Category: mental health

Review of Britney Spears’ Memoir: The Woman in Me (Spoiler: I loved it!)

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I love hearing people’s stories – obviously I love sharing my own stories, but I also love learning about other people’s experiences. I’ve read a lot of memoirs this year including Michael J. Fox’s, Tom Felton’s, and Elliot Page’s – but the one that I surprisingly connected with the most was Britney’s The Woman in Me.

I was an OG Britney Spears fan. I was in 7th grade when her first album came out, and …Baby One More Time was one of the first cds I remember buying. I remember trying to learn the dance to (You Drive Me) Crazy with my friend Heidi. We practiced it over and over for hours! (Did anyone else have the VHS tape of Darrin’s Dance Grooves?!)

As I got older, I didn’t keep up with Britney’s music as much, but I definitely remember hearing about her in the news and tabloids. I remember when she shaved her head, and the media portrayed her as being “crazy.” I remember a guy in one of my high school classes talking about how he loved the Toxic music video because Britney was basically naked in it. Most of the talk I heard about Britney was either about how scandalous she was or about how people thought she was crazy.

I remember a few years ago when #FreeBritney started trending. My initial reaction was that it was just a rumor, that it had to be fake. But I remember wondering later if it could be true. And if it was true, how truly sad and terrible that would be.

It’s hard to separate truth from fiction – the news can obviously be a very biased source of information, and lately I feel like everything I read I have to take with a grain of salt. But I do think that we did learn that Britney had been trapped in some form or fashion under an abusive conservatorship. I can’t 100% know the truth behind her family’s motivation for doing that to Britney, but it sure does seem like they were taking advantage of her and exploiting her money.

When I heard that Britney had published a memoir, I immediately knew I wanted to read it. The day it came out in October, I searched for it in our library’s online catalog and saw that it already had a wait for it. I put a hold on it and was 5th in line to get it. I expected it to be full of drama and thought it would be more of an interesting read than anything else.

I didn’t expect to connect so deeply to the story. I didn’t expect to be stirred so emotionally by it. Honestly, I almost cried at one point while reading it. After reading it, I just wished I could meet Britney and give her a big hug!

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pink flowers

(Secondary) Infertility Grief – When Does it Stop?

EricaLeave a comment

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***here is my disclaimer before you read this post – after you read it, you may find yourself thinking
A) Really? ANOTHER post on infertility? I thought she moved on, why can’t she get over this?
B) Wow, Erica is in a really bad place, she needs to get some professional help.
C) Boy, Erica is really self-centered. Doesn’t she see how great her life is, and yet here she is being overly dramatic…

Here are my short answers to the above questions:

A) Yes, another post on infertility. The grief process is not linear, and sometimes I may be doing okay, and other times I may really be struggling. Right now, I’m struggling.
B) I am getting help – I have a therapist and am also planning to meet with my doctor about taking medicine for deprssion/anxiety.
C) I do recognize that I have many wonderful things in my life to be thankful for. That doesn’t make this hurt any less. My grief is valid.

Lastly, there is no pressure to read the rest of this post if you’re not in the headspace to do so, or if your empathy muscles feel particularly weak at the moment. Writing this was helpful for me, and I thought I’d put it out there just in case it’s helpful for someone else.

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As exciting as it is for me to feel that I’ve very much healed from a traumatic experience with postpartum depression back in 2016, that victory feels overshadowed right now by what feels like a losing battle with grief.

I thought I was moving on. I thought I was healing from this. So why is it hurting so much again?

Back in January, I decided it was time to move on from the dream of having another child. It really felt like the right decision at the time. And I think it was.

I started pursuing other dreams and interests. I began training for a half marathon (I’m up to 8 miles now!), I got more involved in my church and in local community events, and it was all very good.

But last month, a last little bit of naive hope came bubbling back up to the surface, and I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, it could be possible for pregnancy to happen for us? What if we just casually decided to try again? What if, what if, what if???

I made a deal with myself: we could begin casually trying for a baby again if (and only if) I could keep my cool during the process. There was no need for me to convince myself that I was pregnant, there was no need to think that every little symptom meant something, and I definitely wouldn’t get all upset when my period started. I would go into it, knowing our chances were slim to none, and that would be okay.

