When I first thought about writing this blog, I couldn’t think of a name.
Sure, I could have just titled it, “Kara Markovich.”
You all know me.
Or “My Eggs, Infertility and Me; One woman’s journey into the realm of IVF drugs.”
Nope, not really my style either.
Not that this was a terribly pressing issue, but I wanted to think of something fitting. Something that would represent me and what I had to say.
A few days after that initial IVF class (and my decision to start up a blog), I woke up one early morning and just laid in bed. Suddenly, something in my head told me to call the blog, “The Thing Is” after my favorite poem by Ellen Bass. I could not imagine anything more fitting. I immediately got up and started to write.
I want to share this poem with you. I’ve been wanting to for a while now. It is about struggle, pain and accepting all that life throws at us. Though it may sound terribly cliche, I find it breathtaking, beautiful and truthful.
This infertility thing is painful but I appreciate that it has opened my eyes to everyone I have in my life. One day, I will lose someone close to me and the pain will be excruciating. We all will or we all have. It will be in that moment that I will have to move forward though everything in me will hurt.
I want to dedicate this to all of you who have felt that punch in the stomach, that despair and pain, but have continued to find joy in your life. Whether it was a death, an illness or a change in life’s plans that you never expected. Thank you for giving me someone to look up too.
The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.