Hope Floats

I realized that for the past three or four months I have been getting my period. Just getting my period. Sounds simple and routine, but it has taken me a very long time in the mental process of beginning a family to get to this point where I am not counting days and peeing on sticks and strategically planning sex dates with Justin while trying to make him think I am just horny. I know you would think that in the many, many steps that lead up to international adoption, at some point you let reality seep in and release the hope of getting pregnant and float over to the hope of just bringing home a baby. From the hospital or from the airport. But letting go of that hope doesn't just happen with the decision to commit to adoption. Especially in my case with no firm diagnosis on my infertility.

However, somewhere in the past few months I guess, I floated and my period is now just...a period. It's such a relief to be here now, with my period without all of the angst that used to come with it. I used to curse it and question it and cry from it and I confess, pray to it. "Please don't come period...please don't come when everything has been so very carefully put in to place to make sure you don't arrive." But she came. She always came, welcome or not.

Lately, and for the love of all that is good it's taken me a long time to get here, I just stopped caring about the old girl. I have no idea what day I'm on in my cycle, and was actually caught off guard by her arrival this month. It sounds ridiculous and insignificant, but it's a tremendous shift in thought for me. And the fact that it has happened rather unconsciously (i.e. without group therapy, drugs or the threat of divorce) is a a little pat on the back for me in the quest to get to B the G. My energy, my thoughts, my work is focused now on the next step in my path to adoption, not necessarily the next step in my path to adoption because I can't get pregnant.

I dreamt this week that a voice whispered in my ear right before I woke up, "You are exactly where you are supposed to be." Of course this is open to lots of speculation and analysis depending on where your leanings are in spirituality, dream interpretation and the effects of red wine and Eckhart Tolle before bed. But it was such a crystal clear voice, very female and very matter-of-fact. I like to think that perhaps it was the Period Goddess giving me a little nudge, happy to be innocuously back in the fold, so to speak and celebrating the new absence of clocks and calendars and curses.