The Lengths We'll Go To

I'm eating out of the ocean.

Seriously, I've needed to become accustomed to breathing only through my mouth when eating and drinking several things these days. Making my salad tonight was a real... learning... experience.

Last week I bought a new cookbook, Cooking for Fertility, focused on fertility foods because I felt I needed more direction than just, "Oh yeah, that's a whole food. I'll eat it." I wanted better guidance on recipes rather than just eating salads and lentils. One of the first items I decided to try out was this Kale, Cucumber & Seaweed salad. Figuring that sushi works for me and I've tried a little seaweed salad from those sushi places before, it seemed doable.

Welp. Lemme tell ya. Woof.

For about a month I've been using a greens powder (Garden of Life Perfect Food) that has enough spirulina and chlorella to make you think you walked into the fish market. I religiously chug the mixture in two breaths, being sure not to breathe through my nose after each chug. Yuuuuuck! Additionally, the cookbook I bought made a suggestion to drink kombucha. It is a fermented tea and therefore smells a little like a brewery. It's funny, you'd think that would be easy to take, but just knowing that it isn't really a beer somehow makes it a beverage that I gulp down without breathing through my nose. Yawn.

You'd think I'd be used to this... But a seaweed salad is a new level! Most of what's in it is pretty good! Base of kale, chopped cucumber and red onion, shredded apple, black sesame seeds. The dressing is apple cider vinegar, pineapple juice, sesame oil, garlic. Of course there's also soaked Wakame and toasted Nori. Weeeeeird! The wakame seaweed comes in a zip bag all dried out. I put it in a measuring cup with some water and walked away. WOWZERS! I came back maybe 10 minutes later and it had blossomed out of the cup! Kind of a neat trick. But I'm a texture person and man is it slimy. Eeeeep :(

I'm trying to choke it down here remembering that I'm nourishing my body. A big piece of frosted chocolate cake may be easier to gobble up and have seconds tolerate but it sure isn't helping heal the imbalances in my body. So, seaweed it is... Man, when this baby gets here one day, he or she is gonna have a lot of stories to sit through!

Reclaiming Joy

It is so painfully easy to lose yourself in the process once someone stamps you as "infertile." It hurts. It's painful. And you want to find whatever solution you can think of to put the battle behind you. While you're busy researching fertility clinics, deciding on the best supplements and resetting your lifestyle, the goal you're after can become so much of your focus that you forget what life used to be.

The last year and a half has brought so much change that I don't even remember what my life is "supposed" to be like. But what I do know is that most of the time I've been feeling anxious, uncertain and inadequate. Certainly those feelings began to creep in last fall when, month after month, there was no positive test, but it really intensified in May when my contract was up with my old company. In a way, it was the symbolic last tie to my "old" life that I had loved so much.

Despite common professional stressors, life was good in New York. I remember the unbridled joy I often felt just walking through the Theater District on my way home or going for a run in Central Park. Since we've left, I do have my moments of joy and excitement, but so often those feelings are overshadowed by disappointment and discouragement.

One of the first pieces of advice that Acupuncture Jane gave me was to "find joy" which, honestly, had me stumped for a couple weeks. But I put a lot of effort towards reminding myself of the things that made me happy and being more conscious of those little natural things that would put a smile on my face. In Colorado, the sky is just an amazing work of art. Realizing that it was something I enjoyed, I've now tried to really focus my attention towards appreciating those gorgeous skyscapes many times a day. I pushed myself to do things that I was interested in with the hope that I might find a pocket of joy hiding somewhere. So I've tried doing more running and yoga and those things make me feel like I'm reclaiming myself. Which naturally leads to moments of joy and fulfillment.

In the car today I had the windows down with the hot sun warming me up from the air conditioning I'd just been enveloped in. With some old school Dave Matthews Band flowing, life just felt so good. I want to remember to shine more light on these moments and give them all the attention they deserve. And I'd also like to put some more thought into making moments like that. Life is so short that the idea of waiting for moments of joy to fall in your lap seems short sighted. What can we do in life to make our own joy without it feeling manufactured?