The snowball nature of healing

Yesterday I left you at the moment of experiencing my first “WOO HOO HOOO I’m going to be a grannie” announcement. I’m going to continue that blog now as I don’t want the ink to dry too much before completing my thoughts on the snowball effect of healing. You can read “Existence can be hard without snowballs” here. Whilst this doesn’t completely fit into my usual Sunday “CREATING my new existence” theme it does in the sense that I am no longer the person I was when this happened to me.

So if you remember, having thought that I was making substantial progress in my healing I hit a brick wall. A girlfriend, Susan*, I’ve known since we were both four years old phoned to tell me her daughter Anne* was pregnant. WHAM. I had experienced my first “WOO HOO HOOO I’m going to be a grannie” announcement.

To be fair Susan wasn’t like that at all. She’d read my blogs and knew how difficult I had been finding life. She’d asked Anne not to post anything on Facebook until after Auntie Nicci had been told. Susan knew that her happy news had the power to upset me, so she let me know in the most sensitive and supportive way that she could.

My heart did sink for a moment and then thankfulness took over. This mum-to-be wasn’t a complete stranger: Anne was the first child of my longest standing friend. Anne was a child we thought might never come to be as several earlier pregnancies had been lost to miscarriage. She was a much-loved god-daughter and a source of much joy to me. Finally, there was a very strong possibility that Anne had endometriosis, so I was thankful she had dodged the bullet that had prevent me from having children. Yes, there were many reasons for me to be thankful and happy about this pregnancy.

The brick wall turned out to be made of Paper Mache and didn’t have the power to send me spiralling down to despair. Or was it?

About two weeks after the announcement I was having a soak in the bath. I started thinking about how well I had coped with the “grannie announcement”. I was happy that my healing was real. Then I thanked my lucky stars that it was this particular friend because of the sensitive way that she broke the news to me. As I relaxed in the bubbles my mind began to wander to how my other friends might have shared their news.

As I went through each friend, and their children, something changed. My positive response turned into concern. That concern turned into fear. That fear grew and grew until it became a wobble that would have registered 9 on the Richter Scale. The pregnancy announcement snake had disappeared only to reappear as a massive “grannie announcement” snake on a different square and I had stepped on it!

It had only been in the last few months that I had found pregnancy announcement easier: I’d had a terrible time for the eight proceeding years. Now I had experienced my first “grannie announcement” and I KNEW that I had more to come.

I am the odd one out being the only one out of thirteen girlfriends who has not been able to have children. Even the girlfriend who struggled for years to conceive finally had a daughter and the friend who didn’t want children at all ended up having two. Between my twelve girlfriends there are 26 children ranging in age from the eldest (the mum-to-be was 22 at the time) to the youngest who was going to be 11 at her next birthday. I was still hoping to conceive at the age of 45, if the eleven-year-old went on to have a child at that age I had to prospect of 34 years of “WOO HOO HOOO I’m going to be a grannie” announcement.

Yep I’d started to slide down a new snake and it could take me 34 years to reach the bottom. No wonder I feared it was the wobble to end all wobbles!

Yet it didn’t. My wobble did last about eight months: however, that’s considerably shorter than the 408 months that it could have lasted.

What had change?

Even in the darkest of days I KNEW that I would survive, because I had evidence that I COULD survive. I had managed to find a way out of my grief before and I had done it once I could, and WOULD, do it again. It might take a little while because I hadn’t realised that such major wobbles might happen. I had no survival kit to help me. I had to remember what I had done before and see if I could do it again. I made a lot of mistakes because I followed the same mistakes that I made the first time around.

I did, eventually find my way out. I am stronger because of it. I have made more progress then I made a few years ago. I am better prepared for the future. I am feeling brilliant because I am creating a new, beautiful and courageous existence. Although I am CANBACE I am prepared for the fact that there could be difficult times ahead. Yet, because I am prepared, because I am more aware of what progress is like and that “snakes” can move, any wobbles I have in the future will not be as deep, as dark or as long.

I am building up the knowledge that healing is possible and that I CAN survive the tough times. It is easy to shrug off people’s supportive comments that “it will get easier” yet it is harder to do that when you have first hand experience that YOU CAN HEAL. In the next “Existence can be hard” blog I’ll be sharing some tips about how to build momentum in your healing.

* names have been changed

In CANBACE friendship!

If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about so if you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website please let me know and I will keep your words private.