Before I get on to the New Year post, I need to wrap up 2010.
December was hectic, the first half filled with IVf cycle and lawyer appointments, the second filled with the psych testing and interviews, interspersed with acupuncture, shiatsu and reflexology to keep me at least a little bit relaxed, and some personal therapy sessions to keep me a little bit sane. But it meant a lot of driving around and keeping appointments and I didn’t feel very light or free. I felt overworked and hemmed in – nose to the grindstone.
M’s husband decided he would feel more comfortable if we used an egg donor other than his wife. This might change but I don’t want to rely on it, so that meant we needed to get on the Aussie Egg Donor (AED) boards, which took until Dec 23rd to achieve, so I have only posted once there. You need a minimum of twenty posts before you can even ask for an egg donor. I guess that is to get people building up relationships before they go jumping in to anything, and to have time to familiarise themselves the the process, etc etc. I haven’t been keen to actively pursue this as a channel for finding a donor in the past, mainly because I am pretty forumed-out and don’t feel like I have the energy to start making a whole bunch of new friends. But needs must, so DH and I both joined and posted introductions, but that is as far as we have got. I just don’t feel I want to ‘drive’ the process of finding a new donor, and felt like I just needed to let the whole thing go for a while (even though we can’t put in our surrogacy application until we can name a donor, so that will push everything back somewhat).
I felt as though I had done enough orchestrating in 2010, and I needed a rest. To let things be as they were and wait to see what came up of its own accord.
Then I headed off to my 10 day Buddhist silent meditation retreat. It was another long drive up to Perth and I was so glad to get there at the end of the day, unpack, eat dinner and settle in. You can speak on the first afternoon, up until the first sitting at 7.30pm, then it is no talking until after the second sit at 10am on day 9. I chose not to join in the lively discussions around the dinner table about why people were there, what they hoped to achieve, whether they thought they could manage to stay for the whole ten days. Not interested. I sat on my own and hid in my room until the silence descended!
And then I sat. And sat. And sat. IN between sits, I walked gently around the property, if the temperature cooled to under 30 degrees (It has been rather a heatwave over the past fortnight, up between 37-40C most days). If it was too hot, I lay or sat on my bed and meditated. The first day I slept a lot in between the obligatory sessions (there are 3 of them, plus two dhamma talks you are expected to attend) because I was just so exhausted from the lead-up month. As the days went by I gained more energy and went to extra sessions.
It was a vast contrast to my last course, where I attended every session and sat through most of them to the end (between one hour and an hour and a half), tried to be mindful every second and pretty much drove myself hard, feeling frustrated that I wasn’t ‘doing’ it perfectly. This time I cruised along, let myself be who I was, felt what came up, let go of ‘trying’, gently and without harsh thoughts towards myself guided my concentration back to my breath when my mind wandered, and left my judgement and expectations at home.
So by the time I got over the ‘hump’ on about day 5, I was starting to buzz and feel very much at peace. So calm and content and sometimes even blissful. The physical side of sitting for up to 9 hrs a day is a challenge. But without the sensation (of pain, or anything else) it is much harder to keep your mind focussed so in some ways the pain is a great help. And along the way I had a few great insights. The biggest of which was how far my attitude towards myself had come in the last two years. That the experience I was having this time just showed me how completely I could live the truth of being myself without judgement, and how that was becoming easier for me to do – I didn’t have to push to get it, just had to let go, and I could see that I had let go. I could see how I was far kinder to myself now than I have ever been. And I got to experience the real fruits of that personal development work in the feelings that more relaxed attitude brought to the mat, and throughout the whole day.
I also saw things that I continue to dislike about my attitude, especially my criticism and judgement of other people, but I saw that putting them on a list of ‘things to change about myself’ was not the answer. That as I come to have even more loving kindness towards myself, compassion and loving kindness towards others will arise naturally. I can’t create that from an attitude of harshness about who I am and what I do, only from the aspect of love for and acceptance of myself. To that end, I realised that when people say you need to accept who you are, it didn’t mean you necessarily need to accept personality flaws, attitudes and behaviours and actions. Because those things are not you. I could see that this time. I can’t explain how. But it became clear that ‘you’ are separate from your feelings, experiences and actions. And that when you eventually get to ‘you’ – THAT is the goodness. It just is inherently benevolent, full of lightness and calm, of spirit and peace. And when you are truly IN that place, aware of it so fully that it absorbs your whole concentration, then there is no room for anything negative to reside in your mind.
