The Way to Now

There’s something I experienced first hand this winter that I did not realize was so scary and uncontrollable.

Depression.

I wouldn’t even want to talk about it, because now I can pretend it never happened, but I realize how un-talked about it is.  Probably more women in their 30s experience depression as a result of infertility than from any other cause.  This is only what my intuition tells me, but I have a feeling it’s true.  I have been dealing with what infertility does to a woman’s body, psyche, spirit, and lifestyle for over a year and a half.  I know that does not even touch on how long many women have dealt with it, but eighteen months can seem like an eternity when you want to start a family.

So, what’s the disappearing act?

Well, I don’t know where the depression goes, but it’s not a present reality in my daily life anymore.  I am not under any illusion that it will never return, but I think there are steps I took to create some places of sanctuary in my life.  First, I recognized last fall that something was not right.  I felt hopeless, I had no interest in my work, I did not want to see my friends.  To anyone who knows me, that does not sound like me.  I only sought out a therapist because I knew I should seek out a therapist.  But, talking it out really does help.  The steps I needed to take included finding a doctor who specialized in reproductive medicine (the closest one is four hours away), finding a local acupuncturist, and finding a way to take some time for me.

In the beginning years of my career, all I wanted to do was nurture it and grow it, and build something that meaningful.  Throughout high school and college, I guess you could say I was an overachiever.  I always had a goal of blowing away the expectations.  I don’t even know where that comes from – I haven’t gotten that far in therapy!  I was president of Future Community Leaders of America by the time I started my sophomore year of high school.  I was president of my youth group my senior year.  In college too, I was hired to lead the group that designed activities for the students living in the dorms.  I was editor of the English department’s undergraduate literary journal.  So, for my body to tell me that I couldn’t achieve motherhood at exactly the time I planned for it to happen was unacceptable.

There’s a show on TV right now called Life Unexpected and it takes a really honest look at life for several adults in their early 30s.  Two of the characters find out the kid they had in high school is now 16 and seeking emancipation.  Since they had given her up for adoption, they never expected to see her again.  In fact, after the mom found out she was pregnant, she never told the father.  He was the quarterback of the football team and never thought in a million years he fathered a child.  The 16-year-old kid, Lux, shows up seeking emancipation from the foster care system and they discover a life they never expected.  All the mom’s issues from her own father abandoning her, to her current distance from the rest of her family play out now in meeting her daughter.  Lux’s dad, the quarterback, can’t seem to get his life together – his father has never been emotionally unavailable to him, and he has a hard time making himself available to others … until Lux.  His daughter changes him.  They all have to confront their issues and it never comes out in a neat package tied with a bow, but they allow themselves to open up to each other.

We are all living unexpected lives in some way or another.  Think about your life for a moment … did you expect everything that has happened?  And, even the disappointing realities have taught you something, right?  Well, that’s where I’ve come … to a place of trusting the unfolding of my life, unexpected.  When I felt really hopeless and forgot that God had a future set out for me, I needed other people to remind me of the huge track record God has had in my life of giving me everything I’ve wanted.  Was now really the time to lose hope?  Since I wasn’t sharing any of this with most of the people I know, the circle of people to give me hope was pretty small.  But, for me, a few voices pulled me to a new place, a place of healing.  A couple of the voices were authors I read at that time.  Then there was my therapist, whom I only needed to see five or six times, and then a couple of minister friends, and of course, my family.  I chose not to be on any kind of medication for depression, and within a matter of three or four months, I began to feel better, more like myself.

With my medical doctors being four hours away, I set up some time away from work as well.  It was time to follow the protocol they set up for me, but even better, time to spend with my family on the Front Range.  I really needed some weeks of unscheduled, uninterrupted time to do what my spirit asked of me.  I truly rested.  I cooked with love and ate with family.  I just stopped putting so many expectations on my body.  At the end of my time off, after I followed the doctor’s plan, did everything work out perfectly?  No.  I am still waiting for my time of impending motherhood.  Maybe even better than being able to put my infertility behind me so quickly, I succeeded in listening to myself and renewing a right spirit within me.  I have not felt that awful, lifeless feeling of depression in a long time.  That was the real gift of giving myself some time.  Even more so, sharing with others the challenges and new understandings I’ve learned spread far beyond just what I’m going through.  It’s a matter of living and experiencing life.  We either choose to do it all by ourselves, or we share it, because that’s one of God’s gifts to us – community.  It is easier to carry something that 200 people are holding up, than to carry it all by yourself.

