The only one
Sometimes you feel like you are the only one. The only one who has the longing. The heartache. The void. The struggle. The inability. The anger.
You walk through the aisles of the grocery store, look around in church, or simply sit down in a restaurant for dinner and it seems obvious, right. Everyone else has a cart full and a booth overflowing with tiny little humans they call their own. And you can’t help but take notice of them and then immediately feel as though you are the only one.
The only one with empty arms…
A bedroom that should be a nursery…
The only one who can’t join in on the conversations of motherhood…
Or have the argument with your husband on who changes the diaper or picks up the toys.
You are the only one who can’t just look at her husband and she gets pregnant…
Or who has bags underneath her eyes from late night tear soaked pillows instead of 3am newborn feedings...
But one day my heart was opened to see something more. Something different. Because I realized I wasn’t the only one.
After I decided to stop keeping all of my experiences to myself and started blogging and decided to stop allowing myself to grieve and feel the bitterness, I realized the truth was this: 1 in 8 suffer from infertility.
In reality, the momma next to me who was chasing her two-year old? She could have been conceived after her fourth and last desperate attempt via IVF. And the family of five building sand castles and laughing until their bellies hurt could have built their family through adoption. Or the couple to my right could have been given their miracle through the gift of surrogacy. I just didn’t know. My perception might not always be their reality. Just ask the lady who was sitting next to me whom I discovered was also barren, yet hopeful.
The one lesson I continue to learn while on this journey is that we don’t know another person’s story or the struggles they are currently facing. I don’t know the barriers they had to bust through or the mountains they had to climb. And so I can’t be so quick to compare and judge, or so swift to believe the lie that I am the only one hurting. Left out. Because the fact is I am 1 in 8. The lady sitting beside is 1 in 8. And many of the families surrounding me? They could also be 1 in 8.
Together we are 1 in 8. And together we will overcome.
I have loved meeting and/or talking to those of you that are reading this that have reached out to me because you are also 1 in 8.