The meaning of life is something that’s a very complicated matter to think about, and yet we all do it. We’ve been doing it even more now than ever before in the past two + years since the pandemic hit. I most certainly have. The pandemic practically changed my whole f*cking life, and with that, my whole outlook and perspective on it changed, both for the better and the worst.
As the pandemic was just crossing the world, I was doing better than ever in my career as a freelance writer. I was getting my name and my brand out there. More and more clients came to me with bigger project inquiries, and these clients recommended me to their friends and families to outsource me as a writer and/or editor. I was also working extremely hard on my health, my marriage, and my other relationships (family and friends). Life was good.
Then Covid-19 hit in March 2020. Life was still good, and I was optimistic. But everything went downhill within months, and soon enough, it felt like everything I worked so hard for was just all taken away. I barely had any work inquiries, and by the end of 2020, they all just disappeared , all over and done with. My health worsened and I immensely struggled with my mental health. I was also still going through infertility at the time, and it seemed that no matter what methods and what sex positions my husband and I tried, or how many times a week we had sex, nothing worked. Nothing in my life was going as I planned. It wasn’t in my favour. I was ready to give up on life.
It wasn’t until a friend of mine passed away of epilepsy and depression that my perspective completely changed. Due to her own life trauma, she started taking anti-depressants until one day she went to bed and never woke up. Here I was complaining and moaning about my life, my hardships, and my struggles when my friend lost her chance to even do so. I didn’t feel I had the right to complain anymore. Instead, I saw my life, as well as being able to go to bed every night and wake up every morning, as a blessing and a privilege.
Just as soon as I changed my perspective on life as a whole, everything that was broken seemed to be glued together. My priorities completely shifted. Instead f just laying on the couch and mopping around and complaining about how much my life sucked, I began focusing on what was truly important and getting my sh*t together. People always say that when you don’t like the circumstances you’re in, change them. That was exactly what I did. I began working on my physical health, as well as my mental health. I started doing such things as take long walks and take Pilates lessons once a week (I would’ve gone more, but that was all that I could afford money wise). I started working on my new business venture, which is what all of you now know as The Graceful Boon. And after doing some much needed thinking and reflecting on my personal life and the people I surrounded myself with, I changed my circle entirely, and I’ve never felt better.
With all the negative emotions, my infertility struggles added to the stress, which eventually led to my downfall. My husband I finally started our IVF process in 2021. We ended up conceiving naturally, but it ended up being a chemical pregnancy that September. I had an embryo transfer two months later, which ended up failing despite the fact that all my test results looked promising. If you want to learn more about my infertility struggles, you can do so right here. When the nurse at our fertility clinic called me and said that I wasn’t pregnant, my husband was disappointed and distraught. It wasn’t that I didn’t end up getting pregnant after the embryo transfer, but it was rather about having to go through the physical, emotional and mental pain of another embryo transfer – for the both of us.
After much thought and deliberation, my husband and I decided to take a break from IVF completely for at least 6 months, maybe even a year. We thought it’d be the best decision for us as a couple and as individuals as we needed heal and properly prepare ourselves for the next steps. We continued on with our lives and actually started enjoying ourselves. It was like we were back in our dating days. By March, I noticed that I wasn’t getting my period. I assumed my PCOS symptoms started changing and acting up, so by the end of the month, I called my fertility clinic and asked to be tested. It turned out that it wasn’t PCOS, but rather a pregnancy. By the time it was confirmed, I was already almost TWO months along.
That’s not the end of the story, of course. But the moral is this: Good things will come to you at the most unexpected time and circumstance in your life. It’s not that good things come to those who wait. It’s that good things come just when they’re supposed to and when you least expect it.
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