If you know me in real life at all, you know that I"m a big fan and supporter of Glennon Melton, the force of nature behind Momastery. She often says (and I'm citing this as the inspiration for this post) that everyone is recovering from something, most people just don't realize and/or acknowledge it.
So what are you recovering from?
I could put lots of things here. I'm recovering from a stroke - still. Sorting through the ways it's changed my life and re-defined "normal". I tire more often. It means my doctors are exceedingly hesitant to let me have another kid the biological route. If I let my energy reserves run too low, my side weakens. I can't get dehydrated or my stroke symptoms can relapse. I was diagnosed with depression, and then an anxiety problem. I found out I'm genetically predisposed to not respond to any drug which will affect my platelet function, including aspirin. A lot of things changed drastically in my life that day in May.
One thing the stroke brought to light for me that has become apparent the past few months was that I was already in recovery for having a heart condition. Sure, physically, I'm relatively fine. But I'm still recovering from not having the sort of life I planned on having.
This is something I think everyone is forced to recover from. Or at least acknowledge. All of us had an idea of what being a grown-up was going to be like, and I'm sure as hell that nobody (and I mean not one single person) got precisely what they imagined. Even if you pictured yourself as a football player winning the Superbowl and you just won the Superbowl, you didn't realize how much work it'd be, how much it would hurt physically, and the things you'd have to sacrifice in order to make time for practice.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a lot of things. I could never nail down a career idea - heck, I had three majors in college and only settled on the last one because if I didn't pick something I'd be graduating late. I knew I wanted to be a mom. And I knew I wanted more than one child.
This is what I'm fighting hardest to recover from lately. I'll be fine one day and the next it's as if all the air has been removed from my body and I can't remember how to breathe. I want another child. I want another child. I love my daughter and am so thankful for her that it cannot be expressed. But at the same time, I'll look at her and feel this shockingly immense pain when I realize she may not know the joy of having a sibling. And it's a problem I don't know how to fix. I don't know how to recover from this. I don't know how to adjust my worldview to not include another child in our family. Or another two children.
Yes, I know there's adoption. But it's a road we've tried several times, to only end in heartbreak and I don't know if I have enough energy to be recovering from yet another thing. So I'm being honest that some days I really struggle with feeling trapped and shattered and grieving this thing that isn't even tangible. It's why I can't hold babies without crying yet and why I might not smile as big as I could when my friends announce they're pregnant. It's why I sit up until early hours researching pregnancy after a stroke, and alternatives to blood thinner medications. But I can't talk about it except without using my voice. Because this recovery hurts so much more than any recovery I've ever attempted before.
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