In the midst of quarantine and isolation and remote working, I’ve been taking a lot of long walks recently. Some close by, but others I drive an hour or more in a southwesterly direction.

Today I stayed nearer to Salem and ended up on beautiful reservation land in Gloucester. Without knowing, I veered off my planned trail and ended up on another one, only to get the feeling that I wasn’t traversing in the direction I’d originally planned. So I turned around, and soon enough found the trail I’d intended to follow. It’s a trail that cuts through a gigantic swamp filled with lifeless red maples, a place created by beavers however many years ago. An eerily ancient and majestic place.

Then, the same thing happened, I veered off course. Or rather, I thought I remembered seeing that the trail looped around, but when I finally gave in and downloaded the All Trails app on my phone, I saw that the trail had ended and that I was once again off on another. So, I turned around. Again. And while the obvious landmarks were there, the trail looked different walking back the other way. I found myself questioning whether I was still on the right trail when I noticed a stone wall I hadn’t seen before, then stepped over a piece of green glass I remembered and was reoriented.

At that moment, it occurred to me how similar walking a trail back in the other direction is to experiencing our past through memories and reflection. We are bound to see things differently than on the way up, which is filled with veering and reorienting. We may notice things we didn’t before, or see things from a different angle and question our instincts.

The reality is that our remembrances are not concrete, they’re only memories, formed in the way we experienced and internalized them. They are whispers and shadows of a past lived, but not the whole story.

And as much as we might like to question and even walk back through time to start all over again, we can only accept what is right here, right now — the situation and our task at hand, shaped by the combination of choices we’ve made and the outside forces beyond our control.

This struggling to accept is where I find myself, in the midst of a divorce after an almost nine-year relationship, turning 37 in May, not settled in my career or finances, and realizing how much I want to be a mother despite it all. I could lament and question why I didn’t leave my husband when, at 33, I realized he didn’t want children after all. But what good does that do me now? Not a whole lot. It only sheds light on the hard lessons I’ve had to learn.

Acceptance. It’s not easy. There are some days that I wake up, and I can’t make it out of bed for another 30 minutes because the weight of loss is heavy. There are moments when I watch certain movies (i.e. Baby Boom) where I find myself convulsively sobbing when that adorable, curly-haired baby says “mama” for the first time to Diane Keaton. And I wonder what could have been if only…

Acceptance is hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth striving for. And I do, every day. Acceptance is not the same thing as giving up or being passive, or at least that’s not how I interpret it. Rather, it’s being still and seeing our lives as objectively as possible. It’s finding inner stillness and peace, clearing space in the mind and conscience. Acceptance is fundamental to continuing forward on the journey with a strengthened set of values and a renewed purpose. One step at a time.

Today, I accept the decisions I’ve made. I accept where I am, I accept who I am. I accept that this is not where I’ll be or who I’ll be tomorrow. Every decision I make from here on out, and how I choose to react to fateful forces, will determine my tomorrow. Acceptance is hard, but choosing to accept my present circumstances — dare I say even love the lessons and opportunities I’ve been granted — gives me faith that someday, somehow, I will be a mother. And I will experience and see motherhood differently, perhaps in a more aware and acute way, because of the path I’ve walked.

Our minds can be funny, in a fleeting sense of way. Or perhaps not so much fleeting as flash mob-like. You’ve seen those videos where a group of people suddenly shows up in a place, dances their hearts out, and then disperses so that passers-by wonder what just happened? Yes, that’s how my mind has worked as of late. As time seems to slow down and the world takes a bit of a pause, new thoughts and considerations have crept in and danced round.

While the desire to be a mother does not waver, exactly what that journey looks like or how I might get to ‘Point Being a Mother’ has changed three or four times in the last couple of weeks. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is a contributing factor, both in stalling my ability to move forward with bloodwork (one of the first steps in moving toward IUI or IVF) and in my rethinking what it would look and feel like, in uncertain times, to be a single mother… and what that means for my psyche, and the good of any child I bring into this world.

I turn 37 in May. My divorce will be final sometime in July. Two weeks ago, after four years of grief and struggle of choosing my marriage over becoming a mother and vice versa (in the end, becoming a mother is something I cannot sacrifice), I was determined to start the IUI process in July or August. I was even more excited that my current employer-provided health insurance of Blue Cross Blue Shield recently started covering fertility, not just infertility, services for women in Massachusetts.

