Inner Stregth is Quiet


It’s funny isn’t it, how the person you feel you are can change in a moment. In the time it look for a doctor to utter a single sentence, I went from someone who was trying for a baby to someone who is facing a very different journey to becoming a parent than I ever imagined. From the day we heard the words ‘so IVF treatment will be your only option’ we’ve become part of a whole different community of people, thrust out of the ‘normal’ circle into a place that we didn’t even really realise existed - and it’s lonely out here. 


Nobody really knows how it feels, and sometimes we don’t really know how we feel either. A single word suddenly has the power to have me holding back tears, and sometime I feel like if I hear ‘you’ll get there, it’ll happen’ one more time I might give up altogether. Because it might, but it also might not, and being out of control is something I don’t deal well with. I stumbled across this 'Notes To Strangers' note in London, Inner Strength is Quiet, and it really spoke to me. On the outside, I’m dealing with this whole journey. I’ve been promoted at work, I’ve been optimistic and glad that we’re moving forwards. I’ve not cried in public or cancelled plans. Some days though, on the inside, it feels like I’m using every bit of energy I have not to literally crack into two. 

People ask if I’m ok, and the reply is always ‘yeah I’m good thanks.’ If I tell people that I almost cried on the train because a grown man pulled a carton of Ribena out of his pocket and every missing thing about having a child came crashing down around me then they might start thinking I’ve gone round the twist! 


Some days it’s the truth and I really am fine. This time last week, after a day at the beach, some laughter and sunshine and a pie for dinner, I felt like this was just the way things are meant to be for us. Optimistic. Hopeful. Today, after hearing that there’s likely to be travel chaos because of the snow and we have to go to Cambridge and there seems to be nothing but bad news everywhere, I feel like at any moment pieces of me might start floating away, like Voldemort crumbling at the end of The Deathly Hallows and all I want to do is wrap myself in a duvet to hold all the bits of me together. 

Of course, does any of this really make up who I am, or is it just the stuff the ‘who I am’ is dwelling on and being consumed by at the moment. The latter, mostly, but being a Mum one day has been so deeply engrained in me for so long that it feels hard to detach the fear, and the sadness of the situation from my everyday life, and remember that there are things that still bring joy and happiness. I am a wife, and a sister, and a daughter and a friend. I love food and art and sewing and decorating our house, going out for breakfast, growing house plants, writing. I am chronically late, excellent at procrastinating and terrible at saying no. The the list of things that make up who I am, underneath the thing at the forefront of my mind, goes on. 

Yesterday we popped into the Tate modern and, although brief, it was enough to top up the feeling that there is more to me than this. 

It’s important, I think, to try to remember that we have so much to be grateful for, and still so much to look forward to. To try and fill our days, where we can, with dreams and plans that are separate from being parents.


But right now, we're off to Cambridge in the snow, in search of the last of the answers, a therapeutic hot chocolate, and mostly, in search of a plan. 

1 comment

  1. I have no words. Just know that you can always tell me the stupid stuff and I won’t think you’re round the twist x

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