Tag: grief

Giving in to Grief

I was 34 when I first heard about a woman choosing to have a baby on her own. It was over margaritas with my friends one night. One friend told us about a co-worker who was 40, single and had decided to try to have a baby on her own. I remember the moment vividly, my eyes wide and terrified that was where I was headed if I didn’t buckle down and find a man. I thought, “I can’t let that be my life.”

Four years later, as I am in the thick of trying to conceive (TTC), I’ve gone through a lot of emotional processing and grieving that comes with choosing single motherhood.

My first part of grief came when I was 35 and froze my eggs. I did it as a way to buy myself time and hopefully relax in my dating process. But I remember feeling depressed … Continue reading

Hope and Mourning

Making the decision to adopt was not difficult.  After two summers of failed attempts to grow a suitable uterine lining,  I realized that I had to make a choice.  I could try either more aggressive, entirely experimental, shot-in-the-dark treatments to get my unresponsive lining to grow,, or I could move toward adoption.  Infertility is extraordinarily expensive to address; adoption is extraordinarily expensive to pursue.  If I had to take that gamble, adoption seemed the option most likely to lead to success; my body, in so many ways throughout my life, had shown me that it just can’t be made to understand what it needs to do.  And so I shifted seamlessly from doctor’s visits to agency research and home study paperwork.  My hope was renewed.

And yet… There exists a certain duality in this experience, the bursts of effervescent optimism tipped by periods of startling grief.  I have moments –

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– Sophie Holland