know how you feel

Lately I've been feeling pressure to be consistently optimistic and positive about how I'm feeling about the adoption process and the waiting stage. Some days it's really hard work to think positively about all of this. At any given time there are half a million things running through my head related to adoption ranging from "this is never going to happen" to "I've got to properly learn how to install a car seat." My emotions are all over the board. But sometimes it all just plain sucks. On many different levels. Seeing pregnant women sucks. Seeing new babies sucks. Going to work everyday with the feeling that life will never change sucks. Anticipating another Christmas and birthday without a child sucks. Knowing your future is in someone else's hands sucks. Waiting for a phone call sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks.

I feel like I should just suck it up and recognize the blessings that I do have in life. I certainly do have so much to be thankful for. But at the same time I truly believe that it's okay to actually FEEL what you are feeling. After my father's sudden death, D and I went to counselling to help me work through my grief. I very clearly remember the therapist telling me to give myself permission to thoroughly feel the emotion I was feeling. If I was angry, she told me to get angry and sit with the anger to feel it. If I was sad, I was to allow myself to be sad and not let anyone (myself included) tell me how I was supposed to feel.

So when I feel like someone "shot my stork" (I saw this blog title the other day and think it's absolutely hilarious and so true) I give myself permission to be angry or sad about how hard family planning has been for us. And when I feel excited and nervous about the idea of becoming a mother I work at feeling those emotions too. In our house we have a "know how you feel" magnet on our fridge which lists a variety of emotions/moods and there is a separate magnet you use to place around the emotion you are feeling.

Right now my magnet is on the "numb" feeling.