A new beginning

 
Here I am, a woman, in my best age, married, no kids.
 

When we got married, my husband and I talked about the possibility of not being able to become a parent. What a weird and hypothetical thought. But I wanted to be clear that we both choose the one person in the world, we wanted to spend the rest our lives with and not only the one who would just fit for becoming the father/mother of our children. I knew that in the age of 36 years, it might mean, that I could be too old to become a mother, but I never had the slightest idea that this could in fact happen.

Now 5 years later after losing two pregnancies, numerous cycles of trying and 10 ICSIs later, I know I have to let go. I cannot force anything to happen, I cannot ignore the fact that we tried everything we could, but that we will undoubtedly never be parents, no matter how hard we wish for it. Just by deeply wanting and hoping for something, it does not mean that it will ever come true.
 
When I try to detach myself to my inner emotional self, I can see that not having children isn't the worst thing that could happen in life. I have read so many blogs of great women all around the world in same situations, I have read lists of negative things in a life with children, lists of positive things in a life without children. I know by not having children I will be able to travel more, drink more, go out more, have more time to be myself, discover new talents, spend more time with my husband. But when I allow myself to feel into my inside, I would embrace all negative aspects in a blink of an eye because I know that is exactly the life I was aiming for! I really wanted to have kids, I wanted that exact life, that includes all the negative aspects, too!    

In German we say, " Kinderwunsch" which means the wish for children. I always said that I wish for a child. You can wish for everything, but you never know if it will become true one day. Even with the support of reproductive medicine it remains a wish, you wish for a child, you don't order a child.
Wishing means hoping for something, believing in something and knowing even though we give our best, in the end we cannot predict or influence the outcome. There is a German proverb that says, "hope is the last to die".
 
Maybe that is why I find it so difficult to let go. Because if I am honest, deep inside there is still hope, that irrational stupid little hope that one day my husband and I will have family, too. That my deep desire to take care of someone, to have sticky fingers everywhere, noisy laughter, small warm children’s bodies snuggling into bed during the night, that there is the chance to read good night stories to someone, to help a little person to grow and develop, that all those things will come true. Yes, I can try, and I really want to be the best aunt, or a supporting and fun grown up friend to my friends’ kids, but that still feels like compensation.

 

Letting go means to surrender. Letting go that wish, accepting to let that hope die, means facing a blank new page in my life and I am a little scared of what will come next.

It's a blank new page without any predetermined paths, with the freedom to form and create my live without boundaries, without social expectations. It scares me because I have to decide myself which way to go, what role I want to take in life, I have to define for myself what it means to be a woman.
I know that if I don't let go, I will be stuck in this situation forever and all the new, exciting adventures in life will just pass me by.

I believe that it is better to make any decision, even a bad one, than not to make one at all, because then someone else or destiny will make one for me that I might not like. 

My husband and I didn't make the decision to be forced to define a new concept in life away from the average and family concept in the first place,
 
but now I make the decision to try to let

this

hope

go

to have the chance to be open for something bright and new.
 
I will keep my head high and I will try to find a new hope or better the certainty that one day I will be through an through myself and grown.
 
I love the poem of Hermann Hesse "Stufen".
 
It says "In jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne, der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben." "In every beginning there is a magic, that protects us and helps us to live."
 

It is time for a new beginning!