And then the Princess had a colonic...

I bet you don't hear that in many fairy tales... "The princess didn't know what to do so she paid someone to put a hose...."  For the record, I am not getting a colonic.  But, I am thinking about starving myself for the weekend.  Actually, to be more specific, I am thinking about paying someone else to starve me for the weekend.  The spa calls it “Spiritual Cleansing through Fasting,” but let’s be honest…it’s starving yourself and meditating a lot.

I’ve been researching various retreats for weeks now, knowing that I need to get away from my life for a couple of days to get back in touch with “me.”  It’s sad that I have to leave my life to feel connected, but that is the current state of matters and there is no sense in fighting it.  I’m terrified of starting this upcoming, and most important, IVF cycle in the state of mind I’m currently in.  Something has to change and it just isn’t happening while I’m caught up in my day-to-day life. 

In my search for the perfect retreat, I found a place that really appealed to me.  It is only a couple of hours from where I live, it has beautiful scenery and lots of land to roam around on, and it’s cheaper than a lot of the retreats I’ve compared it to.  The only problem is…this weekend…the weekend that I have available to go on a retreat….is “CLEANSE” weekend. 

For those of you who don’t know what a “cleanse” is, let me quote a few lines from the online description of the retreat:  “We'll begin with a dinner of fresh juice on Friday evening.  After dinner we’ll have a Circle to get more connected.  Saturday morning we'll do yoga, skin brushing, and meditation.  Then we'll do a walkabout (on our beautiful 250 acres), relax, juice and have a class/discussion on nutrition, food preparation and wellness.  In the afternoon we'll do a sweat lodge together.  Lodge is a great way to detoxify and strengthen your mind/body/spirit.  We'll do a healing meditation before retiring to bed.  We'll have three "meals" of fresh juice plus other juices, tea and broth as well.  We'll complete the retreat on Sunday morning with some morning practice (similar to Saturday morning) and a breakfast meal in silence to maximize our re-entry to food.  We'll finish with a Walk in Beauty Circle, and people will leave for home by noon.  In addition, you can choose to receive a complimentary colonic on Saturday, if you so choose.  The atmosphere is relaxed and supportive.  It's very restful and rejuvenating.”

FYI- I reitterate here...I do NOT “so choose” to partake in the "complinetary" colonic.  Even my open mind has some limits.

So, when I first read that description, I thought “No way.  I’ve been fighting with that cold and the dehydration that came along with it.  I am a hundred pounds over my normal weight (according to the doctor’s charts) and am afraid I might pass out if I don’t eat often enough.”  But then, today, as I was telling a friend about how I had laughed off this retreat, I had two “ah ha moments.” First, as I heard myself talking about why I shouldn’t go, I realized that I am making excuses for why I “can’t” do something.  And I am starting to realize that those excuses are why I don’t get anything done.  Whenever I try to make a change in myself, there is always something holding me back - It doesn't work with the timing with my cycle, I'm too fat to do that without hurting myself, I'm too tired with everything I have going on.  Well, I call "Bullshit!" on myself.  Maybe I can do this.  Maybe it would feel good to do this, if for no other reason than to say that I accomplished something I didn’t think I could do going into it.  Maybe that's reason enough to do it. 

The second realization came when my friend was saying that she doesn’t think that she could psychologically handle not eating food for two days.  She said that she would be obsessed with the fact that she was not eating and wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.  As she said that, I realized that working through the obsession might just be the point.  I am obsessed with everything in my life right now.  I control, control, control…and freak out when things don’t go as planned.  So, if I was forced to face an obsession (say…a psychological obsession with food and hunger), and could see that I can not only get past that obsession, but I can replace it with healthy, meditative and nurturing thoughts, wouldn’t that be an amazing feat?  Isn't it possible that this retreat could be the catalyst I need to turn my frown upside down (ugh...I cringe even typing that).

I’ll let you know what I decide in tomorrow’s post but I am giving you fair warning that this fairy tale might have a wacky chapter coming up soon.

Into the Mystic

In spite of my recent positive shift in attitude, I have been feeling really disconnected from this upcoming cycle.  Usually, I would be getting excited, even hopeful, at this point in the process.  Being so close to getting the ball rolling is usually the point when I begin to check on what my due date would be, look through baby name books and get serious with my healthy eating.  This time is different.  Maybe it is because of my nagging reservations about using a donor.  Maybe it is because after so many heartbreaks, I’m just having difficulty mustering up excitement.  I’m not sure why I feel this way, but I am sure that I need this outlook to change.  I need to be at least cautiously optimistic before I start the fertility meds, or I will be a wreck going into the “meat and potatoes” part of the cycle.

