What is best for my essential self?

Last Night's, Late Night Blogging

I should be sleeping right now. The moon is peaking through my curtains, the clock is ticking past my bed time and my cat just crawled into bed to settle in for the night. Yet something is calling me to blog. To speak about the quietness, to examine the part of my life that has me pausing and to willingly share what's been going on. Introspection isn't always easy for me, though truth be told, I don't think it is easy for anyone. It requires energy, willingness and courage and an awareness of the self. 

I'd like to talk about my journey with infertility and how I'd like to start calling this my journey with motherhood. I'd also like to talk about the Power of Purpose training course I'm taking at work. When I took the course nearly 3 years ago, I was at a very challenging time in my life. For the first time I was facing my depression, my desire to have children and my relationship with myself. Something happened during the 5 week course and through conversations and activities, I discovered hope, breaths of fresh air and a knowing that I would be journeying forward with this knowledge as a foundation for my growth. 

One of the activities in the course is to talk about our WANTS. The big things we want, what we are doing (or not doing) to get them and the roadblocks we place in our way, mostly out of fear and self-worth that stop us from getting them.

Motherhood was one of my big wants. There were times it was all I could think about. Yet all I seemed to focus on was my envy for other's pregnancy's and the struggles within my own infertility. In a state of depression, I floated further from my real want and essential self and began living like a robot, doing what I could to get through the day. Until I took this course. Somewhere deep inside, I was willing to unearth what was going on and became willing to learn from it. Reflecting back, I see that me and my body were so disconnected, that no baby could have been brought in to this experience, nor did I really want that for them or me. I wanted a baby so that I didn't have to be sad anymore. And in some way, I believed that a baby would save me from having to save myself. 

Fortunately,

(and I say that now, 5 years later,) 

my infertility 
was my doorway 
into my own healing. 

Motherhood remains a want for me. Though I'll be honest, as I was reengaging in the activities in this training course, I realized that I had other wants. And these wants weren't all about motherhood, they were about me living more fully in my life. I began to see how our wants can shift, that what is really important will ask you to fight for it a little bit harder and that we all have a choice.

Maybe someday I'll be a mommy?

Maybe someday our child will be created in my body?

Or maybe, someday, my husband and I will open our home (because our hearts are already there) to a child that doesn't have a mommy and daddy and love them, because we were meant to be together?

And even with the dreams of motherhood, I recognize that the reasons I thought I needed to be a mommy are fears that aren't true (though sometimes they feel like they are). So to reclaim, I'm rephrasing these lies into truths.

I am love. I am healing. I love children.

I am accepted for who I am.

I'm learning to live in the now,

I trust, with faith like never before, that I am exactly where I am meant to me. 

This Morning

On my way in to work, I realized that my late night blogging was my celebration of my essential self. That in my willingness to explore my want for motherhood, my day-to-day choices in how I live are mine to honor. I cannot change what comes my way, though I can feel and learn and acknowledge all of it.This journey is enjoyable (and more fun) if I pay attention and when truth pours from my heart, I begin to self-forgive and course correct that which is no longer needed. I don't know the future, though as I head into life, if there is doubt, I ask,

"What is best for my essential self?"