A New Name and A Fresh Start

It has been quite a while since I have had it in me to even look at this blog, let alone attempt to post about the chaos that goes on inside my head. As I sat and pondered whether to continue to ignore the blog, or attempt to reinvent it, I had to come to the conclusion that I was ready to move past my infertility as well as my failed marriage, but even more so the pain I have secretly dealt with for years. For so long I allowed my infertility to completely shape who I was in every aspect. I failed to see myself beneath my infertility, beneath my inability, and I shaped my importance as a woman based on this single issue. It wasn't until recently, and some time with an amazing therapist, that I began to understand that my distorted view of myself went far deeper than my inability to get pregnant. It is something I have been subtly struggling with for as long as I could think back.

Before we dig too far into this newfound epiphany, it is important that a piece of my past is understood in order for the future sentences to have any understanding. I was adopted at birth, which pretty much every single person who has ever come in contact with me knows, but the important piece to the puzzle lies in an particular statement that I would repeat subliminally to myself  every time someone walked away or disappeared from my life for one reason or the next. "If your biological mother could walk away from you and never come back, why would anyone else stay".  It is what caused extreme separation anxiety in me, from the time I was a toddler, especially when it came to my mom (adopted mom/the only real mom that matters to me) leaving for whatever reason (even just a date night with my dad). It is what about destroyed my marriage the first time I dared to leave home and venture 3,000 miles away to Virginia. It is what has destroyed countless friendships over the years. I have a level of insecurity buried so far beneath the surface that I wasn't aware of it until recently when my therapist began to put the pieces together. When I become emotionally invested in something, especially my marriage and friendships, I become so afraid that the person will walk away that I suffocate them. It is not an irrational fear to me, I've been left, but the one person you would think would never walk away from you... a mother. It is even worse for me, because I have lost my best friend, and two former boyfriends in the worse possible way... them dying with no hope for me to make things right. I pushed my husband away every time we saw another negative pregnancy test, every time he needed space to deal with his own emotions I was suffocating him with my pain, every time he wanted a boys night or  time to see his family, I became so overwhelmed with fear and anxiety that I made every day away from me hell for him.  I had never understood that if someone walked away it was because God decided my life needed to go in a different way, and it was not always because of something I did. My worth is not based on who stuck around and who didn't.

My worth is in me, it is in how I view myself, not how others view me, not because my mother abandoned me (my adoption was abandonment). My worth is in my intelligence, my worth is in the things that I have accomplished like my Bachelor's degree, my worth is in every time one of my kids at work finally grasps a difficult concept that I have poured my heart and soul into teaching them, my worth is in God and that I am first and foremost HIS daughter and I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and my confidence needs to come from that more than anything this world can provide for me.

If you are still reading this, thank you. I know this was a lot of personal information, but it was time for me to finally come to terms with my problems, and find healing and peace.

Jaylee