Children, Family, and the Future

 

This video by Teal Swan matches my observations. She lists reasons why societies around the world are having fewer and fewer children, making very strong points. I am not interested in summarizing this video, so I encourage you to watch it first. 


I'd like to tell my story, as a 38 year old Millennial woman without children, now divorced (as of 2 weeks ago), following some of her points. 

My parents are Boomers, and they were successfully able to raise us 2 kids with everything we needed: financial stability, a "village" to help, and emotional validation. I never learned any of the negative traits from them that she speaks of in this video. I never felt suspicious of their habits, and I never felt traumatized by their choices of how to raise me. I grew up with neighbors who helped and I could trust. I grew up learning that I could trust people. My parents were disciplined with me, but encouraged me to be myself, express myself, and try new things. They gave me every opportunity they could to help me learn new skills. As an adult I have learned that I'm in a rare situation, because my parents are still happily married and they provided everything I needed to help me be an adult in good mental and spiritual health. They did, however, teach me the "path to success" meant for both men and women equally that has failed most Millennials, despite working very well for Boomers (college ► career ►investing and compounding interest ► financial independence ► marriage ► children.)  

In my heart and soul I never wanted to live according to that path, mainly because I knew I wanted to be like my mom, who didn't have to have a career (she worked when needed). What I wanted was to be an educated stay-at-home mother to many children. I never had a problem with working, in fact I like working and I tend to choose physical labor jobs (by choice because I enjoy it), but I never had any aspirations to pursue a career that would take me away from home. So my goal was to find a man like my father: a spiritual leader, breadwinner, and foundation of my family. 

I married at 19 years old, thinking I was going to have children in my early 20's. It's exactly what I wanted: a happy marriage with many kids. The man I married wanted that too, so I believed him that we would make it a reality. The trouble was that we couldn't get our careers going. We never had enough degrees to land a good job, the jobs we took weren't meant to last, and endless other problems. Before I got sick I was applying for every job I could, but this was during the 2008 bubble burst, and the economy was a mess. I was lucky to work 3 part-time jobs, all of which paid me about minimum wage. I was working 60-70 hours per week, and if I stopped working to have kids, how could we ever pay rent? Rent on our awful little house that had a black mold problem that heavily contributed to why I got so sick. Meanwhile, we were living on his student loans. He had a full-ride scholarship and an assistantship, but we took out student loans to pay for our rent and groceries. When he graduated and returned to work, he was able to piece together an income to support us. His struggles were legitimate. I got sick, very sick, to the point where I quit my job and was unable to work for a year and a half. It would have been impossible to live on just his income alone if we had to pay rent or a mortgage. Thankfully, we had the benefits of the "village" that Teal Swan talked about, so we had a free place to live. I was too sick to have children at this point, and my doctor even warned me not to try because my body was far too weak to endure it. He warned me that pregnancy could be extremely risky on my body. I'm summarizing many years, but understand that we never made ourselves stable enough to have kids. 

My dreams of being a stay-at-home mother with a breadwinner husband were dissolving into an impossible fantasy as the years went on. If the "formula" that Boomers taught us had worked, I think we could have been ok. We had everything stacked against us: my college degree did not help me find work (I had one job relevant to my field and it paid me $9 per hour), his career was built on a field that the average person no longer had money to pay for, and the job market was very dry. If that formula worked and we both could have started building careers in our 20's, I never could have afforded to stay at home raising kids anyway. And no, I never had the energy to work full time AND raise children. What a joke - what woman actually wants to live like that? I don't want to live in constant burn-out while failing to raise my kids well enough. I don't want to pay someone else to raise my kids for me. That was never part of my idea of "raising children." I didn't want that life. I preferred NOT to have children than to be unable to raise them properly. 

When I decided I needed to exit the marriage after 18 years of marriage, it was because I realized I had built absolutely nothing I wanted out of my life. I spent about 10 years simply trying to manage my illness, so I was distracted with something very important, but time kept moving on. I didn't see children as a possibility anymore, not even adoption since we didn't have the means, so what else did I want to live for? Why did I work so hard to heal enough to live my life if I had nothing I wanted to live for? I had ideas of other life paths that could give me some purpose, but they all required money, energy, health, or resources I didn't have. And all I could think about was how I just wanted a family with children. I felt so lost and alone. All I saw was constant stress and I felt useless, uninspired, bored, and spiritually hungry. I couldn't see any future for myself if I stayed on that path. I am not blaming him or criticizing him. He was honest and pursued life exactly as he said he was going to, and he fought to build the life he wanted. He succeeded in his priorities in life, exactly as he told me he would. The problem was me needing things that didn't align.  