In fairy tales, when a princess is feeling low, she often gets a little help from a magical character, object or creature.  Cinderella had her fairy godmother to help her.  Sleeping Beauty had the final fairy’s wish to give her a possible out from the bad fairy’s curse.  So what mystical solution do I need to get things back on track?

In the past, I have pursued acupuncture, meditation, hypnosis, vision boards, attempting to harness the power of the “law of attraction,” praying and even consulting a psychic (when you are desperate, you can throw skepticism out the window).  I’m not saying that all of these alternative therapies/practices are “mystical,” but, with the possible exception of prayer, they are generally outside of the norm in our culture.  My fertility clinic encourages the combination of Eastern and Western approaches to treating infertility, so they sort of guided me into the acupuncture and meditation.  In fact, I spent well over two thousand dollars on acupuncture during my second and third years of infertility treatments.  I've taken a hiatus from my treatments since November, when I just couldn't stand to even think about trying to get pregnant.  Although my migraines were better and my immune system was stronger when I was getting acupuncture, I didn’t get pregnant...and really, that was all I cared about.  Some of the other “mystical” remedies made me feel good emotionally during ART cycles, but they also didn’t get me to my goal of pregnancy.

I am pretty open to any suggestions about bettering myself and increasing my fertility.  But there are some things that have been recommended to me that are so outside of my scope of reality, I just can't stomach them.  For example, one time a person was brought into the support group I used to attend, at the clinic I go to for ART, so that she could share her "gifts" with us.  She owns a crystal shop and does life coaching and “spiritual healing.”  She spent the whole time (that would normally be allotted to our venting and comforting one another) talking about how we needed to “raise our vibrations.”  She claimed that by use of crystals, meditations, etc, we could raise our vibrations to the level that spirit babies (disembodied baby souls waiting to slip into a mother’s womb) would respond to.  Apparently you have to think only happy thoughts during a journey with infertility, because sadness, anger and depression will scare the spirit babies away.  When asked about how you set aside open wounds so that you can "raise your vibration," her answer was less than satisfactory.  I should note that she also started off the night saying that she had dealt with infertility and had beat it…only to later explain that she “beat it” by realizing that her business was her baby.  Yeah.  Not really the same thing in my opinion.  She also told the husbands who were attending the meeting that they were responsible for keeping their mates' vibrations high by being good vibrators themselves.  The discussion about the men being “good vibrators” was the highlight of the evening.  It almost became a game to see how many times we could get her to say "good vibrators."  Some mystical remedies are easy to reject...being good for little more than a laugh. 

But now I wonder, what is left?  Do I turn back to the “old faithfuls” for comfort?  Do I venture off into some new, uncharted alternatives?  Friends have recommended a female shaman in our area.  I’ve previously passed on Tibetan monk cleansing rituals that are supposed to be healing, but maybe I should be pursuing some outside intervention.  I haven’t tried cranial massage therapy or reiki yet.  What do I do?  Which one is going to be the magical fix to the funk I am in?  Which one will help me reach my goal of pregnancy?

I have been looking into weekend retreats lately.  There are a couple of ashrams, a monestary and a couple of yoga retreat centers close to where I live.  I’ve gone on silent meditation weekend retreats in the past and have found them to be very liberating.  When you are forced to be silent, you work through all of those dialogues with yourself that you generally push away because you are too busy to deal with them.  Once those are out of the way, you begin to become quiet – mentally, physically and emotionally.  There is a non-denominational spiritualism that automatically takes over…and it feels really good. (Plus I lose a bunch of weight by eating…or should I say by "not eating"…the vegan food they serve).  But I am never able to keep up on “my practice” once I return to everyday life, and slowly the good feeling and self-certainty dwindles away.  So far, I haven’t made any commitment to going on such a retreat.  I know that I can go any time, but I also know that we have a huge payment for our donor cycle due soon, and it is difficult to justify spending money on extras right now.

I wish I knew where my mystical fix could be found.  If I knew for sure that any of the aforementioned possibilities would help, I would find the money to pursue them.  I’ve had a miserable cold for two weeks now, so I will likely start acupuncture again so that I can be reasonably confident that I will be healthy going into the IVF process.  But I’m not so sure that will turn my pumpkin into a carriage, or my uterus into a baby shack.  I don’t know if anything can break the curse of seeing the glass as half full, or break the curse of infertility, but I feel like I have to do something.  I really need some hope of success right now.  What is the magical thing that is going to help this princess get out of her predicament?  I can't yet answer that question yet, but at least I can tell you that it won't be a "good vibrator."  Even my fairy tale isn't that weird.