Thank You for Fervently Believing in Me.
In December of 2020, two months into the “lost years,” I was still working as an infertility doula while fighting tooth and nail to grow our family. The work and the life became enmeshed, and I wrote some of the clearest, most honest pieces about my continued search for motherhood during that season.
One article in particular, a popular blogging site called Scary Mommy picked up and published titled “A Letter to My Husband as We Navigate Infertility.”
This image popped up in my Facebook Memories this week, and it left a lump caught in the back of my throat.
“Thank you, for fervently believing in our family - both the pieces that do and do not exist yet.”
If you want insight into optimism, into partnership, into leaning in and with your partner rather than pulling away - this is the perfect article for you to read.
But if you’re four years past that, if you’ve been forced to cremate three babies, if you lost part or all of your reproductive organs, if you’re been through more trauma than you can count, if you’ve lost time with your living children, if you’ve lost children, if you’ve lost yourself - than your standing here now, next to me, thinking about how this letter hurts differently today.
The part of this letter that still holds true, however, is this one:
“When we took our wedding vows, we talked very seriously about how marriage was choosing each other every single day, not just at the altar in front of our friends and family, and not just in that beautiful white dress I wore while we were standing in the sand. That choose each other attitude is what has gotten us through every rollercoaster we’ve faced in the last several years, including infertility (both before, and again) and I’m honestly really proud of it, and of us.”
Marriage, partnership, it’s a choice. Every minute of every day. It’s also a place for give and take. For please and thank you. And this season, I have an unyielding amount of gratitude for the man who has stood beside me on what now stands a collection of the worst days of our lives, and who’s held my hand and believed in my ability to survive the aftermath even when I couldn’t believe it myself.
My husband has always fervently believed in our family, but more importantly, he has fervently believed in me.
Our family doesn’t look like what I thought it would. Like we thought it would. In truth, our family doesn’t feel complete. But I know that it’s chalk full of love and hope, even when I feel alone in the dark.
Today, my gratitude to my husband is larger than life. It’s bigger than it’s ever been. Because this year, there were real periods of time I didn’t know that I’d make it through. But he did.
There were times when I was ready to fold. And he didn’t let me.
There were obstacles in the way of new treatment options. And he made them possible.
He has seen me, at my very worst, naked and vulnerable, in pain, in agony, in terror, in devastation, and he has held me through them.
This post is more than a thanks.
It’s a promise.
I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life than when we changed the stars. I would never ever undo that. I would never undo us. I will never undo us. And I will choose you, every minute of every day until we run out of time.
Always.