Dancing With Grief - The Struggles Of Secondary Infertility

I'm typing this in my garden, with the sunshine on my back and the birds singing all around me. I've got my incense burning, gentle music playing, my drum next to me for the occasional beating when a suitable songs come on, my 6 year old daughter is at school (finally - she's been off sick this week), and my husband is working.

So much of this is exactly as I dreamed of, and hoped for.

But I'm also sitting with a deep grief inside.

A grief I'm experiencing every 26 days when my bleed arrives and reminds me once again - I'm not pregnant this month.

Secondary infertility was not something I ever dreamed of, or hoped for!

It's such a strange grief to hold, or rather to dance with, because that's what it feels like every month - a kind of unseen, floating, heaviness that comes up to me and asks me to dance.

I say 'Yes'.

I take Grief's hand and we dance together for 3-4 days.

It's slow.

It's sometimes comforting, nurturing and cathartic, and sometimes lonely and empty.

But whilst I dance with Grief, there is also joy floating around me; my daughter bounding up to me for a cuddle, my husband doing well in his exams (he was an actor and is currently re-training to be a Barrister), the birds singing, the positive words of the Mothers I support who are deeply moved by the work I do, and the beautiful alone time I had on the beach this morning after school drop-off.

This all makes my heart swell with joy, and fills me with lightness.

And then it's there again, Grief. With it's heaviness.

And then, 3-4 days in, it goes.

The dance is over.

The void in my middle, starts to slowly fill with optimism, excitement, possibility - a new energy.

Things feel possible again.

I'm not there yet, but I know it's coming in a few days.

​And in the meantime, I have to ride this wave, feel these feels, do this dance.

I've hit rock-bottoms before, they're horrible, terrifying even. But I'm not prepared to go there with this.

I have too much of the good stuff floating around to keep me afloat.

So when I've danced with Grief long enough, I have to let go.

But I do have to do that dance with Grief (and feel all the feels and cry all the tears that that dance brings). It feels important.

It's my reality.

We all have our own experiences with grief - for different reasons, with different levels of intensity, and for different lengths of time. It's what makes us human - all this feeling stuff.

We've just got to keep dancing.
Keep feeling.
Keep allowing.
And then letting go.

Letting go of the shame, the guilt, the 'shoulds', the 'what ifs'.

So we take a deep breath.

We have a dance and we give ourselves (or someone else) a hug and we keep doing life - with all it's feels.

I wish you the courage to dance with whatever life is throwing at you today, and remind you that the song always finishes, and then we move on ❤️