I invited Connie Peebles Barrow, a fertility coach, to share with you today.
Like many of you, one day, I woke up and found myself in the thick of my fertility journey. Month in, month out, I kept dangling the reality further out into the future, telling myself, “I’m not REALLY having infertility struggles. This could be the month!…This could be the week!...This could be the day!”
My journey over those five years of trying to conceive would lead me to the peaks of pregnancy, then the dramatic, downward plunge of miscarriage, not once or twice, but three times. Even in the midst of my second miscarriage as I came close to hemorrhaging in the local emergency room, I clung to the not-even-remote possibility that my little one just might pull through. Hope is a funny thing, that is “funny strange”, not “funny ha-ha”.
Hope was the life raft that I clung to—a glimpse, a whisper, an inflection of the voice. I looked for it in the nuances of my life when I could no longer see it in the details. Even as I received the death knell prognosis from my reproductive endocrinologist that I had a less than five percent chance of ever conceiving with my own eggs, my reflex was to grasp for any sign of hope. I asked my doctor if he knew of anyone, even just one woman, with a fertility history similar to mine who had ultimately conceived on her own. That moment before he answered is frozen in time for me. I willed him to say “yes”, yet felt embarrassed that my desperation had led me to this miserable place. After what felt like an eternity, my doctor said “yes”, and I clung to that word.
I would like to say that I consciously chose to stay with hope and leave desperation behind. The reality for me—as it is in most, if not all, of my fertility coaching clients’ lives—is that whether we like it or not, both hope and desperation are our companions on this fertility journey.
Desperation is the primal scream of our spirit as it craves relief from the fear and powerlessness. Yet, when we find ourselves bottomed out, the flicker of hope re-ignites once again. Synchronicities (aka “God’s coincidences”), nudges, our Inner Voice show us our next step, our new path, our possibilities. And, before we know it, we find ourselves soaring again, spiraling upward with renewed energy and hope.
Is it naïve to continue to hope in the face of improbabilities?
Is it self-sabotage to feel such extreme desperation when you still have even a slight chance of conceiving?
No, on both counts! As an ocean wave is both ebb and flow so is that of our spirit. The key is to avoid getting stuck in the ebb of desperation and to sustain your spirits’ momentum to shift into the flow of hope. Desperation grabs your attention, showing you the depths of your desires and the measure, the capacity, of love and joy that is yearning to be fulfilled. Hope is the compass, the magnet that draws you ever closer to your heart’s desire, with a knowing beyond your earthly knowledge. Hope creates an opening that allows you to co-create with Spirit, interweaving faith and actions together to manifest in the outer world what you have only imagined in your inner world.
So, what to do? Sustain that ocean wave in your life through support. Support—at the mind, body, and spirit levels—is the glue that binds together the ebb of desperation and the flow of hope. It comes to each one of us in different forms at different times…through fellow fertility bloggers, support groups, mind/body/spirit practitioners, books, workshops, spiritual retreats, and life coaches. As a life coach, my focus is on walking alongside my client to provide her with encouragement and a fresh perspective, asking the tough questions and keeping my client true to her heart’s path.
May each one of you who reads this know in your heart a full measure of support with each step you take on your journey, and may you find peace and joy not only at your destination but also as you travel along.
And, so it is!
For more information about Connie Peebles Barrow and Fertile Possibilities, visit www.fertilepossibilities.com.
