Gratitude with covid

Well, it's been a miserable couple of weeks. As of yesterday, I was still testing positive. I've had a lot of severe pain, both because covid triggered another pain condition I have, and for sinus pain. I still had a bout of that today, though yesterday was better, but overall I think I'm improving! DH has tested positive, took paxlovid (he qualified under our health system, and I didn't) and is now negative again and has been out on the golf course with his buddies. Doesn't seem fair! 

So I'm just grateful that I didn't have to put on a brave face for anyone over this festive season, and that I could be thoroughly miserable and look after myself. But it was a bit hard seeing all the "happy" wishes on social media, and the happy faces with the extended families. It's New Year's Eve tonight, a festival I dislike because of its forced celebration, but again, I have an excuse not to be celebrating. Besides, it's cold and raining (yes, it's summer, but this is NZ and our weather is nothing if not unpredictable), so a cosy night with some binge watching will be just what the doctor ordered.

I do want to say I'm grateful you are still reading, and that there are new voices popping up from time to time. I'm hoping 2025 will be wonderful for you all, but if not, that there will be pockets of love and joy and friendship that help you through, just as you help me through. Sending love.

Holiday, holidays, and covid

This is the first time I've signed in to No Kidding in NZ for over three months! As I mentioned on Monday (here) on A Separate Life, I've been away on an extended trip. Unfortunately, security issues required me to be quiet on the blogosphere about my travels, given that I’m open about where I live, I’ve posted photos of my house, and, unlike many years ago when we travelled for six months, my real name can be associated with this blog. So I didn’t want to advertise our absence too much. Unlike previous long trips, our friends are no longer working in the city, so couldn’t drop in and stay for a night or two every week, so we were a bit more concerned about security this time. I wrote and scheduled all my posts in advance, because I knew it would be too hard to do so on the road. I also find it horrible to log into blogger on my phone/ipad, so I really apologise that I haven't been able to respond to comments etc, even though I have been reading them. I am going to go back now and read them and comment! If you stuck it through to December with me, then I am very grateful.

I'll reveal much more about our trip in due course. We had a wonderful time. I got to meet up with some old ectopic-messageboard friends, unfortunately missed Bamberlamb due to scheduling, and got to meet former blogger and author Lesley Pyne in London just before we flew home. 

We arrived home last Monday, giving me plenty of time (or so I thought) to clean the house, decorate my tree, do all the seasonal baking, write some blogposts, and be ready for Christmas. Unfortunately when we got home I began ailing, quickly tested positive for covid the following day, and have been laid up ever since. Today is the first day I've even made it upstairs to my laptop. So much for plans.

Though on the bright side, if I was going to catch covid on the trip, coming down with it as we arrived home was the best possible time.

It will just be the two of us. That was always the plan. I'm pretty miserable, and need another nap on the couch, so unless I improve rapidly in the next day or two, there'll be little celebration here. That's fine. It's the end of a long year, and I hope for you it passes peacefully whether you celebrate or not. I'm looking forward to the rest of summer (having missed the start of it in Europe), and health returning.

Sending love 

Formerly-absent-but-now-returned Mali

PS. Here are some previous seasonal posts to help anyone who might be struggling:

Reclaiming Christmas – written way back in December 2010, only my second month of blogging (though my seventh year of No Kidding Christmases)

Holiday Season: If Money were No Object 

You are Not Alone

Childless at Christmas

My 2016 Annual Holiday Post

Four Rules of Surviving Christmas for No Kidding women

The Season and Traditions

Success stories

Humans aren’t born with a fear of failure. Failure is how we learn. I wish as girls we had all been taught that, encouraged to embrace it. I’ve seen girls terrified of failure, maybe instilled from parents or family or a society that holds up behaviours and expectations that are impossible to achieve. They see their mothers subjected to standards of being able to achieve and have “it all” when their fathers are not subjected to that. They learn that failure is shameful. When actually, it means that at least they tried.

And so when women start to face infertility, they have already been trained to achieve what is expected of them. People assume infertility issues are those of the woman. People judge women without children very differently from how they judge men without children. We’re expected to achieve in our careers and social lives and marriages, and part of that achievement is to have children. So when infertility looms, our fear of failure is accentuated.

