Empowered

The fact that I happen to be heading towards becoming a mother at the same time that I’m having a mid-life reckoning is super-fun. Now I’m not only trying to birth an actual child, but also all of the other things that I want to birth in my life, like essays and books and articles and a daily and more robust yoga practice. The fact that I am picking up a dropped thread with most of those things can feel an awful lot like failure or hopelessness. For a long time, it was my habit to lean into my feelings of failure and wrap myself in “poor me” mentality. It can feel good to feel bad. It can make you feel justified about making unhealthy indulgences and wasting time. I always had magical thinking to fall back on; I was sure that if I just did enough visualization and ritual everything would work out.

Back in January when I lost my magical thinking security blanket, I began a spiritual crisis. The crisis is largely around redefining my idea of God and my relationship with whatever that is, and my current spirituality is still an ungrounded mess that is just beginning to get sorted. However, one of the unexpected gifts of “losing my religion” around manifestation is that I’m no longer falling into the “poor me” hole so often. Magical thinking not only puts the blame on individuals for things outside of their control, but it also depends on some ambiguous thing outside of oneself to do the heavy lifting of dream-making. It can distract and detract from the personal work and changes in behavior that need to take place to actually make things happen. Though magical thinking gave me an illusion of control, losing it has made me feel more empowered.

Two weeks ago I had surgery to remove the giant fibroid that had made me unable to carry a baby. Once the surgeons were in my uterus, they were able to see that it was even larger and more complex than they were able to see on the MRI. The method of this particular surgery can cause a patient’s organs to take on water if it lasts too long. My fibroid is so large that they had to end the surgery before they removed it all because my lungs were beginning to take on water. Waking up coughing in the recovery room was scary, and I had to unexpectedly spend the night at the hospital so my oxygen levels could be monitored. I will now need to have another round of the same surgery in a couple weeks to remove the rest of it. A year ago this would have all sent me into a self-pity downward spiral. Honestly, I think this one would have been justified. I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling sorry for themself after all the shots and the four surgeries it’s requiring for me to do a perfectly normal, natural, basic thing like have a baby. Weirdly, I don’t feel sorry for myself.

I have always wanted to be a mother. It is one of my dreams for my life.  Thanks to medical science, pregnancy is a possibility for me when it would have been impossible otherwise. The same benevolent mother nature to whom my woo woo crunchy granola self had capitulated turned out to be the thief of my dream thanks to her giant fibroid. I understand that I am blessed to have the resources and technology at my disposal to choose this process, and that this process is a privilege. However, I am also choosing the hard thing. The painful thing. The very expensive thing. I am not giving up. I am doing everything it takes for me to become a mother. Even when some might argue that maybe God or the “universe” didn’t want me to. And that makes me feel powerful. That makes me feel like a badass. That makes me feel like a true creator of my own life. Now I sincerely know my own power to make my dreams happen.