Be Nice!

So if I've learned anything over the past 2 1/3 years, it is that the more you beat yourself up the more you live down to those ideas of yourself.  The uglier I felt, the less I cared about my appearance.  The fatter I felt the less I worked out and more I ate gluten.  The more I called myself lazy, the less I did.  I tore myself apart.  I got myself to the point that I felt like I deserved infertility.  I lived down to a person who I subconsciously thought DID deserve infertility.  I am pretty confident that I didn't invent this wheel.

We are human, and we want so much to control and understand everything.  We want good things to happen to good people, and bad things to only happen to bad people.  When it doesn't happen that way, we immediately try to pick apart why the bad thing happened.  Since we can't usually control the bad things, we turn to the "good person" and try to figure out the "reason" they deserved this.  It is a way for us to try to console ourselves and reason why it would/could not happen to us.  People do it all the time...think of the rape victim that was wearing a short skirt at night.  We blame her for wearing a short skirt or for being alone at night, or for both.  I must say, I've worn a short skirt before, and I've been alone at night, but I feel pretty confident saying I don't deserve to be raped. I may not be the prettiest, thinnest, smartest young woman in the world, but that doesn't mean I deserve cancer, to be abused, to have endometriosis or infertility.  Nobody does.  

So to occupy myself with all the free time I have while in nursing school, I am really working on not victim-blaming myself.  I mean, I'd be totally nowhere if it weren't for me. Not to mention, I don't foresee an immediate future where I wake up as Britney Spears, Katy Perry or Princess Kate, so I guess I'm stuck.  Therefore, I can choose to beat myself up all the time over what I don't have or can't do, or I can choose to be thankful and happy for what I do have.  

It's so easy to become so narrow-visioned when dealing with infertility...you put all your time, energy and assets into having a baby that you totally lose sight of everything.  When things don't go well, instead of turning to the things we do have, we seem to turn on ourselves.  Again, I can't remind you enough how infertility is mean enough on it's own.  You don't have to help it beat you up.  You can fight it from tearing you down by taking steps back, looking around and appreciating the things you have in your life that you want to eventually share with a child.  

(Since it's kinda blurry...)
Be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace in your soul.

Peace and loving myself so I can best love you,

Mary Katherine 

"find though she be but little, she is fierce" ~Shakespeare