So I saw the only alternative path: Move back in with my parents. Let go of broken dreams and start over. My Boomer parents fully support me, and they understand how insane society is. They see how impossible it is to succeed now. They understand why couples can't have children anymore. They didn't judge me at all, and honestly, I don't know how many other Millennials could say that about their parents. I'm extremely blessed. 

I'm 38, but I'm still interested in starting a family. I do NOT want to be a single mother. Bless all you saints who manage as single mothers and love your children so dearly - you are the most wonderful women to find that kind of strength for your children. I don't know if I'm really capable of having children due to my health, but I'm stronger than when my doctor told me not to years ago. Endometriosis tries very hard to rule my life. I'm tired all the time, and that could be a major problem with raising children who rely on my endurance. I don't know if society or the economy will ever make it easy to start a family, even adopt, but I also feel like family is more important than every other aspiration or desire in life. Building a family, with or without children of my own, should be at the center of all my decisions. Nothing, not even career, is more important to me, and I feel like I've lost way too much time to constant life problems. 

This is what I do know about my life as it is now: it's mine, I don't have to focus on how the cards have all been stacked against me anymore. I'm burned out on complaining, disappointment, fighting for the impossible, and pursing dreams that cannot become reality in a healthy way. I'm exhausted from not living my own truth and always hiding in waiting for the right time. I'm tired of not being a priority. Something I've learned about myself in 18 years of marriage is that I'm creative and adaptable. I have the ability to find my way in any situation, even when I clearly didn't belong in the situation. But I'm burned out on adapting constantly. I'm exhausted from finding creative solutions to keep surviving. I'm so bored of needing ways to "escape." I'm done with shutting off my brain and emotions. I know I can be fully present when I'm where I belong, pouring into my own cup too. My cup has been dry for so long. 

If I didn't have a home with my parents, I honestly don't know if I would have survived myself. Without my parents' support, I wouldn't have had a life path to take that would inspire to me keep living and trying. If I continued with him, I would have been a total zombie. I wouldn't have really been living. His life choices worked really well for him, and I don't blame him, because he deserves all the happiness he can build for himself in this extremely difficult climate. He needed to make the choices he made, but he wasn't capable of fully supporting me through my circumstances and crises. He really did do the best he could, and it wasn't his fault. My needs were too great for both him and me, and I couldn't continue like that. I'm genuinely happy for his successes. It's my turn to have my own successes.

I agree with Teal Swan in her video about the roles of women and men. I am simply a very traditional type of woman: I want children with a man who can provide. It's really difficult for men though, and it doesn't make any sense to me that both people in a couple have to work full-time if they don't want to. I know married women begged for the right to work full time and have their income count towards the total household income, but did they think it through? I agree women are fully capable of working if they want to. I know women who do jobs better than men. But isn't it counter-productive to society to need every individual person to work, especially since we have to keep creating tons of meaningless jobs just so every individual person has a job? We keep creating junk no one needs just to sell just so people have jobs. Now our oceans and lands are full of trash we bought and never needed, just so some worker could make some money. We've lost sight of working to fill a need in society, and working so one parent can stay home and raise children and continue our species. I'm so fortunate to have a job that is very meaningful and gives me purpose, but how many people have to take any mind-numbing job they can get that doesn't help make the world function better? Our unsustainable society is built on earning personal income, not built on creating families and raising children so future generations can exist and thrive. We can do better, and I'm sick of being a part of this system.  

This has been, by far, the greatest challenge of my life. More challenging than being bedridden with major health issues. Oh, but then you add in all my illnesses and then life is just impossibly stupid. What's the point? Well, I believe in the value of all of life, including my own, even when we cannot fit in with how society was built. I will find a way. I keep adapting. I lean on hope, gratitude, and faith. I don't keep anything that wasn't meant for me. I can do this. I will not compromise my values and live a life that doesn't align with truth. 

As it is now, I am happier than I have been in many years. I feel a great deal of relief. I don't feel daily stress anymore. I can give my limited to energy to what I want to give it to, and I no longer need to give it to things that don't serve me. I returned to a job that has been phenomenal for me. I have a great living arrangement. I have access to some of the best beef in the country (my diet is mostly red meat.) I have some seriously great friends in my life. I have the option to focus on gratitude without worrying about anything. I don't have to defend myself to anyone. I don't have to justify my needs. I don't have to fight to be understood. I have peace. It's wonderful. I'm where I need to be right now, and I feel aligned and centered. I need to heal more before I built my future, and I can heal in peace.

But how many women have this luxury? From what I have seen, very few. 

