THANK YOU BUFFY

Dear Buffy, Your work remains active in me daily. It has transformed my life. Your mindful fertility prosess started me on a journey that has blessed me with liberation from a long dark night of the soul—I could say a lifelong night of the soul.  I came to your work bereft of hope, filled with suffering, and with no light in sight.  I left with tools that blossomed over these couple of years into a deep practice in the art of living.  Living richly in the face of continued great loss.  The debilitating anxiety, fear, anger and disappointment that characterized how I internally met life have metamorphosed into mostly fleeting moments that come and go as I watch, often with a healthy dose of compassion in that gaze—unheard of prior to mindfulness practice being my daily bread!  Their hold on my mind has decreased to the point that I marvel at how I made it through all the years of living in such suffering.  What a gift it was to find your work and be generously given the tools to begin my journey back to myself!  I’d been searching for so very long for healing, trying many things, but had never seen clearly enough to realize that the practice of presence was absolutely foundational to any healing for me.

Ever since I began, I’ve meditated an hour a day, with few exceptions.  It was hard to do, a daily commitment, and remains thus.  But the benefits!  It’s like all that work sets me up to bring mindfulness into the whole day, moment by moment.  Oh, my mind goes flying all over the place, but now I catch it again and again and again, throughout the day, reground, show up again; and in doing so, I stop terrorizing myself with my thoughts.  More and more over time, I catch myself before my body has gripped in fear, regret or dark anticipation.  Or if I’m too late, I can now give myself some kindness, breathing myself back off the ledge.  “Yes. This, too. This, too.” Of course, I haven’t been magically relieved of all my Stuff—I fall about constantly—but I’m finally there to pick myself up.  And with ever-diminishing Germanocatholic self-berating!  Indeed, compassion for myself continues to take root.  And that is MIRACULOUS.

Life has become richer and much more interesting.  My marriage has grown.  All of my relationships have deepened.  I have been reunited in a heartfelt way with my family, and the tenor of my friendships is fuller, sweeter.  I don’t dread myself and my lacks very much anymore, and can share this newfound peace with those I love.

In order to show up, I have had to fundamentally change the pace of my life.  Slow way, way down.  Hurry is tantamount to anxiety for me.  My adrenals took a big toll from my prior mode of existence.  Since adolescence,  I’ve experienced the symptoms of PTSD, but now instead of being frustrated about that and simply pushing on through to my detriment, I  practice accepting what it is, and letting it guide how I structure my days.  This has required a quiet kind of life without much socializing or go-getting.  It’s quite hard on one level, as I long have wanted to expand and deepen my work, spend more time with my friends, visit my family more often, make and maintain a great big luscious vegetable garden, etc.  But learning to honor my energy limitations—and give gratitude for what I can do, for the abundance I do have—has been one of the most powerful teachings of my life.  My days are now filled with countless moments of internal “thank you’s.”  For example, when, for the 57th day in a row my husband administers another injection of progesterone into my bruised and painful butt cheek, instead of the previous frustration and shame about my position, I feel:  “Thank you that I am lucky enough to even be able to use ART.  Thank you that at 45 I get to get pregnant with my sister’s help, with my husband’s financial sacrifice, with science’s advances.”  How different the world looks from this shift in perspective!

So I hope you recognize the gift you give, Buffy.  Know also that I recognize it and appreciate this part of your life’s work with all my heart.

I want to share with you, on a more painful note, that in the past 14 months I’ve lost all three pregnancies from my dear little sister’s donor cycle.  Two have been miscarriages, and one was a devastating decision to end the pregnancy in the second trimester when we found that our baby had a severe genetic defect.  We have three more embryos, and are trying to feel out how to move from here.  Nobody knows why I’m miscarrying—everything keeps looking great at the start.  So since I last saw you, my life goes pretty much in the cycle of being pregnant, losing it, healing from that, and preparing for the next try.  All this, and I can still write all of the above.  I am grateful indeed.

Much gratitude, Kathleen

(Kathleen delivered a healthy baby girl in 2011, after many years of trying).