So, obviously, the more you can be there, the more positive your thoughts, feelings and behaviours will be, just naturally. There is no trying, no pushing. If there is a struggle, it is only that of letting go of attachment to desire. Desire for wanting what you don’t have, or not wanting what you do. In a practical sense you can start with the thinking about how much your knees hurt. “OH if only my knees didn’t hurt, I could sit here happily”. Sound familiar? But you breathe and you let go that desire and focus on your breath and observe the sensations come and go and the struggle releases and you are free.
Now, I am not saying I have made it to Nirvana by any means. This kind of peace comes from a lifetime of practice, over and over and over again. But I think it is the right track to an achievable happiness, and I am encouraged to feel that at least I can see the path, and that sometimes I am on it.
And so, in this way, I saw out the old year, and saw in the new, and came home completely refreshed to a pretty hectic afternoon of bushfire preparation. After I had unpacked, done a massive load of washing, had a light lunch, debriefed with DH about his Christmas, buck’s day, best-man-at-wedding experience and last three days of being on call, I went to have a lie down. After about 10 mins I could smell smoke so got up to look out the window and was dismayed to see thick smoke surrounding us and a red hot sun with high breeze happening. I rushed to the internet to cheek the sentinel hotspots website to see if I could locate the source and work out how far away it was, and DH got on the blower to a neighbour to see what info they had. There were two options and one was quite close, so we began a frantic time of collecting the stuff on my fire plan list, filling buckets and jugs, bringing in mats, checking the sprinklers, setting up the water cannon, getting the rakes and spades and mops ready, putting the radio on local ABC which gives out fire alerts every 5-10 mins when places are in extreme fire danger.
It took us an hour to get ready (to stay and defend, not to leave), which was a lot better than the 2009 bushfire situation, which took us 5 hours. Obviously that experience spurred me on to develop a reasonable fire plan, but I can see the flaws in it after yesterday and will do more work this week. We still need some better fire-retardent clothing and a spray backpack. I need to make some stoppers for the downpipes so we can fill our gutters with water. On a grander scale, we’d like a sprinkler system for the eaves of the house, and some metal shutters to protect the windows from shattering in the radiant heat. This will cost thousands. Maybe $20,000. I have no idea. (We could easily have bought it all by now if we hadn’t been spending twice that amount on fertility costs!) But we need to make a start, at least.
I mention this now because as I look outside the smoky conditions have returned. I know now that the fires are a long way away, and it is the afternoon breeze that is blowing the smoke in our direction, as it did yesterday. I have the radio on, and they are not mentioning any fire alerts. I feel much calmer, but not complacent. It is still unsettling. It puts me in mind of the saying “never turn your back on the ocean”. This land is like an absolute tinderbox this summer, after the drought-conditions winter we just had. I am not going to waste my energy hoping we don’t have a bushfire, I am just going to make sure I am 100% prepared.
The last thing I want to mention is this: on the evening of the lifting of the Noble Silence, I struck up a meaningful conversation with the girl who had been sitting behind me, and had the room next door. We had made no eye contact the whole time, and this was only our third time to speak – the first two were as part of a couple of general conversations a group of us were having at lunchtime. Talk turned to whether or not I had children- as it always does. I answered no, and spoke a little of my story, mainly the part about the losses. She told me she didn’t want children herself, and had recently donated her eggs (at the same clinic as me, in May 2010) to an American woman who subsequently miscarried. Apparently this girl (B,33) caught a glimpse or mention of egg donation on TV and wondered what it was all about. She did some research and then just walked into the clinic and donated. The staff nearly fell over themselves. I have probably mentioned that this happens rarely to never here, as donors are not paid and it is not widely marketed as something one ought to do (like blood donation, for example) for their fellow woman. So whoever was on the top of the donor list got a call, and they cycled right away. B was devastated when she heard of the miscarriage and cried the whole flight to New Zealand (heading out on holiday).
I told her then, about the surrogacy part of my journey and the egg donor shambles and how we were in limbo at the moment and she said “I’ll donate to you if you like.”
Can you imagine? I go on a ten day silent retreat and come out with the possibility of an egg donor? Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me that doors just keep opening, and offers of help keep flowing in. I am floored. I am trying not, however, to get too attached to the idea. We’ll keep in touch, keep talking. She’ll get through her relationship break-up and see where she’s at. She’s going to the UK in July for a while. This might not happen for some time. It might not happen at all. I can’t rush it, push it or force it and I don’t want to. But I also don’t want to even feel impatient with it. I want to stay present to the fact that people change their minds. Things happen. Everything changes, nothing stays the same. There are no guarantees.
But there is a possibility.
Happy New year to all of us!
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