I am taking the time to work on rediscovering myself. With life’s lemons in the fertility world, it gets difficult accepting and understanding who you are and who you want to be. The same goes with being in my current work place. For the past 6 years, I’ve been working with adults with chronic mental health issues. This along with my own journey of infertility does take a toll on the mind, body, and soul. The journey of learning what it is I like and the person I want to be is important. It’s interesting, we are never too old to learn or work on something new. The ideas of being a mom is no longer the case, this is such a hard pill to swallow. And yet, although I am not a mother with children on earth, I am a mother to Angels. When I decided I am no longer going to have kids or I am taking a long break to feel whole again, there are just many things my mind and body are fighting.
Sometimes I see myself wanting to forget/escape from all things that reminded me of my pregnancy journey including losing Amir and Aliya. Although, I want to bury that side of me because I want to move on, the experience of losing them is forever in the body. I sometimes see myself wanting to regress to a time in my life when I had no pregnancies and it was just Tanvir and I. This is so easy said then done. I need to somehow find a balance and find the story that makes me feel the most comfortable. Being in denial of having Amir and Aliya is okay for a few seconds, but when their Birthdays and holidays come around, I am shaken with the grief and remembrance that they exists and I don’t have them.
For so long, my grief with Amir has been front and center. Aliya’s grief left me numb for years. I suppose the numbness has been coming down and I am now allowing my mind and body to feel her loss. Trauma plays tricks on my mind and body. I sometimes lose track of time and years. It’s a good thing I don’t have to rely on my brain to remember what day today is or the year and can count on electronics. This is what the trauma brain does for me. There were months I went on living day by day, task by task, project by project with short term goals. If you asked me about the future, I couldn’t tell you anything regarding my hopes, wishes, desires and plans. I was living in the here and now. This was/is my survival skill. This brain, mind, and body had a lot of grief over life circumstances and feelings of disappointments that didn’t work out.
Being resilient and working on not being crushed also takes a lot of energy and healing. I always had a difficult time with feeling my emotions. The way I took blows to my sadness was basically keeping it inside my body and using my intellectual brain. I didn’t want to feel the feelings and I always wanted to run away from the feelings. Trauma is part of us and it stays in the body. I am working as much as I can to allow myself to feel and be aware of emotions and feelings. Being okay and looking okay is very exhausting. It’s also scary not having a good space to be vulnerable at times or feeling like no one understands where you’re coming from or the depth of the feelings. My other escape is this blog, I am writing to heal and express the energies that are stored in my body to be out. This blog makes me feel naked at times and that’s okay.
We live in an interesting world today. Sometimes the world can feel cruel and in parts of the world it is. Even with everything going on outside of my own personal issues and feelings, I can and do feel for others in the world that are struggling to survive. I am grateful that although I have moments when my grief is all around for all the blessings Allah has given me.
I am taking the time right now to develop who I am as a person and to be good to me. I want to figure out who my authentic self is and what gives me joy in the world. I want to learn what I can do in this world to maintain a good balance of work, fun, and love. They say you’re never to old to learn something new and that’s where I want to be. I want to allow myself to develop and do the things I haven’t been able to do for awhile. I want to continue to have a solid relationship with Tanvir where we both grow as a couple and our individual selves.
My baby girl will become 5 years old this December 16, 2024. I will celebrate you Aliya Duniyah and I am learning to be okay. Okay with being a person who has the experience of multiple pregnancy losses and a person who can still find joy and develop into whatever was meant for me to be. I am still learning, I am still learning to process this no mom journey and it’s crazy, you would think I would be comfortable with where I am, but I’m not. Now that there is no future of a child (that I can see at this time), I feel stuck with my past history. I am trying to learn where I should be for the comfort of myself. I need my own answers because sometimes interactions with others can leave my energy not so good, especially when the questions regarding kids come up. It can be very uncomfortable to know or to figure out what to say.
I use to be so bold with expressing I am a mother of 2 angels and these days, I wanted to escape the narrative. I’m still figuring out my journey.
Happy Birthday Aliya Duniyah Rahman, the world will move on yet you will always be in my heart, body, soul and mind. You and Amir were a part of me and I am grateful for this experience even though it does make me sad sometimes. I am working on finding my authentic self and manage how to include you 2 in that journey as well.
In a Blink 