Crazy IVF Dreams...And Good News at the Clinic

I've had a couple nights pretty bad insomnia...probably some of it having to do with the drugs I'm on, some of it my anxiety about traveling/how this cycle is going. Last night I lay awake for hours, and when I finally fell asleep had the weirdest dreams about my clinic.

First, they didn't do an ultrasound to check the follicles, they had me lean forward and could see them as little ovals on my lower back. They said I had a lot, and then said that they weren't going to retrieve any, and I couldn't quite figure out why. Then, I went to have my blood drawn, and they needed a different kind of blood draw, they said, and they used a needle the size of the barrel of a ballpoint pen and put a big puncture wound in my arm that needed a couple stitches after. And the whole visit took 24 hours and no one seemed concerned about that. And then I got in a pretty major car wreck on the way home, but didn't really seem to be hurt. Has anyone else had weird dreams like this?

Back in the real world, I had my first visit at my out-of-town clinic today (I've been being seen locally up until now) and everything is looking really, really good. They're thinking retreival next Tuesday or Wednesday, possibly Thursday. The fact that we won't know the retrieval day until 36 hours ahead of time is causing stress as we've got to get my husband out here and he's in college and has already missed a lot of school because of his dad dying and we're going to have to get him a plane ticket at the last minute and he has a test on Tuesday that could cause big problems if missed...ugh...stressful. Need to focus on today's good news and not our potential scheduling nightmares. 

Hope everyone else is doing well on this lovely, sunny (in Colorado at least) Friday. Happy almost-weekend! :)

The Stirrup Queen's List of Blogs

Also known as "The Stirrup Queen's Completely Anal List of Blogs That Proves That She Really Missed Her Calling as a Personal Organizer." I wish I'd found this list when I first started with fertility treatments. It can direct you to blogs focused on all sorts of infertility-related topics (including pregnancy and parenting). Such a great resource. 

Positive Thinking and IVF

This book really helped me during a difficult time in my life. It's not a self-help book, but a look at the negative side of positive thinking.

So here’s what happened last summer with IVF cycle #3:

A few weeks before everything kicked into high gear, I went to an acupuncture appointment. The acupuncturist said to me, “There’s no medical reason you can’t be pregnant. Your only problem is that you’re not happy. Think positive and be happy, and you’ll get pregnant, no problem.”

First off, this was terrible advice to give me with only a couple weeks to go before treatment. Also, my fertility clinic had told me there were five different medical things wrong with me. And I was trying my best to be happy…how was I going to turn things around in just a few weeks?

But I tried…oh, I tried. I tried thinking positive to the point of being delusional. I tried to be happy, although how you’re just supposed to magically be happy all of a sudden is something that’s always eluded me.

And then my cycle ended with a chemical pregnancy, which means that technically I got pregnant, but my body was unable to hold onto the baby.

And I blamed myself--clearly, I wasn’t happy enough and positive enough.

“What baby wants to stay inside a mom that’s not happy?” the acupuncturist had said to me. My not being able to buck up had killed that baby.

Those were dark weeks. The guilt was overwhelming. My deepest fears surfaced--that I shouldn’t be a mom, I wasn’t happy enough to be a mom, I’d be doing any child of mine a disservice by bringing him or her into the world.

I had let bad/scared/conflicting thoughts into my head. And because I wasn’t able to keep them out, everything was doomed. There was no use even trying again--every baby was going to die and each time it was going to be my fault.

And then a friend sent me a book called Bright Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich. Once I read it, I felt so much better. The author’s talking about cancer here, but I think this applies absolutely to those dealing with infertility…just substitute “infertility” for “cancer” and “not getting/staying pregnant” for “cancer spreading” in the following passage:

“…without question there is a problem when positive thinking 'fails' and the cancer spreads or eludes treatment. Then the patient can only blame herself: she is not being positive enough; possibly it was her negative attitude that brought on the disease in the first place. At this point, the exhortation to think positively is ‘an additional burden to an already devastated patient,’ as oncology nurse Cynthia Rittenberg has written. Jimmie Holland, a psychiatrist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, writes that cancer patients experience a kind of victim blaming:

‘It began to be clear to me about ten years ago that society was placing another undue and inappropriate burden on patients that seemed to come out of the popular beliefs about the mind-body connection. I would find patients coming in with stories of being told by well-meaning friends, “I’ve read all about this—if you got cancer, you must have wanted it…” Even more distressing was the person who said, “I know I have to be positive all the time and that is the only way to cope with cancer--but it’s so hard to do. I know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster and I will have shortened my life.”’”

