Finding Community

I hope all of you have seen the Today Show's segment that aired February 24th - it shed light on how isolating infertility can be and the need to find support, to find community.

This segment is close to my heart as it featured our NYC Resolve Peer Lead Support Group. I have grown to love these women like sisters. They have become my family and over time, we have shared parts of ourselves that few people IRL even know exist. It's a place I go when I want to be heard, when I want to release my frustrations and of course, I go to our meetings to connect and offer others support and understanding. It's been my lifeline for over 2 years, and for this, I am forever grateful.

When I was going though the loss of Sprout, our Resolve group hadn't formed yet. Even with online support groups, I still felt so alone. I was able to get the facts online, but not the connection, the eye-contact of someone who knew exactly what the suffocating veil of infertility feels like. When I heard about the Resolve group, I breathed a sigh of relief and found reprieve amongst good friends.

Since the airing of this segment, our group has grown leaps and bounds. It's amazing to see new women come in, looking and sounding out of breath - they've often been battling this elements, the madness, on their own and they've come in from the cold. We've created a warm, inviting, supportive and safe home for women going through IF in isolation. I feel proud and I feel humbled to be a part of such an amazing group of women who are helping other women - not judging them, not tearing them down, not abusing them, or be-littling them. This is what community and support is all about. We celebrate the wins and we hold space for those that need to process their pain, fears and broken hope.

Our group has seen a lot of women come and go. I have lost track and count of how many women have passed through our sorority doors. We've watched many, many women cycle and get pregnant. Some women have taken breaks from cycling and therefore, have taken breaks from coming to the group, but we've managed to form a core group of women that makes the group consistent. Those that get pregnant sometimes announce their pregnancies, others don't, and then they are gone from the group, most never to be heard from again. The first year I was there, I didn't become attached to people because I was still too wounded to really let anyone in. As the year(s) progressed, I have become attached to these women, to their stories and to their story ending in a birth of a healthy baby. Now when women leave our group to tend to their pregnancy, I feel a sense of separation anxiety. I miss them. It's hard to not see them sitting across from me, sharing their insides. Their spot at the table is quickly replaced by another lady-in-waiting,  but their place in our group, in my heart, is not forgotten. Those from our core that have gotten pregnant, are still part of the core. Thankfully, we still see each other, still have group outings and cheer our pregnant-after-IF-sisters on from the sidelines. Jealousy isn't part of our vocabulary... for the first time since TTC, I find myself rooting for my friends that get pregnant... what a change.

We recently threw a "Send-off with love" for our friend Kaos. She is heading to Oz - CCRM - for perhaps her last cycle with her own eggs. She and I have become close over the past couple of years and I can't even begin to explain how having her in my life, has saved my life. She's one of the most generously kind and caring women I have ever met. She's one of the few women I know that doesn't gossip and she's not petty or judgemental in the slightest. I find myself able to be myself around her without editing, contemplating or planing what I am going to say. When we first became friends, I was at a place where I felt alone, left behind and left out. I remember her looking at me and saying, "I'll be your IF buddy." It was so cute - and IF buddy doesn't even scratch the surface as the kind of friend she's become to me. I know in my heart of all hearts, that she and I will be friends forever.

One of the girls that made the reservation for our dinner, said we were a bachelorette party and asked for a "hot waiter." It was hilarious, the waiter kept waiting for us to start doing body-shots, break out the penis straws and dimestore veils and to jump up on the bar to dance. Boy did we have him fooled. Only one of us ordered a glass of wine, one was in the 2ww, one just came off of a failed cycle, one who just started stimms, and me, who's in a pseudo 2ww, though I did a shot of Jagermeister (!!). We talked about protocols, cycles, seminars we'd been to, doctors in the city, therapists, and sex with our husbands... or lack there of. All while laughing, crying and feeling free amongst familiar faces. We are an eclectic group of women, from all walks of life, sharing a common battle and creating a impenetrable bond.

Kaos leaves today. We are all rooting for her, rooting for all of us...hoping for the day when we are all out of the trenches.

I feel full in my life.