Leaving My Healing House

Hellooo everyone! I have missed reading and writing. I look forward to getting caught up on everyone's blogs. But I am happy to share that I am settled in my new home. I am unpacked, organized, and, thanks to my mother who came to visit this week, all of my pictures are hung up on the walls and my new home is now decorated as well. I can't believe it: it's only been 3 weeks and I am already settled. My new home is the homiest home I've ever had. :)

I am so grateful for my little rental house, where I lived for a little over 2 years. It was old and it was far from perfect, but it brought me a lot of healing. It gave me time between living in my children's house and living here in my new home. I did a lot of grieving and healing in that rental house. Before I started school, I spent a lot of days just sitting in my recliner reading. It was there that I stopped reading TTC posts entirely. I had already started reading infertility blogs, but I officially ended my quest for children six months after moving there. I spent the rest of my time reading books and blogs about women living life without children after infertility and just putting one foot in front of the other. It took absolutely everything I had.

The house had a good energy though. I talked to the homeowner, a woman in her late 80s who had bought the house with her husband some sixty years ago, and learned she was an artist. It was not just a hobby; she was a working artist with pieces commissioned for important places all over the world. She said the house had good energy and had been good to everyone who had lived there. Plus, the house was close to school and had a backyard for my dog so it was perfect for us at the time.

Living in that healing house gave me the space I needed to deal with my infertility experience. It was there that I went through every single piece of paper I had accumulated throughout my TTC journey. It was there that I went through all of my files from the fertility clinics and adoption agencies. It was there that I decided to shred it all except for the pictures of my embryos.

Living in that healing house gave me the gift of time. It gave me an in between stage where I could sort through my things and sort through myself, deciding what to keep and what to let go. It would have been very difficult to go straight from living in the house I bought for my children to living in a place where I knew that I would never have children.

I cried so much and so hard in that rental house. And with each good cry I shed a layer of pain and devastating disappointment. I wrestled with my existential demons, wondering what was the point of anything really. I missed my expectations for my old dreams and I missed my previous relationships with my friends and family that had been forever changed. I grieved and I healed.  And then I moved out.

And now I am here.

Home.