Then, COVID-19, which was just a dot on the horizon, suddenly loomed large on everyone’s doorstep. And, I found out that my employer is likely changing our health insurance plan beginning in April of this year, due to rising healthcare premiums. Timing is everything.

All of this uncertainty got me thinking. Many would say at 37, it’s a matter of months rather than years of getting pregnant, especially with an IUI procedure. I know fertility takes another rapid descent from age 38 onwards. And yet, as strong as my heart desire is to be a mother, I do not feel prepared — yet — as a provider.

I would like to own my own home, a place where I am settled and can welcome a new child. Excitement at the thought of getting pregnant, for a moment, blinded that realization of having to move from place to place (and apartment to apartment), as I have done in the last seven years. There is stability in a sense of rooted place, and it’s something I feel is necessary before I can more seriously pursue motherhood. And, I would like to have at least half a year’s worth of child care costs saved. I’m just not there yet.

I am also not mentally and emotional settled in my current job and am still seeking opportunity. I have plans to find another option for work, potentially a remote position with an organization that I have previous ties with (fingers crossed), though I am looking at all options, including a return to teaching. I am also in the beginning throes of starting my own professional organizing and homemaking business as a side hustle, with the hopes of one day growing a full-time endeavor.

As far as locale and community — in the last week, I have realized how much I miss acres of undeveloped land and the woods. When I worked on a farm this past summer, I discovered a rural area that is about an hour southwest of where I am now, in Salem. Housing is not exactly cheap in this land of trees, fields, and tractors, but it’s much more affordable than where I am currently. If I create the right work situation, I have my eye on moving that way come September (before the Halloween crowds hit).

I know there is never a perfect time to become a parent, especially when a woman is poised on the edge of fertility, but does that make it right to leap ahead if you don’t have at least a running start on the means to support another human being? A new life is the biggest of deals, perhaps the most significant event that shapes a person’s life trajectory.

Maybe right or wrong isn’t the best framework. If it happens to you, as an unexpected outcome, then that’s an avenue to navigate and still cause for celebration. In my case, where I am choosing and planning to become a single mother, it’s an acutely conscious and aware choice. I feel there is a level of responsibility and accountability necessary, for me and for any child that I bring into this world. I have the urge to also become more self sufficient, in a practical sense — in the next few months, I want to learn how to change my own car tire, oil, coolant, etc., as well as CPR and first aid. These are important skills for any independent woman who is taking care of another person on their own, if for nothing else than the sense of sufficiency.

And, while I am certainly not basing my choice around or feel that I need another person with whom to have a child, there is always the thought that I could meet someone within the next couple of years… I have always said that I never want to meet and be in a relationship with someone simply to procreate, which is quite true, not to mention cutting it quite close to 40. But I suppose, there is always the chance…

More important, though, is the core idea of being a mother and reflection on what that really means for me. While I deeply desire the experience of creating life, of carrying that life for nine months, what I really want is the opportunity to be a mother. If that means adopting when I’m 42 or 43, after I’ve had time to settle and establish a new way of life and being for myself, then maybe THAT is the better path, the less selfish option.

The unknowns of any path are equal. I don’t know what considerations or thoughts may show up and dance through my head in the coming weeks. And if I’ve learned anything up until now, it’s that I certainly can’t predict what unexpected events will cross my path in the coming months.

But I can rest in the hope and faith that no matter how it works out, that one day — I will become a mother. I can move forward in each present moment, actively shaping the journey, creating opportunities for myself and a child — not waiting and letting life, in all its forms, happen to me. Instead, I will happen to and meet life halfway, no matter how many bouts of reflection and reconsideration it takes to arrive.

You are worthy of the release. You are worthy of being free from all the things that broke your heart.

— Author Unknown.

It is the day after my divorce. The sun shines, skies are blue with tufts of white. It’s chillier today than it has been, a hiccup in the unseasonably-early spring-like weather that has washed Massachusetts since February. I spotted the earliest buds on bushes today as I walked to a Dance Jams class I decided to try out at the YMCA. Since I’ve been having an issue with my lower back, I’ve had to call off my usual running routine after almost 20 years.