I’m back at this fertility business again, in the middle of another cycle. And this time? I don’t care about being positive. I just want to stay calm, do what I can to not lose these weeks of my life to worry and stress and obsession over numbers and progress and statistical chances. I’m trying to have a good attitude, absolutely, trying not to go to that dark, scared place that is so, so close. But I think I can get through things this time without blaming myself, even if I’m once again not pregnant/without a baby at the end of all this.

The doctors are doing their job; they’re very good at their job. Aside from following their instructions exactly, it’s not up to me. I’m not going to cause this to succeed or fail.

Oh, and I’m not going back to that acupuncturist ever again.

Out-of-Town Fertility Clinic

Going to try and make this Denver trip a good one, even though the last thing I want to do right now is travel.

I'm going to Denver next week for two weeks, as we're in the middle of a fertility cycle and my clinic's out of town (we live on the other side of Colorado).

Having to travel for treatment complicates an already difficult situation. I was feeling really overwhelmed this past week trying to figure everything out--where am I going to stay, who's going to be with me when I need someone at the clinic (my husband's in college and can't really miss class so I'm doing the trip by myself), how are we going to get my husband there on retrieval day for his "donation", who's going to give me shots (I am a total baby with needles and have yet to give myself even one), are the passes going to be OK or will there be a ton of snow making driving difficult/impossible, how am I going to deal with missing my husband, etc. This is on top of all the normal stuff everyone has to deal with, such as having to take time off work for all the appointments etc. and trying to keep emotionally calm while doing something with such high stakes while all hopped up on hormones.

It'd probably do me good to focus on the positives of the situation:

1) I am so lucky that I get to go to my clinic, which one of the best in the world

2) My brother lives about an hour outside Denver, up in the mountains, and I can stay with him vs having to spend two weeks in a hotel

3) I telecommute for work, so there's no need to take all this time off

I'm grateful for these small blessings.

I think the best thing to do is to try and really enjoy this time as much as possible, and also make it as easy on myself as possible. There are so many friends that I want to see (I grew up and went to college in the area) that I'm not going to schedule things with, because I don't think running all over Denver/Boulder/the Front Range while not feeling so great and trying to keep all my medical appointments and working is such a great idea.

But I can see my brother, and a couple really close friends. Do some city things that I miss in my small town (good restaurants, boutiques, the art museum, etc.) And I get to have some days resting in bed, which I never do so I'm kind of looking forward to it.

It's all going to be good. And hopefully at the end I'm pregnant and can do for a while what I really want to do: stay home. :)

Image credit: Ishmael Orendain.

Halfway Pregnant

So I’ve stumbled onto a concept that’s working well for me as I go through my next fertility cycle:

My husband (a few days ago): “Can you help me lift this super-heavy water heater?”

Me: “I’m not supposed to lift heavy things. I’m halfway pregnant.”

It’s weird, being in the middle of a cycle. I’m obviously not pregnant. But the list of things I can’t do is long and essentially like I’m pregnant. No caffeine (oh, I miss tea in the mornings). No alcohol (ditto a glass of wine at night). No lifting heavy things. No baths. No hard hikes (must keep my heart rate below 140). No yoga (not allowed to sweat). No snowboarding (this one’s killing me, but at least the snow’s not epic this year). No trying to lose weight. Etc.

Essentially, I’ve got to act like I’m pregnant, even though I’m not. Again with the limbo.

Somehow, thinking of myself as halfway pregnant makes it all a little easier.

Image credit: Sleeping Sun

Ugh…None of My Clothes Fit! (And the Limbo of Going Through Multiple Rounds of Fertility Treatments)

Advice from this January's issue of Vogue.

So I was reading Vogue on the plane last week (I own almost nothing designer, but dream about having a closet full of those clothes), and January Vogue says new clothes are coming, it’s time to clean out your closet and get ready for them. And I so want to do just that (I love buying clothes…it’s my weakness), but it’s impossible in the middle of fertility treatments. Does anyone else have this issue?

First, the IVF cycles I went through last year led to weight gain. It’s only five pounds (OK, seven), but enough that some of my clothes are tight in the hips, and if I planned on staying this size, I would get rid of them, buy something new. But I don’t plan on staying this size. But I can’t lose the weight at the moment, because I’m in the middle of another IVF cycle.

