Recovery is taking too long. I’m tired. I’m angry. I don’t want to do this anymore. –Angel from CA
Angel, have you ever heard the expression from John Maxwell, “Everything worthwhile is uphill”?
It does take a freaking long time when you’re in recovery and you can’t see the light at the other end of the tunnel. Especially if you’re marching through alone, it's scary. How long have you been without a period? Think back to the times that you started noticing your period skipping one cycle and then coming back or showing up two weeks late? That was the beginning of it. If you had many years where your period was coming and going as it pleased before you noticed the dead stop, that’s when your lifestyle started to be a problem. Have you been working on your recovery as long as it took your body to start having fertility struggles? Have you put in the same amount of time to be fertile that it took for you to be infertile?
You’re tired and you’re angry. Well of course you are. This is hard work. This isn’t just body work, this is mental work. This is rewriting the things you thought were the truth. You’re going against your own belief system. And to make matters worse, you’re fearful. You worked really hard to make yourself healthy only to find out that you weren’t. Of course, you aren’t on the other side yet, so you’re not totally sold on the idea of what you’re doing. What you feel like you’re doing is just making yourself unhealthy. You’re reminded of what you’re going through every time you go to the bathroom to check for signs of your fertility, every time you think about exercising, and every time you think about eating. That’s a lot of opportunities throughout your day to beat yourself up mentally.
You don’t want to do this anymore. Of course you don’t! Like I mentioned before, you have about a million opportunities a day to beat yourself up mentally. Did we mention the addition of putting on clothes that fit differently and glimpsing yourself in the mirror? Many more opportunities to get bogged down in this hard thing you are trying to do. But let me go back to the beginning and that quote from John Maxwell…
“Everything worthwhile is uphill.”
Getting your fertility back means bringing your life back. You will finally be able to feel and see what you couldn’t before. Your fertility protects not only your ability to have children, but your bones, your skin, your brain, your adrenals, your thyroid, your muscles… your hormones connect to everything. You care about your health. This is a hard journey. But the fact that you’re ready to quit shows that you’re almost there. Keep going.
