The Ashes
If you are anything like me, you probably had a list of things you wanted to accomplish before having kids, and you assumed that when the time was right, the pieces would fall into place and you would be holding your first child in no time. Maybe you had an idea of how many kids you’d like to have and what age gaps you wanted between them. Did you have names picked out? I did.
Infertility changes everything. It changes the way we see ourselves, the way we see our partners, family, friends, strangers with kids walking down the street. It changes the way we think about vacations and work too.
Through some unjust combination of negative pregnancy tests, blood work, invasive tests and procedures, cycle monitoring appointments, medications, timed intercourse, intrauterine insemination, finding donors, matching with a surrogate, IVF cycles, failed transfers, miscarriages, later term losses, stillbirth… Our timeline burns to ashes. Maybe those names we so lovingly chose are now held by children we hold in our hearts instead of our arms.
The person who started this journey full of hope and optimism is not the person reading these words right now. Where is that old version of us? Can they come back? Would you want them to? Can something or someone else rise from the ashes of all we have lost?
My Phoenix
In mythology, a phoenix is a beautiful bird that is born in the flame and ashes of it’s own destruction. The phoenix lets go of the life it had to take to flight in it’s new form. In this way beauty rises out of the ashes of what has been lost. To me, this is a beautiful metaphor for creating meaning and healing through the adversity and uncertainty of infertility and loss. The image of a phoenix rising from the ashes of it’s former self and taking flight is one of resilience and strength, resonated with me on my own journey through loss, infertility, and building my family through surrogacy.
I was already on my healing journey after recognizing that I was not handling my journey through infertility and loss well on my own. My counsellor and I were working on processing how the life I had wanted and anticipated was not the life I had, and whether it was possible to be okay with that. My sisters and I had a girls night where we took a class on creating mosaic stained glass artwork with pieces of broken glass.
Each of these coloured shards had originally been part of something else constructed with intention, which broke. It felt deeply personal to me to make meaning and beauty out of what was broken. It felt like a outward symbol of what I was doing inside. I knew I wanted to make a phoenix. I took those pieces and with them I created something new and (at least to my eyes) beautiful. This stained glass was important to me in my own healing journey. Since I made it, it has sat in the window of the space where I have done my schooling and my healing to get to the place mentally, emotionally, and intellectually where I can safely and ethically counsel others on similar journeys through infertility and child loss.
Your Phoenix Taking Flight
Journeying through infertility, child loss, assisted reproduction, and alternative forms of building family often means loss of a future we thought would come easy, taking the pieces of something we pursued with intention, and hoping to make a beautiful life with the pieces that remain.
As a professional with a background in behavioural psychology and a Master’s of Arts in Counselling Psychology, I use both my personal and professional experience in the realms of infertility, pregnancy loss, and surrogacy to meet you with empathy and compassion while protecting the safety of the space for you and your unique story. I am here to help your phoenix take flight and find meaning and beauty in your journey.
Phoenix in Flight Psychotherapy 