Second, IVF hormones/prescribed herbal supplements (of which I took a ton) have made my boobs huge. I went from a B cup to a DD cup last year, and I have no idea how long that’s going to stick around (so far the DD is here to stay). My husband loves it, and I guess I don’t mind (although I was never one of those women who lusted after bigger boobs), except that it makes it so a lot of my tops and dresses (not to mention all my pretty bras) no longer fit, which is annoying. But I can’t get rid of all that stuff, because I don’t know what my body’s going to do in the end. I don’t want to buy new stuff for the same reason (although I had to buy new bras, there was no way of getting around that).

Third, hopefully, hopefully this current IVF cycle will work and by next month I’ll be pregnant! Yay! Which means soon nothing’s going to fit (which would be unbelieveably wonderful…I’m one of those women who have always wanted to be pregnant, I do not dread the changes to my body in the slightest). But even if I’m not pregnant with this cycle, I’m  probably still going to be in that limbo place where there are more procedures coming…

Bottom line: Very few things in my closet fit. And I don’t know what the future holds as far as pregnancy/further IVF treatments/getting to the end of the line where it becomes clear I’ll never be pregnant and then working out like crazy to get my body back to where it was before all of this madness started.

What to do? I guess I should box up everything that doesn’t currently fit, reevaluate those clothes when my body is back to normal (whatever normal turns out to be). I have enough that works to get by. Maybe buy a few things in my current size if it looks like I’ve got more fertility treatments ahead of me. Pray that soon I’ll be buying maternity clothes, and this limbo will be over.

It’s the limbo I’m hating right now--the clothes are just a place to focus my frustration and anger and fear, emotions I’m trying to suppress, but today are apparently bubbling to the top. Please, God, either get me pregnant, or let me know this isn’t going to happen so I can get my body and life back and get off this horrible fertility merry-go-round. I’m tired of being in limbo.

"Up in the Air"

Great movie, watched it for the second time last night and there are a couple of lines in it that I think are really profound.

First:

The movie's about a guy who flies around the country and fires people for a living, and he has the following exchange with someone he's firing, trying to show the guy he's firing that being let go from a boring corporate job is not necessarily the worst thing in the world (this is the rough exchange, not a direct quote):

Fire-er: Do you know why kids love athletes?

Fire-ee: No.

Fire-er: Because they followed their dreams. How much did they pay you to first come to work here and give up your dream?

I think it's so sad and so common...so many, many people give up their dreams to go into a respectable corporate career, me included. For me personally, I don't think it makes sense today to totally give up my corporate job, but I can work a lot less hours, and spend a lot more time focused on things I love.

Second:

Same guy is home for his sister's wedding. The groom has cold feet and the brother goes in to talk to him. The thing that he says that makes the groom realize it's going to be OK to get married is something along the lines of:

"Think back to your best memories, the days and times that you really treasure. Were you alone in those memories, or were you with other people?"

The answer of course is, other people, or at least it is unreservedly with me.

I've been thinking about that line since I first saw the movie, and since last night in a slightly different context. I'm in the middle of my 4th and last IVF cycle, and my husband will not be able to be with me for the transfer as he's in college, we need him to miss as little school as possible (our clinic's out of town). My mom would be the logical second choice, but she's in Costa Rica 'til March. So I've been thinking, do I ask a friend to come be with me, or do I go through it alone? Now I know the answer. I have a lovely friend in Denver I'm going to ask... 

New Year's Resolutions

I know I'm a week or so late with these, but here's where I want some change/movement this year. I want to: 

1. Travel less. Way less. Things are already looking bad for this particular resolution, however. Sigh

2. Do everything I/we can to try and get a baby/child into our lives. This is probably going to be the year where it at least becomes clear how things are going to shake out

3. Actually try to publish some of what I've been writing. More specifically: submit one piece each month for publication (multiple submissions per piece)

Wish me luck! And a belated Happy New Year to all my bloggy friends. :)

Just Because You’ve Been Damaged by Tragedy Doesn’t Mean You Have Nothing Left to Offer the World

Here's where we got married, Glade Park, Colorado.

A sweet story, told to me yesterday about the little log cabin chapel where my husband and I got married:

“When we were building the chapel,” Alice, who owns it, told me, “we were getting wood from an area of Glade Park that had been ravaged by fire. The supporting pillars for the structure that you see in the front, we decided not to strip them of evidence of the burn. We did that to remind us--I could picture those poor trees saying ‘I’m so damaged by the fire, I’m burned and disfigured, I’m no good for anything anymore.’

