Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Surrender to Hope

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I carry a pain with me that I haven’t shared here before. It’s private, it’s been a personal struggle for me and my family. It has caused many tears. Many tears. My heart aches and yearns. Several OBs, a midwife, an acupuncturist, friends, family have been through this trial with us.

It’s the trial of infertility.

We’ve been trying to grow our family for over three years now. I had a dream of having three children, each two to three years apart. We have one child who will be turning six soon. She is beautiful and precious and truly a gift. My heart aches for another.

When I hear people complaining about their children, my heart breaks. It breaks because of my longing and because these others in those moments are unable to see the beauty they have.

It can be hard to be joyful when yet another friend becomes pregnant with her second, third or fourth child. It can be hard not to grieve for myself and for the loss of the life I had envisioned.

I’ve  heard stories of women who tried for ten years to conceive and then finally did. I’ve heard stories of families who gave up and adopted and while in the adoption process became pregnant.

These stories do not bring me solace or hope. They bring up more pain and more questions of Why Me? I look at people on the street screaming at their children or at the library when I father tells his son he can’t play on *that* computer because it’s too “girlie” and I wonder why the Universe has deemed them fortunate to  have that child, but not me.

Not me who puts all my heart and soul into being the best mama I possibly can. Me who every day searches for opportunities to grow, to become a better person – all so that my child will have a healthy family, a healthy childhood.

Why me?

I had an ultrasound last week to look at my uterus and to see if the surgery I had in September and the hormone treatments I’ve been doing since then have shrunk it enough so that an egg could implant.

The answer was yes. My uterus is back to a “normal” size. My body has healed this part, and now to move on to step two of what feels like a million step process to get us to the point to make a decision about conceiving.

I’ll turn 42 at the end of this year. Statistically this is not a great age to be birthing healthy babies. I know the odds are not in my favor. I know I have other health issues that may play a role in making it even more not in my favor.

And yet.

I have hope. It’s hard to surrender to this hope. It’s hard to dive into it and open my heart to the possibility of even more loss, even more heartache. I don’t know if I can manage to tell my daughter again that her baby brother or sister has died inside mommy. I don’t know if I can explain again how I don’t know why the babies keep dying. I don’t know if my heart can take the pain of losing another child.

And yet.

Today I looked at due date calculators and thought about baby names, even though the “trying” process hasn’t even started. I have hope.

I’m scared. Scared to release my fears. Scared to dive into Hope. Terrified to surrender to Trust and Faith. Knowing it will all be okay.

Knowing our family will expand. As it is meant to. In it’s own time.

Letting go of the illusion of control. The tears flow. My body shakes.

I can breathe deeply into my pelvis now. This is something I couldn’t do a year ago. I can live in my body. I am able to focus on my present moments more and more. I see the beauty that is my life and sometimes, for a moment or two, I feel at peace with the way our life is, with no longing or yearning for what it isn’t.

And yet.

I had a vision over a year ago of our second child. Beautiful little toddler, standing next to my daughter. I hold that vision in my heart. I hold it knowing that other child is meant to be with us.

I’m in this process of surrendering to Hope. To Faith. To Trust. 

A practice. It is all a practice.

And when our second (and third?) child comes to us, it will be in her or his own time. A lesson taught to me by our daughter, that I didn’t quite learn.

Now I release the fear. I surrender to Hope. 

Truth, Love, Growth

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My husband and I have been together for coming up on 16 years. We’ve been married for almost 7 of those. We’ve had our daughter for over six of those (if we are counting the pregnancy). When we started dating we lived in separate states (he Texas, me Washington) and that lasted for our first year. He moved up to Seattle after that and we crammed our lives together (which included two cats – mine- and a small dog – his) into a little 600 sf apartment on the edge of Capitol Hill. After a while we moved to a larger apartment that also had a gorgeous view of the Space Needle and downtown. Shortly after we married we bought a house. Had a baby. And that is when the really hard times started.

Everyone tells you that having a child changes your marriage, changes your life. No one ever tells you how. Or if they do, you don’ t listen because frankly you can’t even fathom exactly how having a kid really changes your life. Those first few years can be hard even on the most stable of couples, and let me tell you, having our girl rocked our world, in both good and not so good ways.

Those first few years were filled with a lot tears, a lot of yelling. We got to a point where divorce was screamed at each other several times a week. Sometimes it was yelled in our couple therapist’s office.

It was rocky. We did make it though. Both of us wanted to be with the other, it was non-negotiable. Yet, we were causing each other so much pain. We weren’t sure how to get out of it.

We read a lot of books. We went to marriage counseling. We discovered some serious health issues. We made hard financial choices to save our sanity and our marriage, our family.