You would think after living with myself for over 36 years that I would know that there was no way I could be casual about this. And no surprise, I definitely was not!

I am ashamed to confess how quickly I devolved into past habits. In two weeks’ time, I convinced myself I was pregnant, went out and bought brand new (expensive!) pregnancy tests, and was devastated when the results were negative. Immediately, all the bitterness and rage came back. And I couldn’t believe it. How was I back in exactly the same place I had been 6 months ago? I thought I had processed this grief, I thought I had moved on!

Maybe I never really moved on, maybe I just deferred my grief and pain for a while.

I’m honestly scared to face the ultimate decision of permanently moving on. Right now, I continue to try to defer that moment by telling myself “I’m only 36, I have a few more years.”

Will it get easier then? Or do you just live with this constant pain all the time? And how do you do that gracefully?

In the past month, I’ve had four friends that have become pregnant. One of them with their first, three of them with their second child. And to be honest, it hurts. It hurts a lot.

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The End of Our Infertility Journey

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***note: I originally drafted this post in January of 2023, when the emotions were still very fresh. I have done a lot of healing over the past few months, but it has not been a quick or easy process. A lot of ugly parts of me have been revealed during this process – anger, bitterness, resentment – for the people who have stuck by my side during some of my worst seasons, thank you. Thank you all for giving me grace as I try to become a better, healthier version of myself.

This is the third, and what I believe will be the final, update on our infertility journey. In May of 2020, my husband and I started trying for a second child. In January of 2023, we stopped trying. After 2 and a half years of this emotional roller coaster from hell, we finally decided to quit.

There’s a lot more to the story, but if you just want the cliff notes, that’s about it. I suppose it’s not really the end of the journey, because now it’s time to take a detour on the path called grief. I wish that the journey was just over and I could go back to my life before. I wish I could feel like who I was before we started trying to have another baby, but I don’t know how to do that. We will be forever changed by this experience, and I’m just looking forward to the day when it doesn’t hurt so much.

Because I’m weird, or perhaps a bit obsessive, I tracked how many cycles I’d had since we began this process and figured out how many times we ended up trying (and failing) to get pregnant. So here are the stats below:

31 months total
35 cycles total
30 = # of times we tried to get pregnant
5 = # of cycles we took a break from trying
17 = Longest consecutive stretch trying for a baby

Over a period of 31 months, I had 35 cycles.
Out of those 35, we made an effort to get pregnant 30 different times.
There were 5 cycles that I purposely opted out of trying because I needed an emotional breather every once and a while.
Our longest consecutive stretch of intentionally trying was 17 cycles in a row.

I don’t know if it’s helpful or not for me to see these numbers, but in a way I feel like it validates my experience. I can look at the numbers and understand a little more why it has been so hard. 30 is a lot of times to feel emotionally shattered.

So what happened? Why did we decide to quit trying?

In the last update I gave in October of 2022, I had just talked about how we had recently seen a reproductive endocrinologist and that potentially we could try one of the less-invasive treatments: intrauterine insemination (IUI).

After thinking about it, we came to the decision that starting in January of 2023, we would give IUI a try, up to three times. If it didn’t work, then we would plan to call it quits.

But not every couple is eligible for IUI. There’s a lot of factors at play – sperm count, number of healthy eggs left, fallopian tubes being open/blocked, etc.

When we last went to the doctor back in August, it looked like we were good candidates for this procedure. But before going through all the trouble of attempting IUI in January, we wanted to double check that everything still looked promising, so we did a few tests again. This time, the test results were not good. What our results showed is that things had changed, and we were now ineligible for IUI.

“Let us know if you’re interested in pursuing IVF.”

That was the last message we got from our doctor’s office.

But I had already decided that I was not going to pursue in vitro.

I’ll pause here for a moment because I just know someone out there wants to ask, “if you want another baby so badly, why aren’t you going to try in vitro?”

Infertility and the journey of trying to have a child is a very personal, not to mention difficult, journey. What’s right for one person may not be right for another person. And that’s okay. And when a couple decides their journey is over, it’s important to validate that decision.

For me, the mental and emotional toll of not getting pregnant every month is something I can’t continue doing. The past year I found myself struggling with depression often. At times, I found it hard to find the energy to get out of bed.

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