"And look where they ended up--the most important part of a chapel that’s meant so much to so many, many people.”

"Health and Family First"

The last few days of work before vacation have been, predictably, crazy. I keep repeating to myself over and over my mantra for the year, which is: "Health and Family First." Not work.

So when I'm asked to do another and another and another thing before leaving, I say no and instead get some exercise and help my mom with something she needs and go out to dinner with my husband. I no longer say yes and sacrifice all else, which is how it used to be.

I need to keep this up as I go through IVF in January. It's OK to take days off to deal with the appointments etc.

Work is no longer king. "Health and Family First."

Is it OK to Be an Older Mom?

I’m going to be an older mom. Not really by choice; I tried to have kids back in the 90s, and have been trying hard again for years. But it is what it is at this point, and I really need to find some acceptance with it. I think I’m also having a hard time living in a small town, where everyone seems to have their babies in high school or just out. In a place like San Francisco or New York, I’m sure I wouldn’t feel like such an oddity.

There are definitely advantages to being older, I know: more stable emotionally and financially, and I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do as a young adult, so there will be no regrets along the lines of “if only we didn’t have kids, we could be doing A, B, C and D.”

Still, the age thing is something I struggle with. Is it fair to the kid? Am I going to have the energy? Am I going to be able to make the necessary adjustments, having had so many years to get set in my ways?

My parents last week both inadvertently said things related to this that made me feel better.

My mom mentioned that when (if) I have the baby that’ll come out of the January IVF cycle, she’ll be the age her mother was when she had Luke, my youngest brother. Now granted, my mom was her mom’s last child, and Luke was my mom’s last child, but still, when my mom’s helping me she’ll be the same age as when her mom was helping her.

And then I was hiking with my dad and he was talking about how the life span is 20 years longer now than it was in his grandparents age, and why is it that we’re still pushing kids through college right after high school and then to get married and work and start a family? Why are all those extra years being tacked onto retirement? Why aren’t we altering things so they can be enjoyed earlier in life?

Now, I am well aware of the biological reasons to have kids in your 20s or 30s, and the earlier the better. But circumstances worked out so that that wasn’t possible for me. Instead, I got a whole lot of extra years to be young and have fun before starting a family.

“Well, seeing as if all goes well I’ll have my first baby next fall, I’m doing my part to put some of those years up-front,” I told my dad, laughing. Maybe I need to step back and truly appreciate that. How lucky to have some of those years up front when you’re young.

It’s OK to not be a young mom. I’ve just got to get my head around it. The things my mom and dad said, they’re helping me do that.

Fertility Update

There’ve been little bits of things to do here and there over the past few months, but thing are about to ramp up for our IVF attempt in January. Here's our history, and here’s the latest:

• My period should come in ~2 weeks, after which we’ll get a solid calendar
• We had appointments in Denver last week to update things that were expiring (baseline ultrasound, communicable disease blood work). Frustrating and EXPENSIVE to have to do that, but the rules are the rules. My husband also put away another frozen sample
• I've got a couple of what look like fibroids in my uterus, but Dr. Gus as my husband calls him says not to worry about it
• We’re going to be traveling in Europe with syringes and needles and meds; that should be interesting
• I’m feeling a bit scared and detached. I actually did not like going to the clinic last week at all. Really, not one good bit of news came out of that place in 2010; in a way it’s a little traumatizing to go back. Even when I had positive betas (pregnancy tests) they were like, “well, it’s positive, but the numbers are low (and/or aren’t increasing the way we’d like).” Even last cycle when we seemed to get a lot more eggs than before that was followed by a fertilization report of “sorry, all but 2 died.” Our clinic (CCRM in Denver) is one of the best in the nation if not the world and I’m really grateful to be able to go there, but I really hate physically going there, if that makes any sense. It’s hard for me to truly feel like anything positive can come out of that place after months and months and months of disappointment. This cycle is our absolute last. I’m scared to get my hopes up again. The past few months have been amazing, taking a break for the most part from thinking about how much I want a child and how nothing we’re doing’s working. The disappointment of it not working is so painful, I can’t imagine willingly putting myself through that again.

Except this time it might work…

My Dream Life, Part 3 of 5: Snowboarding

Powder days. Best thing in the world.

