Firstly I have spent any spare time I've had on writing an article about autism for the local paper (which was published) as well as getting some paintings done for the stall I had at a Fair over Easter. I have been creatively-focused!
It has also been the school holidays here (two weeks) and we went away for two nights to my Mum's holiday home. The day we left there to come back my Dad and half-sister, aged nine, arrived to stay for five nights. So I had almost a week of "mothering" two children. It was good but with my daughters ASD and my half-sister with behavioural issues; it was certainly challenging at times!
I believe I have had a shift around the whole SIF deal/adding to our family. I have mentioned the three "As" in recovery before - awareness, acceptance and action and how to get to action you need to move through awareness and acceptance first. I find myself very much moving into acceptance. I think for most of my SIF journey, I have sat within awareness - I was just not able to accept my fate for a very, very long time.
I believe I have accepted what God has dished out - early menopause and as a consequence of that - SIF. I still am a big WIP though around some aspects of acceptance - body image being a big factor. Yet I was able to talk to a friend who went through POF (premature ovarian failure) at a much younger age than me, around some of the stuff that comes up as a woman going through menopause so much earlier in life than anticipated. I had to cancel my appointment with the clinic in town that specialises in menopause last term but will reschedule that. I am also considering going for some counselling around early menopause and what a big impact that has had on my life.
My husband and I have mutually decided to not pursue the permanency (long-term fostering) route at this point. It took us two long years to go through the adoption process (our choice to take that long) so we really just want to give adoption a chance so will wait and see what happens over the next year. Fostering may or may not be in our future - I really don't know. It would be easy to force a solution and to go down that track but our preference is to parent from birth - in an adoption situation rather than as foster parents.
Also after having my half-sister here this week, it is a reminder of how difficult it can be for my daughter to share her space with another child. She had four full-blown meltdowns this week (including two in one day). Although she enjoyed having a playmate a lot of the time, she was out of her depth dealing with some of my half-sisters emotional outbursts. We did all learn from these scenarios - and talked about them. But I just have to trust that God will ultimately make the right decision for us and will guide us to fostering if that is the way we are meant to go. Obviously if it doesn't feel right; we won't go there.
In the meantime, while waiting it out in the adoption pool, I will continue to focus on my creative goals. I want to do more freelance writing and am aiming to have a permanent stall this Summer selling my art. Although I occasionally look at other jobs out there, I have a sense that I'm meant to be in the job that I am in right now. My daughter was exhausted in the last three weeks of last term and I ended up having her home a lot. I'm lucky that my job for the most part works around that.
I have noted that creatively I have pretty much picked up from where I left off four and a half years ago - when we first TTC our second child and SIF was obvious early on. For the last four and half years even my writing has been focussed on SIF and not much else. So it feels good to be moving out of focusing on just that and to be reclaiming parts of myself that I have lost over the years - little things like humour entering my art indicate that a lightness is coming back into my life again.
I also have to be realistic around my energy levels and menopausal symptoms - to accept the fact that I would be very challenged going through sleepless nights all over again with a baby. Perhaps God knows this already and is giving me time to come to this awareness and to therefore accept it.
I think also that fairy-tale endings just aren't always the way things go. Just because I've been through all I have with SIF; it doesn't mean I will get to be a Mum again. Perhaps it just simply isn't God's Will for me. From the outside when people go through their own trials and tribulations, it is easy to say that one event happened to lead to another event. But it is not always so obvious why things happen in life - especially losses. Perhaps sometimes they just do happen - to make us stronger or more emotionally and spiritually resilient and that's all.
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