"Your confidences fall. Is your faith etched in stone? Neither can comfort you from the wild unknown." Brett Dennen

Darlin' do not fear what you don't really  know

Walking the path of infertility is like walking through a dense jungle in the land of the wild unknown. There is no one miracle cure that will forever usher in the future we want, and there is no one definitive slam to the slightly open door that will tell us it's time to move forward with our lives. Absent is the confirmation that no remote, or slim, chance exists to sow the seeds of life in our own bodies.

So we continually wade through the wild unknown, hoping, believing, giving up, trying again, and living life a bit as if "on hold."

<I suppose we should insert some of that elevator on hold music here>.

So when do we push the little red emergency stop button on this ride? When do we exit stage left? When do we make peace with what is and move on to what will be? And perhaps the trickiest question, how do we navigate doing this in tandem with our partners?

Recently my husband confided that his feelings about adoption have changed, that he is no longer sure it is the right step for us, perhaps we should try to conceive on our own for another year or two. In a frenzy to hold onto the peace I had finally found for myself, I shut down.

Soon however I realized that my husband is in that same jungle, he is hacking away at the overgrowth with a machete and trying to make his own path in this wild unknown. I am walking beside him, however we are each forging our own footholds.

Perhaps the most we can do in this vast wilderness is hold hands as we climb up the steepest of terrains, and let go when we need to stop for water at the reflecting pool. With our broken hearts and battered souls we learn what to hold onto to, and what to let go.

We are lost in the wilderness together, yet filling our flasks with the hope that we each need most in this part of our passage.

"If you have a broken heart or a battered soul
Find something to hold on to or to let go
to help you through the hard nights like a flask filled with hope
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know"