Former First Lady Speaks About Infertility

I've recently become aware that Laura Bush struggled with infertility. She talked about it in an interview with Ladies Home Journal, as well as in her book Spoken from the Heart. I like reading her thoughts...here is just a small taste.

"For some years now, the wedding invitations that had once crowded the mailbox had been replaced by shower invites and pink-or-blue-ribboned baby announcements. I bought onesies or rattles, wrapped them in yellow paper, and delivered them to friends. I had done it with a happy wistfulness, believing that someday my time, my baby, would come. George and I had hoped that I would be pregnant by the end of his congressional run. Then we hoped it would be by the time his own father announced his presidential run, then by the presidential primaries, the convention, the general election. But each milestone came and went. The calendar advanced, and there was no baby.

The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence. For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend, we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful some not. Still we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only “I’m sorry for your loss.” But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?"

Here I Go Again...

It's been awhile, I know. Every once in a while, I'd think I should blog about _________________________ but nothing ever transpired. I think I may have taken an unplanned break because I feel like it's always the same old stuff that I talk about on here. Sometimes it feels so therapeutic to talk openly about our infertility issues, other times I feel like a whiner. So now that the explanation for my absense is done, now I can get back on the blogging bandwagon:)

I have been checking everyone's blogs...I'm glad not everyone took a break!! It was great to read my friends' goingsons during the holidays with their families. It was also therapeutic to keep up on reading the blogs of women who are also dealing with infertility during this holiday season. I am inspired by the positivity and vulnerability that I read on each blog, and I am encouraged to dig deeper into God and what I'm supposed to be learning during this time in my life. Even though it's a hard time, I 1)know that life could be way harder, and 2)know I can't change my situation, but can change how I face it.

Something else I need to work on is how I deal with bad choices that people make, whether I'm close to the person or not. It may be someone getting a divorce, dealing poorly with life in general, etc. I finished reading The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs a few days ago. A quote stood out to me that spoke to how much I can let my mind go when thinking about choices/actions that people I care about make. I need to put it on my mirror!! It came as Gran was talking to highschool friends that are rekindling their friendship after deceit and years apart, as well as lots of heartache in each womans' life.

"People sometimes don't do the right thing...So then you're left deciding how you are going to react to what they offer. Because you can't make them change."