I wish snowboarding had been big when I was a child, and that my parents had had the money/time/interest to get me on a board as soon as I had the muscle coordination. In my dream I’m a pro snowboarder, at least through my early 20s, and then I get married and have a passel of kids and live in a little A-frame house in the mountains with prayer flags strung over the loft like a house I saw once in Vail. Funny how this dream doesn’t include any sort of education or intellectual success—things in my real life I’ve worked hard to achieve.

How to make this dream a reality? Well, I’m obviously not going to be a pro snowboarder in this lifetime, but that’s OK. I can still have the little A-frame in the mountains. Hopefully a kid or two. A life lived largely out-of-doors (although my husband, though he’ll go with me occasionally, is decidedly not an outdoorsy person, so that presents some difficulties).

My brother who died, he and I always planned to take one winter off together, live on the mountain, snowboard every day. Maybe there’s a way to make that happen. Snowboarding’s one of the very few places I’ve found peace since my brother died, one of the few things I genuinely want to do.

Hopefully this snow season I’ll be pregnant and sidelined. There’ll be many more seasons to come.

Photo credit: Mihai Japan.

An Ex-Boyfriend Contacted Me Through Facebook

My ex-boyfriends generally fall into two categories: those I’m friendly with, and those who don’t want to talk to me. One of the ones I though was in the latter camp sent me a message over the weekend, out of the blue after about 6 years.

He’s actually the last person I seriously dated before I met my husband. I’m sure his version of why we broke up is probably different, but my version is I was still in love with someone else, and didn’t really want a serious boyfriend, and he wanted to get married and have kids. Not necessarily to/with me, but that was his goal.

Anyway, really nice message, and his picture shows him with a baby so I assume he got the marriage and kids part figured out, which is great. Happy for him. And I’m glad we can be in contact, even though I’m sure it’ll be very sporadic. I hate losing anyone to the past.

But. Ex-boyfriends popping up make me feel unsettled. It’s got me thinking about that time in my past--things were complicated back then but they are infinitely more complicated now. I’ve lived through a lot since we dated, things I don’t necessarily want to talk about in a catching-up conversation with an ex-boyfriend. I feel a lot like I can’t really talk about how things have been. It’s too heavy. So I give the cheery “got married, still doing the same job, living in Colorado now, snowboard season’s going to rock, all’s well” reply, instead of “since we last talked my brother’s been killed, I’ve had to leave California and the ocean and I’ve been to hell and back trying to have a baby and we’re nowhere near through yet.”

And I feel more isolated than ever.

Getting Healthy for IVF

Today's exercise - check! Love hiking down into this little canyon.

We’re doing IVF again before too long (January), and since I’ve been back from California, I’ve been feeling like I need to get as healthy as I can in the intervening time. Thus, my somewhat scientific list:

Things To Do Each Day to Get Healthier

• Thyroid medication/prenatal vitamin – I am the worst pill taker in the world. Must have it on a chart to check off or it will not happen. Hypothyroidism is one of the things I was diagnosed with last winter in my fertility work-up
• 2 cups tea max – Love caffeine and I can officially drink it until my cycle starts, but it won’t hurt to go off, right? Next week it’s 1 cup, then 1/2, then zilch
• Healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner – Meaning lots of vegetables, whole wheat bread, brown rice, as little processed/packaged food as humanly possible. I’ve also been feeling a little anti-meat, so that may work its way in there as well. Having a really hard time losing the IVF weight I gained the last 3 cycles…it’s not that much weight, but still would be good to start this next cycle back where I was before all this went down
• Meditate – Which I’m not particularly good at doing, mostly because it’s hard to find the time. But if I need help with anything, it’s help with stress
• Work a reasonable workday – I am terrible about overwork. Causes huge amounts of stress. Need to stop that. My goal is 6 hours/day plus or minus
• Hike or yoga – Love hiking. Haven’t really been in the mood for yoga, probably because I haven’t gone in a while. Hope I can break out of that
• 1 glass red wine – Opinions differ on whether alcohol is good or bad fertility-wise. Of course during the actual cycle I’ll go off it, but in the meantime, a glass of wine is such a pleasure
• 1 sweet max – Includes fruit or juice, again trying to lose that IVF weight…

So I’ve got a little chart set up and today’s of course gone great. We’ll see how I hold up a little bit longer term. :)

Why Do You Want This Baby So Much?