For instance: I've been talking to more and more people through my job who have been diagnosed with Endometriosis. The good news is that there are more surgeons who can diagnose it now, so women have more access to the surgery that can diagnose it. As I talk to these women, something very striking stands out to me: women with endometriosis are veterans who know war. We're told not to talk about it because it's uncomfortable for everyone else and we have to learn to integrate into society despite our mental and physical pain that dominates our lives. The fact that it is uncomfortable for everyone else is proof that our medical system is failing us. It's proof that our society is failing us. It's proof that we should not be treating every individual person as equally capable of thriving in how our society is structured today. It's proof that our government services are seriously lacking and allowing people to fall through the cracks or suffer. It's proof that our lack of family structure and reliance on individual success isn't working. When a woman is unable to work like a healthy man at a full-time job due to pain, fatigue, extreme bleeding, major brain-fog, PTSD, medical trauma, and emotional trauma... what then? Parents, never stop being a support for your children. Villages, come back together and help take care of your people. Government, stop spending money you don't have on things we don't need, and instead use our tax dollars to allow villages and families to support each other again. 

We're hardly a society anymore. We're a collective group of individuals. We're failing both men and women. We're failing children. We're failing the future of humanity. 

And on top of all this immense stress of simply just being a cog (person) in society's poorly-build wheel, we have to advocate for our health and avoid all the toxicity in the world. We have to work hard to stay physically healthy and not lose our health to the terrible food available to us and all the toxic synthetic chemicals in everything. We have to make choices as if we're surviving an apocalypse:  we have to choose the safest, cleanest, foods. We have to avoid plastics, preservatives, excess sugar, food dyes, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and so on and so forth... my whole blog is about this topic. 

So, women, I beg you all to breathe. It's ok to acknowledge that we're all struggling this much. You're not failing. We're literally trying to survive an apocalypse. Families are dying, our physical and mental health is dying, children aren't being born, our ability to have healthy relationships is dying, and most of our consumer goods are toxic and poisoning us. Affordable food is very bad for us. If you're surviving, you're doing exactly what you need to be doing. 

I'm writing all of this while my pain from endometriosis keeps increasing. Soon I will NEED to lay in bed with a heating pad to manage.

...And after many hours of being in bed with my heating pad, I'm back to finish this post. Except it's 11:30 at night and I should sleep. I wrote many desperate sounding statements it this post because I felt my pain increasing the whole time, but I don't disagree with anything I wrote. I will say that my hormones feel a lot better now and I no longer feel the need to express much of what I wrote. Funny how that works. The 24 hours before my period starts is always a time of deep inner reflection and creativity for me, often making me feel every ache in my soul too deeply. Oh my goodness, womanhood... it's a lot. The world has more to offer than I can experience because I'm too busy being a woman. That's ok. I was never meant to have the world. I was only meant to have my life in this world. Peace. Don't yearn for what isn't meant for us. 

I bought this heating pad and I've really liked it for managing my pain

Click the link to see it on Amazon - don't worry, I'm not an affiliate trying to sell you anything. My old one was too small, heated inconsistently, and wasn't getting the job done anymore. So I decided to try something larger. It's much better, and I like the heat the stones provide. The trouble is that the stones are icy cold until it's heated up for several minutes first. 

Endometriosis Awareness Month: A Glimpse Into My Reality with Endo

It's endometriosis awareness month. 

First, here is an awesome Facebook post with some info about what Endo is and what it is not:

I'd like to write about my current cycle in honor of raising awareness. 

A little personal history, for context.

I've had extreme periods since I was 17. When I started to use menstrual cups, I counted how much I bled on the first day of period over years. I normally filled my size 2 Diva Cup 3-7 times full in the first day of my period. The average person fills their cup 1-2 times full through their entire period. Along with this heavy bleeding was excruciating pain. Full body pain. I could move a toe and feel it cramp up my leg and trigger pelvic pain that felt like someone stabbing me with a knife repeatedly. I also had relentless diarrhea, which was super painful. I could sit on the toilet and feel my heart rate skyrocket to the point where I was seeing stars, seeing my vision slowly go black, and I would gasp for air. All while my body purged itself beyond my control. Yes, I've fainted from all this. I took up to 12 ibuprofen on the first day of my period for years, and it didn't work well. I kept taking more hoping for any pain relief at all. I was like this for years and years. Finally, a doctor told me my liver was in poor condition, and I admitted taking all these painkillers (and a daily Allegra D) to him - he warned me to stop because that was causing a lot of damage to my liver. So I was left with no real option for managing my allergies and pain in the conventional way. (I always refused birth control as an option for religious reasons, but also because I read all the side effects and didn't want them. Doctors did drop me because I refused birth control.) 