Last night my husband and I sat in our office and had a long conversation about money. It’s one of those hot topics that both of us get defensive about.

We didn’t get defensive.

We didn’t fight.

We didn’t yell.

We had a conversation about money and it didn’t end in tears. It ended in calm, and understanding. And it lead to another hot topic: Family Pictures.

For the first four years of our daughter’s life, at least once a year we would get family portraits done. These events were always stressful for me, and while my husband would try to make them fun, I would always get pissy about how he’s making goofy faces or can’t he smile right or whatever.

I had an expectation for these photos that wasn’t realistic. And worse than that, because of my expectation being unrealistic, but still wanting it, I made everyone suffer through the process.

We didn’t get formal family photos last year. We couldn’t afford them and it breaks my heart in a million pieces that we missed a year. I told my husband last night that it was a priority for me this year. That we need to afford them. I want the photos.

He was very hesitant and it led to him telling me how not fun, how agonizing family photos are for him – how I made the process miserable. I told him I know, I’m letting it go, we’ll have fun, it’ll be great.

He didn’t believe me. He didn’t feel heard. He didn’t want to fight, so he just got quiet and turned away.

I said to him: “You don’t feel heard.”

He looked at me, relieved. Ah, I got it. I need to tell him in more detail how I know I’ve made things unpleasant and how it will be different this time.  We talked and we both sunk into the knowledge of how we have changed, how our relationship has changed. How we can now feel heard and seen and acknowledged and known.

It’s been a process of three years. Three years since I walked away from my career. Three years since we started uncovering my health issues. Three years since we started putting our marriage – our family – together in a healthy, loving way.

The more I learn about attachment and mindfulness, the more I see how they are the key to approaching relationships, to approaching life. It’s a constant practice of working on myself and working on my marriage and working on my relationship with my daughter and allowing my husband the space to do the same. Practice, practice, practice.

I developed Repairing in Relationship with this in mind: Practice. Attachment. Mindfulness. Breathing in the Truth of my love for the people around me – the people who nourish me and whom I nourish.

There is still time to register for this course. I would love to share my knowledge and some of the tools I’ve acquired to deepen connection and bring those important relationships to a new level of peace, joy and nourishment.

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Traditions

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Growing up there are a few holiday traditions that I remember and hold dear to my heart: Christmas Eve with the Italian side of my family; eating Chex Mix; playing with the nativity set at my grandma’s.

The traditions of my childhood were set in place before my birth, growing in the childhoods of my parents. Now that I have a family of my own I want my daughter to have traditions that she will hold close to her own heart when she grows up and has a family of her own. I struggled the first couple holiday seasons of her life, trying to make everything happen: baking cookies, making Chex Mix, creating Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feasts that would feed an army. Inviting our chosen family to share our meals. Making sure all the decorations were just right. I focused on detail after detail trying to create perfect holidays filled with magic.

What I didn’t understand those first few years of my daughter’s life is that magic can’t be made by hyper-focusing on every detail. Magic happens when we let go of control and let it flow. Traditions are created over time – they are the beautiful things that occur every year because we want to do them, not out of obligation, rather, out of love and joy.

The last couple years I have been letting go of control and letting our holiday traditions manifest and grow. After years of creating the “perfect” Christmas Feast with friends, last year Nick requested we have a quiet Christmas Dinner, just the three of us. We compromised – Christmas Dinner just the three of us and a Boxing Day Feast with our friends. As fate would have it, we lost power at our house on Christmas Day and couldn’t cook at home. So, ala a Christmas Story, we went out to Chinese food. It was packed, and it took forever for the food to come. Still, it was fun and nice and something totally different from what we had done for years (including the years we were together before our daughter was born).

This year we asked our daughter what she wanted for Christmas Dinner. I had let go of controlling the Holiday Feast, having the same thing year in and year out. Our daughter said she wanted Chinese food. And so, we went to Chinese food again this year. It wasn’t as crowded as last year, we got our food in a timely manner. It was beautiful spending the time with my family, sharing our entrees, talking and laughing.

I don’t know if we’ll go to Chinese food next Christmas. I’m letting this tradition grow as it will. I’m opening our life to the possibilities that life has to offer, letting go of control and letting beauty and joy manifest into my life. It’s both freeing and scary, exhilarating and terrifying and I can’t wait to watch our family traditions grow over the year to come.