At 36 (going on 37 in May), I feel I’m too young for such pains, but the human body is as vulnerable and delicate as it is strong and resilient. Clearly, something has gone awry — perhaps from this past summer (2019), when I worked 12-hour laborious days on a local farm — an exploration in interests and a personal sabbatical that was far more physical exertion than I could have ever imagined. I fear a disc may be out of place, yet I hesitate to put much medical diagnosis behind it at this point. I’ll take my chances in first switching up my physical routines. I have decided that dancing is for me, and I’ll try and make it a Saturday morning habit. That, and morning swims twice a week, combined with long walks and weekly yoga. I’ve got this.

So. My divorce. The first and only, I hope. After almost five years of marriage, and four years of internal and external struggle, we — my husband and I — made it official. On a rainy Friday the 13th, we went to the county courthouse — the same county in which we were married, though we’ve completed two cross-country moves in that time — and filed a 1A (walk-in) divorce. There were three other couples, and I marveled at how calm and contained and even amiable they appeared. Not me, not we.

From the get-go, I was all nerves — irritated that my husband had waited until that morning to print out his financials, though I had most everything else in order. We drove together, though we hardly exchanged two words. My heart raced as we stood in line, and I snapped at him and called him a name when he made a rude remark about not being in line for paternity (divorce and paternity being one line). When the woman at the counter told us we needed to fill out a new form because the lawyer my husband had hired did not fill it out correctly, the dam broke and all I had been holding onto gave way.

Tears fell, I shook trying to control the floodgates; I also felt my husband soften. He told me it would be alright, that we would get through this, lightly touched my shoulder. I asked a man at another counter for tissues, and he looked at me as if I had trees growing out of my ears. “My tissues are upstairs, I don’t usually work down here,” he barked. I muttered a “thanks for nothing”, appalled that there were no tissues to be found in the whole of the registrar’s office (though there was plenty of hand sanitizer on defense against Covid 19).

Then we waited in courtroom #1 with three other couples for our case to be reviewed by the presiding female judge. I’d brought a book with me but could not read, could not do anything but watch and listen and wait for our turn, sitting on that bench in a New England courtroom that was as overcast inside as out, excepting the light of the desk lamp where the judge sat reviewing files. And then, we were before her. Nothing out of the ordinary, the questions seemed the mandated type. The details of our agreement aren’t important, though basically it’s as if we are going back to the way things were before we ever became a couple. Though things are not the same, they will never be the same. And for that, I at least… am grateful.

What is important is the reason that brought us to this place in time, to two people standing next to each other and stating that, after four years of disagreement and two rounds of couples counseling (separated by two years) — these two, who had sworn their lives to one another and meant it — that there was, is, no hope for reconciliation. To put it simply (though I’ve learned it’s anything but) — I want to be a mother, deep in my bones (though I tried countless times to grow out of it). My husband has no such desire, nowhere in his heart (though he tried his best to dig it up). In the end, we both made promises that we couldn’t keep.

To say that this experience was surreal, on Friday the 13th and in the midst of the Coronavirus panic no less, is an understatement. The drive home was a blur of raindrops and stifled, leftover tears. We parted with scant words. I stopped at Whole Foods on the way home and stocked up on food for the week, arrived home and decided to rearrange my entire studio apartment, then fell into a dream-ridden sleep for 2 hours with my cats snuggled on either end. I don’t remember the details of my dream, only the feeling of acute sadness. When I woke, I took two weeks’ worth of laundry to the laundromat, then came back home and did a deep clean of all the nooks and crannies. My way, I think, of releasing all that no longer serves me.

I did not expect life to ever take this turn, and as I grow older and wiser I realize that the unexpected is the only constant we have in life — that, and our choice of practicing optimism and hope or feeling the victim of uncontrolled chaos. There are times when I find myself dipping my toes in the latter. But, most days, I find my foundation and breath in hope, and the knowing that while I always seem to learn the hard way and to be a consistent late bloomer, there is authenticity in the choices I’ve made. And there is meaning in those choices.

Over the next few months, I will start the path of becoming a single mother by choice. In many ways, I began months ago. I plan on using this blog as a place to document my journey, my thoughts, hopes, fears, and epiphanies. There is much that remains uncertain, much to decipher and decide on over the next 6 months to a year. But it starts here and now, with this seed of hope that I carry with me wherever I go — that one day soon, I will become a mother and meet the tiny person for whom, without meeting my husband, would have never been.

~Mother Intuition