my guardian angel

Up until about a month ago the only people who knew of our situation were my mom and my 2 best friends. I was scared to tell anyone else. Worried about getting THOSE comments and questions. Worried about getting a pity party. I was just starting to deal with my self pity and didn't need anyone to add onto it. I wanted to just let it out, but I couldn't.

I was reading Navigating the Land of IF and the chapters about telling people and dealing with questions and comments gave me a bit of courage and a good starting point to just let it out. Don't get me wrong I was still scared, but that itty bitty ball of courage was slowly growing. I decided to start off small. Tell someone who is not in my big pushy family.

Does anyone else have a person in their life that you have known forever and were never really close with, but they always seemed to turn up at times when you needed someone and always know what to say? C is that person for me. She is about my mom's age and her 2 girls are a little younger than me. She says we met when I was 5. She was my Sunday school teacher for a long time. Over the years we would chat after church or by e-mail and eventually Facebook. Not a lot, but we were kinda friends. For some reason when I was thinking about who to tell she popped into my mind. I didn't know why but thought she might be a good place to start. So I emailed her and we got together at her house to chat.

Even though I was comfortable with her I was shaking. I decided to just rip off the bandaid.  I started to cry. I told her how we have been TTC for 2 years, what we have been through so far and where we are now. She sat and listened with a loving look on her face. When I was done she smiled and said "I know exactly how you feel" and what happened next blew me away. She stared to tear up and told me that she went through the same thing over 25 years ago! Her TTC journey was 6 years. She has PCOS and she finally got pregnant after almost year on Clomid. Apparently they did things a lot different back then. She had her first daughter and was surprised 9 months later with the natural pregnancy of her second.

We talked for hours and our conversations continued for days through email. This one thing she wrote to me I always keep in mind.

I used to think, "I have so many blessings in my life -- am I being ungrateful or selfish or greedy in feeling so badly, feeling it's not fair if I can't have a child?"  But I realize now, from the perspective of so many years having gone by, that it's not a "fair" way to judge a reaction.  No matter what anyone is going through, there is always someone having it worse, so that is not a good or valid comparison of reactions.  Any reaction, any emotion, you may have because of this is valid -- it is what you are going through NOW.

Days later I realized just how many times she was there for me over the years. Just little things she had said or done. Or even just a hug here and there.

That itty bitty ball of confidence grew very quickly over those few days and by the next week I had told just about every close friend and family member. I am so proud of how I handled the questions and I got nothing but amazing support and love. I had that feeling of weight being lifted.

We get together a couple times a month and still talk online. She says we are good for each other. That my company is a gift since she is dealing with her kids being far away at college.

God works in mysterious ways.