I have this oil painting hanging on the wall above the desk in my home office. I look at it every day, so often that it almost lost the meaning it once had. It's like I went numb. I used to look at it and wink my third eye at it, as if saying "hold on, little Angel, let me just finish this one other project and we'll get to the business of conceiving you". The last time I felt this way was about this time last year. We had just bought a house and started a major renovation project. Now that renos are finished and dust is settled but the little Angel hasn't joined us I'm full of anger, sadness and questions - did I make him wait too long? Did he choose another mommy? Will anyone else choose me? Where are you now?

Later on that summer, I felt it was time for some divination tools and decided to make a baby vision board. I asked my friend, who had also been trying to concieve for a while, to do this together, and she suggested we paint what we wanted instead of cutting magazines. I never painted before, nevermind using oil paint, but she confidently pulled out all the required accessories, showed me how to mix, and we made ourselves comfortable at her backyard patio for a few hours creating our babies on canvas, calling on them, and dreaming about getting pregnant at the same time. How much fun would it be to be pregnant together, to be happy together, to worry together, to have same age children and go through all the steps of motherhood together. We dreamed and painted and prayed. And painted.

Fast forward 10 months... I am hosting a baby shower for her this weekend. Crying and laughing. Crying at party stores while shopping for baby-shower stuff. Laughing because it's ridiculous how easy is it for me to teach others how to manifest and it works out for them. But what about me? Do divination tools only work for every other person? It's not just a shower, it's raining inside! With a chance of thunderstorms. No one knows, only you. I can keep this a secret, and my shit together.

I wonder what lesson is in this for me? What am to take out of this experience? Is my desire not genuine enough? Do I not want a child badly enough? Am I such a horrible person that I don't deserve to be blessed with this miracle of life? What do I need to do? Give me a sign!

Ok, time to wipe up the victim's snotty nose and put on the big girl pants.

​I'm listening. Seriously listening.

 This time last year I was laying bum up on a folding beach chair in the heart of Caribbean frantically trying to catch my anxious breath. Head spinning, heart palpitating, dehydrated and drunk, sad and broken. Alcohol usually helps with anxiety... but that was a big one, the one you can't wash down with a Cuba Libre.

My friends we leisurely laughing about something, creating a soothing background noise for my frantic thoughts, while on the foreground my mind kept recycling sentences exactly as they were delivered to me, nonchalantly by my family doctor in his office just a few days prior: "....estrogen off-the-chart low...", "...you're like a post-menopausal woman...", "...basically you're not ovulating at all...". 

My gosh, way to deliver the news! Just shoot the woman in the womb while you're at it and let her bleed to death slowly. This was followed by a suggestion of going on the contraceptive pill for three months! A cherry on top of an already wounded female soul. Who goes on the pill when they are trying to conceive? How did modern medicine even get this ground-breaking idea? Hold on, did I hear that properly? I did.

My anger was rising, as was BBT under the mid-afternoon Caribbean sun. I loudly finished my drink and fell asleep. Away from reality.