I was at a lunch today to plan a fundraiser to ship medical supplies to a hospital in Kenya I’ve had the privilege of visiting.  Together with Project C.U.R.E. and The Center for the Church and Global AIDS, United Methodists all over Colorado will be raising money – our part will be with a golf tournament in May.  While this would usually just be another project in the work I do, I had a different feeling about it today.  Today, I felt “there” in a way I haven’t felt in the past year.  I was present – fully present.

Why was today so different?

Months ago, I was feeling something many of us in our 30s do.  I was having a bout with depression and I felt at the end of what I could do for others.  I was not even caring for myself.  I needed rest.  I needed to be.  I needed my house and home cooking and time apart.  For most of 2009, I felt this set of needs come and go in waves.  I would push them aside or tell myself, yes, I will care for you later.  By September, I remember getting ready to celebrate my 31^st birthday.  That day, I cried.  I could not celebrate.  I felt so sad, so empty, so ready to fall apart.  I finally started talking about my pain and sharing my sadness with my husband.  It broke a cycle that I had let occur for months.  I would feel ok and work at my wonderful job and be thankful for all the gifts in my life.  Then, I would come back around to the reality that I really wanted to start a family.  With so much fullness, there was still emptiness.  It was a devastating feeling, knowing I lived four hours from any specialists or doctors that even offered fertility help.  I also revealed to my parents how empty and sad I felt.  While I think it scared them a little, they were quite supportive of my need to explore the ways to get help.  I had already started seeing an acupuncturist, a tall dancer who was raised in Grand Junction, and had just received her doctorate for acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.  I really liked how acupuncture felt, but mostly, I liked that I could talk to my actual doctor every week.  Unlike my western medicine OB/GYN, whom I almost never spoke to in person, April was personable and knowledgeable.  I remember the moment clearly, when she asked, “How are you doing today?” and I replied, “You know, I think I realized that I’m putting on a brave face when anybody asks me that question.  Really, I’m not doing good.  I have never been so sad.”

It was a moment of pure honesty.

Where was I to go from here?  Next, I found a therapist/counselor, whom my insurance covered.  The first session I had with her, I just cried through my story.  I couldn’t believe how heart-broken I felt over not being able to conceive.  After that first session, I took the rest of the afternoon off from work, and that night, I told my husband how shocked I was to realize the state of my heart.  He listened, looked me in the eye, and said, “What should we do?”  We talked about waiting for nature to take its course, waiting for acupuncture and herbs to revive my body, looking up fertility specialists, or trying to work with the limited options my OB/GYN was offering here.  While still talking, and sniffling (mostly me), he Googled the specialists my brother and sister-in-law started seeing on the Front Range.  They are rated as the best, not only in the state, but one of the best in the country.  As he read this, I felt my heart perk up and heed the good news.  Suddenly, Eric was saying to me, “I just filled out two forms, and should definitely have someone contacting me.”  Two days later, he told me our phone consultation would be in a month!  The husband got extra points for taking the lead on getting something in the hopper.

That is the medical side of how I started to breathe again, feeling the solid hope in my heart that we would, indeed, be parents.  But, still in the midst of feeling completely disconnected, and very distracted at work, I knew I needed to take a break.  We were just going into the program year at the church, and the busy time of Advent and Christmas would be right around the corner.  This was definitely not the time to take a break, but it was also not the time to have a break down.  I came clean to the people I had been acting my butt off around for months and said I needed to take some time off for me, but I didn’t have a clue what that might look like.  Over the next months we worked out a plan that would begin around the 1^st of the New Year.  I combined a renewal leave for the purpose of writing with a medical leave and was able to work out an eight-week leave from work.

As Advent and Christmas rolled around, I was counting down the days until I could have seemingly endless hours of doing exactly what I wanted, what I needed.  My husband and I worked with our new fertility specialists and devised a plan.  We actually did one round of fertility drugs in December.  I was almost giddy thinking the large and looming task of getting pregnant might be taken care of by the time I was on my break!  One of my friends said only a person having fertility issues would call getting pregnant “work” or a “task” – touché.  The result was not the one I was looking for – a period instead of a positive, but the good thing is, I ovulated (not a usual occurrence for me).  The beginning of January came and I began my time off and I felt almost immediately a weight lifted.  I pinpointed it on that same day – finally I wasn’t caring for anyone else but me.  I took a brilliantly selfish deep breath, and have every day since!