A Reevaluation

It's amazing what a single conversation can do. How is it that being presented with a simple question, can suddenly change your outlook or assessment of something you felt so strongly about before? This morning I was lucky enough to meet up with the lovely and ever genuine Hillary, at Making Me Mom. She was in town for the holiday weekend and was gracious enough to squeeze in a coffee with me. (Umm by the way, Starbucks is no longer serving the Carmel Brulee Latte. - I know! I almost cried.)

There is such a unique feeling when you meet another IF blogger. Here is this person whom you've never met, but share a life altering circumstance with. So particular is this condition, that it seems only the people afflicted by it can understand where you're coming from. Cultures, religion, or diagnosis have no bearing on this bond you've discovered. The conversations are easy, (once you get passed the meeting-a-complete-stranger jitters. Maybe that's just me though) and there is little space between each thought or sentence.

Shortly into our meeting, Hillary asked me what my thoughts and feelings were about 2009, 2010 and the year ahead. (Since she's out of town she hadn't been able to catch my recent disparaging, and profanity laden post about last year. That's probably a not a bad thing though.) It's sounds like a relatively simple question, but the answer honestly stumped me. I'd been spending so much time resenting 2009, that I forgotten to look ahead at what might be. Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty pissed about 2009, but having to discuss it in a civilized conversation made me realize that not all of last year sucked. My husband started his own business, which is something we'd been working towards for a very long time. It's exciting and terrifying all wrapped in to one. I was in the room when my best friend's baby was born, that was pretty incredible. We've seen a few really good concerts (which is very important to me)... Other than that whole not getting pregnant part- life was just life, and truly - not all that terrible. It wasn't as if I had wasted any time; things just didn't work out like we'd hoped they would. Do I wish we had been a leeeettle more aggressive with treatments? Hell to the Y-E-S. But I don't think we did anything really wrong with them...

And as for 2010, well right now, I'm feeling pretty hopeful. Maybe it's because I haven't looked much passed my Yahoo horoscope. Or maybe because it's only January 2nd, and there hasn't been anything to screw it up. But I'm going to break precedence and therefore my first order of business will not be to obsessively plan out the next six months in terms of cycles and finances (Brian is probably jumping up and down right now), but to enjoy the things I used to do before trying to make a baby took over. Cooking, listening to music, and just being my husbands wife. I need to find me again. And I feel lucky that I have the good sense to do so. You see, receiving that gift from our friends has taken a large part of the uncertainty out of how we will approach our next round of treatments. Now we can move forward when we're ready, not when we finally have some money. It's such a HUGE relief to know we won't be held back because of our finances. That check is so much more than a few extra zero's in a bank account. It took the pressure off of when our next round will begin. And I feel so incredibly lucky and grateful to be able to say that.

So thank you Hillary, for helping me see what's really important. Here's to 2010, May it not suck like last year. May a little hope go a long way, and help to bring each of us our hearts desire.