them, and continue to try and be a better version of myself…

And now this a time where I get a constant infusion of unwavering enthusiastic love streaming through my veins. A partnership where we truly are best friends and want the same things. My wife teaches us the art of small ego each day. She doesn’t take things overly literally or get bent out of shape easily. She is genuine and loving. And we can be lighter, and more genuine and loving as we learn from her.

This is a time where being kind is more important than being right. A time when it’s ok to slow down and feel feelings and moments without rushing. Without rushing. Unimaginable for me. If you only knew.

This is a time where I have money in my bank account and have paid down debts, and can love myself more for those efforts. A time I am learning to put off instant gratification just a little bit more to create a safety net for my family.

This is a time I can play and enjoy life a little bit, there was a time that I thought I would never have time like this.

All the time I have left in this world is yours….

💜💜💜

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Untangled thoughts are a bridge in my world…

This is my life in the raw. I’ve done my best to be the judge and jury and find myself guilty in any way possible of incorrect parenting/living. I’ve spent most of my life fearing this, and the journey I undertook only gave more evidence. It is now that I am finding my way out of that. Because now everything makes a lot more sense.

A letter to my son: bless anyone with the courage to brave my handwriting. This is how I spend my mornings. Deep in thought and reflection, and I’ve learned to stop finding that to be wrong as well. “Too much introspection, you’re too serious, too too too.”

Perhaps I should type the transcript for ease? I can’t right now because now I need to scramble like eggs to at least put clothes on for work.

I am here feeling radically grateful for the love I’ve had the courage to spend a lifetime weaving. I love myself enough to be brave enough to put pen to paper and to show my heart to the world.

You should know I criticize myself. Or I try, but it just isn’t as loud anymore. I am corny, inappropriate, shouldn’t this be private between him and I? Aren’t these emotions too intense for a child to hear from their parent. I’m not sure on this one: but I know it’s almost impossible to explain my story, and they are the ones who really need it. So they will never have to doubt my love for them.

I’ve created many critics along the way, but do you know what was harder to find? Someone who was willing to look further into me and to invest. That is what we all want. To be loved like that. And I hope and pray I get enough time on this earth to teach my children this self-acceptance and love I’m only finding now.

Is that even possible ? Or don’t they probably have to have their own journey with its trials? Isn’t that the beautiful part even, would we want to skip it in the name of less suffering. I finally know I wouldn’t. I used to think if only I had suffered less I wouldn’t be so crippled in so many areas. Now I not only know logically, but have lives, that the “wound is where the light enters.” -rumi

Love should never be private. Perhaps if we showed more of our scars and trials to the world, more people could love themselves better as well. And then their gentle hearts could also be accessible to their children, and not just their drive and protective instincts. Not just their advice and guiding.

The kids are all right. They will find their way. It’s the adults who are fragile and scared. Scared of not enough, scared of too much, scared of the unlived portion of their lives.

Kids still believe in magic and hope and play. I want to more like kids in the second half of my life.