I hate that fertility is talked about in such strong, success/failure terms. It's one of the reasons I refuse to use the “failure” word when I talk about IVF cycles that don’t result in a pregnancy or even a live birth. The truth is, we are not responsible for fertility treatment that doesn’t get the result we were looking for. The medical profession don’t know why some cycles result in pregnancy and some don’t. I had a specialist who once said to me, “we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about women’s reproductive systems.” So really, we should never feel as if we have failed. The treatment might not have worked. But failure is a very strong term. It’s not through lack of application, or desire, or commitment. It’s due solely to biological processes working differently than we and our doctors had hoped. To me, that’s not a failure.

I know. It’s easy to say that now. But it’s how I feel. Biology is responsible. There’s no failure. I don’t feel a failure, or even that my body failed me. It did everything it could! The only failure would be if we refused to accept the outcome and the resultant life we have for the rest of our lives. That’s why, at the risk of repetition, I think that so many of the childless are actually the true success stories of infertility. That despite not getting what we wanted, we are still prospering, living good lives, feeling contented and happy, and being decent people. Not taking advantage of the life I had would be the true failure. 

Don’t you agree?

 

 

 

Tough days: they come, and they go

I wrote this almost sixteen years ago, and published it on A Separate Life. It was about those tough days six years earlier, when I was in the midst of figuring out what life was going to be like now. I thought it was worth repeating here, all these years later, just to show that a) I understand what you might be going through, and b) that I don’t feel this way anymore. In fact, it has been a long time since I felt like this. Read the posts around it on A Separate Life, when I was already loving my life. We all get past those tough days. And we find joy again in that strong summer morning sunlight that is returning to the southern hemisphere right now.

“The strong summer morning sunlight was insistent, piercing her closed eyelids, willing her to wake. She struggled to hold on to sleep, because even asleep, her mind knew that she was protected, safe. But the sun won, consciousness was stronger. Her eyes opened. For a moment, serene, comfortable, rested. Then ... loss! She squeezed her eyes shut, but it was too late. The pain followed very quickly.

She spent her days alone. Wandering the silent house, listlessly. Talking to the cat, checking her voice still worked. But he never spoke back. And when, in fits of sadness, she would hold him tight, rocking back and forward in her grief, sobbing, wailing, desperate to feel another living thing close to her, he would struggle against the unfamiliar grip, and break free. Leaving her scratched, scarred, and feeling even more alone.

Mostly, she lived with the ever present sadness, hovering so close to the surface. She kept it in check by a thin veneer of calm, covering the cracks as they appeared as quickly as possible, usually before the tears leaked out, but not always, usually before others noticed, but not always. She found herself weeping easily, at the simplest of things. TV ads seemed to be a weak spot. Unaccustomed to tears, it was as if the tap had been turned on, and she feared that now it could never be shut off completely.

She dreaded the phone ringing, having to make conversation with someone, anyone. Home was a haven. But of course, there were unavoidable chores to do.

“How is your day going?” asked the cheerful, spotty youthful checkout operator at the supermarket. She hated this question. “Fine,” she mumbled, struggling to look normal, incapable of raising a smile. Supermarket shopping was daunting. She was reluctant to go when there might be crowds. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing someone she knew. Having to make conversation, appear cheerful to those who didn’t know, or sense the pity in their eyes, their judgement of her situation. So she went in mid-morning, quickly, furtively. With the retired folks and the new mothers. A double-edged sword. She looked only at the floor or the shelves, avoiding all others.

After the supermarket ordeal she escaped to the nearby cafe for a latte and the opportunity to sit for a while, incognito, for just a while being normal, doing normal things. She would take that when she could get it. The other customers largely ignored her. The teenage girls from the school down the road were appropriately happy and boisterous, beginning the new school term. She was invisible to them, and that was fine by her. The business people unnerved her a little. Usually she was one of them, in another café, discussing the latest office gossip over a coffee. But now she wasn’t part of that club. And felt lost. Because then there were the mothers and babies. Usually one or two were pregnant, a few loud toddlers, and a crying newborn. They would settle next to the play area, spreading out, taking over, leaving their buggies in the way and their toddlers to play. One of them ran along the banquette seating towards her, and stopped. He stood, turning his head on the side, looking at her as if she were a strange alien being.

And she felt she was – a woman without a place in the world, in society. She wasn’t at work, and she didn’t belong to their club.

She drove home. “SORRY” said the neon sign on the big yellow bus as it wound its way down the gorge. In an odd way, she felt comforted. Not too many people had said they were sorry. Or meant it.”