wish not, want not

Last month, I read a Substack from Kayti Christian about starting IVF¹. I don’t have a personal connection to IVF, but I have friends and loved ones who have either gone through the process or seriously considered it.

I know it is very difficult. I know it’s stressful and characterized by longing.

I read Kayti’s article and its last phrase kept surfacing in my mind: Because this is my life. I don’t want to miss it.

As she expressed it, to embrace this concept is to live with discomfort. It’s an invitation to be gentle with yourself. To not wish pain away in hopes that you would be better without experiencing it.

So often my heartache, depression and anxiety were caused by wanting something different. Or as Kristin Neff puts it, Suffering equals pain times resistance.

What really struck me as I sat with this phrase is how often I’ve heard versions of “it will get better when” in reference to my son.

“It’ll get better when he sleeps through the night.”
”It’s easier when he starts to feed himself.”
”I bet you can’t wait for him to be out of diapers.”

Then a friend without children said, “I heard it gets better".

This is my life. I don’t want to miss it.

I doubt anyone means to uphold a paradox, but on one hand you hear “The time flies by. My son just turned 21 and I feel like he was a toddler yesterday,” and on the other hand we’re told that things are soon going to improve.

It happened when I was pregnant too. I wasn’t always comfortable, but I was pregnant. I mean… it felt crazy magical to get pregnant at 40 with all that women are told about their bodies. I was walking 6 kilometers a day and thriving with a nine pounder blasting my ribs with his heels. Random people would say, “I bet you can’t wait to have that baby.”

I used to shut them down with, “You can’t hear babies cry in the womb,” or “Have you read the news? This one can do college correspondence from the inside if they want.”