So. I’m reading a book called “Inconceivable” by Julia Indichova (jury’s still out on whether I like it or not). But something I read yesterday keeps going through my mind--something a Chinese doctor said to a woman trying to conceive her second child. What he said encapsulates perfectly why I want a baby--why I can’t make this longing go away. (Because believe me, I’ve tried to talk myself out of wanting this. The savings in money and time and hassle and heartache would be astronomical.)

Here’s what the Chinese doctor said:

“You need to keep asking yourself why you want this baby so much. Do you want it for yourself, to own it, so you can say you have two children? Or is it a channel of your love to send out into the universe?”

New age-y, I know. But I need places for my love to go. January has got to be our month. Please God let it work. 

Infertility Sucks

A brief history of my attempts to have a baby:

1998 or 1999 – 2000-ish – Try to have a baby with husband #1. Unsuccessful. Never went to the doctor

2001 – 2005 – Need some time to be free and get over my bad/failed marriage

2005 – Brother’s killed and I’m in no shape for anything

2005 – Meet husband #2

January 2007 – Move in with husband #2, stop using birth control

October 2008 – Marry husband #2

January 2009 – Go to local ob/gyn re: possible infertility; no workup other than fibroid diagnosis

February 2009 – Fibroid surgery

April 2009 – Fibroid surgery #2; told to try on our own to get pregnant for the rest of the year, then come back if it doesn’t work

November 2009 – Schedule appt. with specialty clinic

January 2010 – Get worked up at specialty clinic. Turns out there are multiple issues. IVF recommended

February 2010 – IVF #1 cancelled due to cyst

March/April 2010 – IVF #2, chemical pregnancy (very early miscarriage)

July/August 2010 – IVF #3, chemical pregnancy (very early miscarriage)

Need to wait until January 2011 for various reasons – then: IVF #4

It’s hard to go through this. It’s not necessarily going to turn out happy. I do better just not thinking about it, unless there’s something specific that needs to be done.

Infertility sucks.

Update on 2011-02-20 01:08 by Buttercup

IVF #4 worked! I am officially pregnant! Due date: October 26, 2011.

Update on 2011-04-22 04:56 by Buttercup

IVF #4 pregnancy ended in a missed miscarriage at 11 weeks, 5 days. FET planed for July, 2011.

Update on 2011-08-18 20:31 by Buttercup

Our FET worked! I'm 6 weeks pregnant with twins!

Why Blog?

My desk in my home office, where much of this blog will be written.

So last week an idea that’s come and gone for years popped back into my head: “I should write a blog! It’d be fun!”

Quickly followed by: “That would have been cool ten years ago, but everybody’s doing it now.” And: “Why would anyone want to read anything you write, you’re just an average girl.” And: “There’s already not enough time in the day, why would you want to add something else to your schedule?” And: “That’s a stupid idea. Get over it.”

Herein (I think) lies the source of much of my misery: I don’t let myself do what I want to do. I talk myself out of things that sound fun--why, I have no idea. But I’m trying to get ready for another IVF cycle (major fertility treatment), and one of the things I’m trying to do is get myself into as happy a place as possible. Just in case those who say the reason I’m not getting/staying pregnant is because I’m not totally happy, and what baby wants to be with a mom who’s not 100% cheerful all the time? (I’ll have a lot to say on that point of view at some point, by the way.)

Anyway, my “get happy” mandate has somehow helped me brush aside all those negative voices, and hey! Here I am! Blogging! Just because it’s fun! And if I find I don’t like it, I can stop, right? But at least I’ve tried something I’ve thought about doing for a long time, instead of just leaving it on my long list of things I’d love to do.

Yay, me! :)

How Can You Be Happy After Bad Things Happen?

So here's the story:

Girl has childhood with some rough elements. Girl, grown up, does what’s expected of her instead of what she wants. Girl’s first marriage goes down in flames. Girl lives with her beyond-cool baby brother/best friend/soul mate (not sure that's the right word, but don't know what else to use to get across how close we were)--up until he’s killed in an accident. Girl meets and marries fabulous second husband and tries--unsuccessfully so far--to have the baby she’s wanted for absolute-ever.

Girl started out pessimistic by nature, and at this point feels pretty beaten down by life. But girl doesn’t want to be one of those people who wake up in the morning wishing for it all to be over. Instead, she wants to be the kind who wakes up happy and thankful for all the good in her life and all the amazing, beautiful, inspiring things that happen every day.

This blog is intended to document one girl’s attempts--big and small--to get to a happy place.

Welcome to my world. :)