INFERTILITY SUCKS! Keeping it all together ...

Anyone else notice that last week’s supermoon coincided with this year’s National Infertility Survival Day®, May 6, 2012?

Hence, the evening of May 5, National Infertility Survival Day eve, I suppose, the moon came as close to the earth as it has and will this year, appearing larger than it has been or will be in 2012.

Next Saturday, the 19^th, the moon will swing out to its furthest point from us for the month.

I must say, it reminds me a lot of the infertility struggle. Feeling so close to and inspired by that which you want to embrace, but can’t; then, a fortnight later, it’s as far away as can be.

But here’s the thing to keep in mind this Mother’s Day, for those who feel the impossible pull of that beautiful, distant distant moon. It comes back. It always comes back. And bathes us in light and possibility and golden magic. Pulling the tides with its moods. Pulling us all forward glowing. Now smiling in the sky. Now half what we know it to be, again full now gone. Again vast and humbling.

The term, supermoon, credited to Astrologer Richard Nolle, refers to perigee, when a full moon comes within 90 percent of its closest point to earth within a cycle — a point at which the earth, moon and sun are all in alignment. It speaks to the promise that these things can and do happen. And it does so in a showy, brilliant, cosmic way.

In The Daughter of Dreams, A fable of destiny, tian yi, the alignment between The Mother of Dreams, the Mother who Brought Her to Be and The Daughter of Dreams coincides with the autumn Moon Festival and a supermoon so powerful that it paints daylight everywhere.

As it happens, and as these things do happen, my Daughter of Dreams was united with my husband and me August 12, 2001, a month ahead of the Moon Festival and the very day of the very apex of the annual Perseids Meteor shower — when shooting stars sail across the sky in a testament to hope and dreams and all things bigger than we are, bathing us in light and possibility and golden magic.  

To those of you who are mothers today, happy Mother’s Day. To those of you who are waiting for your moon glow, your shooting stars, your shining dreams, surf your tian yi, your destiny with the peace that comes with knowing this: That supermoon of May 5 – 6, 2012 belonged to us and will circle back to you, a perfect orb of golden magic. The moon does not lie.    

This is your day to shine! Make it one to remember for good reasons, for good fortune, for good. 

Shine on.

 

Happy National Infertility Survival Day 2012

 

Beverly Barna

Founder, National Infertility Survival Day 

Celebrating the Sunday before Mother's Day since 2004

Celebrating You today and always 

Congratulations and best of luck to Giuliana and Bill Rancic and their family!

 

Just one more week until National Infertility Survival Day® 2012.

 

If you haven’t already, today is the perfect day to hit the mall or your favorite store wherever it might be and set your sights on something sweet. For you. A survivor. This is for my infer-sisters, and also for their spouses and anyone else who’s in infertility orbit along with them.

 

Trust in this. You will land eventually in a good place.

 

For those of you who have already glided into post-infertility life, please take this time to find a way to reach out.

 

No event for me this year, beyond sponsoring, by providing cards and signed books, some of the many events that have started to spring up ahead of the mother of them all, Mother's Day, in the years since I unleashed National Infertility Survival Day on a sad and unsuspecting world.

 

My present focus is to keep the momentum moving; it's more conceptual, existential, influential, inspirational and aspirational. (I’m told the latter is not a word. Too bad. I like it.) 

 

Oh, yeah, and a little bit acquisitive. I found a yummy new perfume yesterday, which I will have by this time next week, Sunday, May 6, 2012 — the Sunday before Mother’s Day. National Infertility Survival Day 2012. (Thanks, Lancôme!)

 

Something light, new, sweet

is so much better than tears.

Land in a good place.

 

All the best,

 

Beverly Barna

Founder, NATIONAL INFERTILITY SURVIVAL DAY®

May 5, 1969:

Because in the end everything often revolv(ers) around The Beatles:

 “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down” released. I hereby nominate “Don’t Let Me Down” as the official theme song of National Infertility Survival Day®.

This year, the release date precedes National Infertility Survival Day by just one day. Although John was singing to Yoko at the time, I can’t think of another song that so rawly, exquisitely captures the kind of longing we feel as we fight our way out of the infertility box.

I’m in love for the first time.

Don’t you know it’s gonna last.

It’s a love that lasts forever.

It’s a love that has no past.

In the end, John, of course, did get Yoko (or did she have him?). The couple endured fertility struggles, famously recording the heartbeat of their infant on “Life With The Lions,” released just four days after “Get Back”/”Don’t Let Me Down.”

Says an editorial review by the Rykodisc label:

“Life With The Lions creeps sideways into the details of Yoko's miscarriage.”

Today, we'd recognize their plight as a case of secondary infertility; John and first wife Cynthia had son Julian and Yoko had daughter Kyoko.  

Hindsight tells us, “Don’t worry, Yoko. Sean Ono Lennon will be along in six years, five months."

And when I find myself in times of trouble, I try to remember to take deep breaths and tell myself, hold on. 

To my daughter of dreams, who turns 11 years, 8 months today:

I’m in love for the first time.

Don’t you know it’s gonna last.

It’s a love that lasts forever.

It’s a love that has no past.

I love you forever and a day beyond that.

In the end, I was not let down. I get to be your mom. It was destiny. Bashert. Tian yi.

Karma. Sometimes instant; always satisfying.

  

I’m not chicken.

But when it comes to bio-baby ability, I’m an old hen. My five years of fighting infertility are never far from my mind. Now that we’re over Friday the 13, 2012, let’s focus on what for so many women is the real day we dread. Mother’s Day is nigh.

We don’t have to run around like chickens sans heads. And I refuse to believe the sky is falling. That’s why in 2004 I founded National Infertility Survival Day®, celebrated annually the first Sunday in May — the Sunday before Mother’s Day.

In the eight years since, many people have asked me, essentially, what’s the point. Some have tried to argue that “survival” should be reserved for those who conquer life-or-death circumstances. Not so.

For every person who doesn’t get it, here’s the scoop: I started National Infertility Survival Day® for the women who sit crying and praying silently in the pews on Mother’s Day, while those around them exalt the moms they wish so deeply they can become.

For my dear friend who recently suffered another miscarriage. For a far away colleague and all the others who, after blissful, full-term pregnancies, had to go through labor to deliver babies that just couldn’t make it into this world. For every woman who has lost a child they thought would be theirs in yet another way. A failed adoption. For the e-mailer from New Zealand who’s heart pulls her toward adoption, but whose purse pulls the plug.

People, if these are not survivors, maybe I am a chicken after all.

But when I look in the mirror, I see a survivor. A woman who wrote and published a book called Infertility Sucks, Keeping it all together when sperm and egg stubbornly remain apart. Ten years ago, before the Internet grew up, before people were talking publicly about infertility and adoption. Before books saying that divorce and cancer suck, which of course, they certainly do; or people routinely fused “infertility” and “sucks” together in countless blogs. Even before Resolve, the national infertility group, moved its annual National Infertility Awareness Week from autumn to join this new party for the previously uncelebrated to the week before Mother’s Day. 

A woman who created National Infertility Survival Day® for you. Because you need to understand.

It’s also for the women who discover National Infertility Survival Day® each year only after Mother’s Day festivities have already made them feel like the sole recipients of not a dozen roses, but a dozen curses. I hope you see this in 2012 first. And carry it with you through every year.

I am still infertile. All these years later. And I also have found peace. I wish you the same. And soon.

Happy National Infertility Survival Day® to all my heroes.