Healing in Community

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Community is such a large concept. Often we hear people talk about the lack of community; the lack of communal support he or she feels. Looking at society I can see this lack of support as families have pared down to the “nuclear family,” losing the beauty of multiple generations and extended family under one roof or at least within close proximity. Neighbors no longer knowing each other’s names. There is a great tragic loss in this lack of community. Honestly I see this loss of community as a trauma in itself – isolating us more and more, having us burrow further into our own pain and not being able to look out at others and notice theirs. Not being able to reach out for support, love and healing.

Peter Levine writes about how healing trauma must always happen in community, with at least one other person present to bear witness to the traumatized person. The reasoning for this is simple: trauma happens when we are alone. This is not to say there are not other people physically present, or there is not another person or persons actually creating the trauma event in our presence. It is to say that we are alone – the only witness to ourselves in the trauma. Our bodies absorb the trauma and we tend to isolate after – either by choice as a survival mechanism or because we are manipulated to by an abuser. Trauma equals isolation. In order to come out of the trauma, to come out of the isolation we need a safe community.

This community can be one person. It could be a hundred people. It could be a therapist or counselor. It could be a spouse or partner or close friend or other family member. It could be a teacher, a mentor. It could be a stranger. It could be anyone. However that other person or persons, the one who is to bear witness to our trauma, needs to be firmly grounded or else he or she will do us no good. James Finely describes bearing witness to a traumatized person as keeping one foot firmly grounded outside the circle the trauma, and the other foot firmly yet gently steps inside the circle. The traumatized person needs the other to be grounded, this is possibly the only way the traumatized person can find her or his own grounding, perhaps the only way he or she can get back into her or his own body. The traumatized person also needs to feel the other person within her or his trauma, to feel truly heard and seen and understood.

We need community. However we need that community to be grounded. Knowing the extent of trauma in our world, finding these people who are firmly grounded can be a challenging task. So what do we do?

We seek. We look for those who have gifts to offer to help us in our own grounding process. To help us get back into our own body. To help us heal. Then we pass these gifts on. The beauty of these gifts, of learning how to become mindful, how to ground and stabilize our body, mind and soul, is that we can pass the gifts on AND keep them forever. It is the non-dual beauty of healing – realizing life isn’t about either or, rather it is about and. It is raining and cold  and I can be warm and cozy. It is dark and I can see light. I can be angry at you and love you with all my soul.

We can heal ourselves and heal within community. As we shift, as the trauma releases from our body we will be able to see more and more community available. In the beginning though we have to be vulnerable and risk further hurt. Not further trauma, but potential pain. And in being vulnerable and open, we can see the pain in others and perhaps give them some community to heal.

Bearing witness to our own pain. Becoming and remaining grounded. Healing ourselves. Being healed by our community. Healing our community. Finding strength and grounding. Offering strength and grounding. Offering and receiving in the same breath.

I’m thankful for my ever-expanding community. Many of the people in my community are strangers. Strangers who probably don’t know how much they have impacted me, how much their existence has helped me heal. Others are close friends, my husband, my daughter. And a wide range of friendships and acquaintances in-between. Each person giving light to my darkness, whether he or she knows it or not. And hopefully, prayerfully, I give a little light to their darkness too.

Fall Sun, photo by me

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Clearing

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I don’t make New Year resolutions. Instead, around my birthday in October I reflect on my life and think about the things I would like to see different. How I would like to grow and change as well as how I would like to rearrange the furniture or replace our dinner plates. All pieces of me are opened up and looked at, examined, given value and then I decide if I’m ready for the shifts needed to make the changes I want. Sometimes, like in the case of new dinner plates, it’s easy. Other times, especially when it comes to my personal growth, it can be a lot more challenging.

I didn’t do that reflection this year. I turned forty and instead of thinking about what I wanted to change I basked in the glow of what I love about my life. It felt good to have this shift. I had an amazing party, surrounded by friends and all our children and honestly, I think it was the best birthday party I’ve had to date. I felt whole. I felt loved. I felt my community and my family. There was nothing missing, nothing in the days and weeks surrounding my birthday that I wanted to change. Life was just as it needed to be in those moments.

The holidays came and went, with much activity on my part and the my family’s. Revelations were made about past traumas. I found comfort and safety in my little family. I had some growth. Life was good for the most part, although I was finding little things I wanted to change or shift, but I wasn’t sure how to make the shifts that I wanted to see. These shifts I wanted to make revolved around a sense of fear, a sense of feeling incomplete and empty, and a sense of feeling unsafe in the world in general.

January came and a few friends posted and talked about their new year’s resolutions of purging and cleansing and clearing. Getting rid of stuff. Not feeling overwhelmed by stuff or schedules or life. Letting their bodies and minds and souls heal a bit more. I was inspired. I needed to clear. I needed to cleanse.

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