In 2013 I started to work with a Naturopathic Doctor in New Hampshire. We did a lot of work to improve my health. By following his advice, over a few years my periods slowly became about 50% less intense. My bleeding reduced down to 1-3 full Diva cups on the first day (still heavy, but manageable.) My pain was still intense, but he made a tincture for me that actually worked. It blocked estrogen receptors, which did reduce my pain a ton, but it also knocks me out. So when I take it, I sleep for hours through the worst of my symptoms. He put me on natural progesterone and hormone-balancing herbs, which made a big difference over time too. He changed my diet, which made a big difference. My PMDD was not as long or severe, my cycles were more regular, I didn't bleed as heavily, I was more stable during my periods with less fainting issues, and my level of fatigue wasn't as strong anymore. But I stopped getting better. Everything improved about 50%, which was miraculous to me, but I stopped improving more. 

In 2018 I was first diagnosed with POTS, and the next week I had a $14,000 laparoscopic surgery to look for Endometriosis. My surgeon was a local gynecologist doing the Davinci Robotic surgery. She was sure she wouldn't find endo - in fact, she was doing the surgery just to help me stop feeling convinced that I had it. She told me it would be a 30-minute surgery. She was wrong. It was 3.5 hours long, and she did find endo. She took a biopsy and confirmed it in the report, but refused to give me a "diagnosis" in my chart. Why? I don't understand that part, seriously. So when doctors see my medical records they only see the surgery, but not the result. Anyway, she removed endo from my Pouch of Douglas / Cul-De-Sac, which was probably where the majority of my pain was coming from. She also found it on my uterus and ovary. She was unable to fully remove it from my ovary without removing the whole ovary. The problem with endo is that if you don't have it fully removed, it grows right back. She also found that my uterus was tilted backwards. In the year after the surgery, my periods were the lightest they had been in my life. My pain was a little better too. But the results didn't last longer than a year. 

After my surgery, I was still bloated from all the air they pumped into me and my scars were bruising. 

In the last few years, my periods have been slowly getting worse and worse again. My PMS has been turning back into PMDD again. My cycles are less regular. What has changed? Well, a lot of stress in my life. I've stopped using the herbs as regularly. My diet has loosened up a little. And I think, most importantly, I've been unable to have regular acupuncture treatments in the past 2.5 years. Acupuncture made a huge difference for me.

I've always had to call in sick on the first day of my period. I never improved enough to be able to work on the first day of my period. I had to miss very important events in my life because of it. And despite all the medical care I've been though, all the extremely strict diet and lifestyle changes I stuck to for years and years now, and all the praying and therapy I've tried, nothing helped enough to give me a "normal" first day of my period. It always made me so sick that was bedridden with major pain, fatigue, and vertigo for the day. 


And now, for the present.

So let me talk about my current cycle, to give a glimpse into the turmoil I live with every month. I use the Clue app on my phone, and I pair with my Oura Ring. I'm not good at tracking all my symptoms, but I am very good at recording the first day of my period. So let's look at Clue for this month:

Each dot represents a tracked symptom per day. The red phase was my last period, and I only tracked for 3 days of it before I forgot. I bed 5 days, I think. The days with 2 dots are because of information my Oura Ring automatically sends to Clue: sleep and body temperature. Then the blue phase, which is ovulation, you can see extra dots. That's because I bleed dark purple thicky sticky blood for 3 days during ovulation. Then, when the 3 dots appear again, is when I started to record my PMS symptoms. I had symptoms for a few days before I started to record. I had acne, bloating, mood changes, scalp tenderness/ sensitivity, and fatigue issues, but they were not bothering me enough to think to record it. So I've had about 10 days of PMS symptoms. What does that mean for me? It means gaining a pants size in bloat, relentless hunger (even eating high protein with some extra carbs), very sensitive mood that causes me to feel everything too deeply, moments of unprovoked anger, days of irritability, feeling super anti-social, withdrawn into my head and difficult time being in reality, random cystic acne around my mouth and on my chest, ringing in my ears, deep fatigue that caffeine can't cure, nights of insomnia and then nights when I sleep 13 hours, very achy deep throbbing pain down my legs, vertigo and dizziness that makes me really unbalanced, sharp throbbing cramping all over my pelvis, feeling a bowling ball growing in weight in my pelvis, unpredictable bowel movements, throbbing aching teeth, swollen tender breasts that hurt to touch, sharp nerve pain in my breasts, inability to completely empty my bladder, and I'm sure there are symptoms I'm forgetting. 

 My period is late. "Late." I've had years with my average cycle lasting 30 days, and years when it was 35 days on average. I've just been in a 30 day average cycle this year, so now this looks late. 

The problem with me being late is that I've had many days of symptoms that marked what should be the beginning of my bleeding: major cramping, vertigo, and fatigue followed by an improved mood. All the symptoms that tell me it's time to lay in bed with my heating pad and stop doing anything else. Except that my bleeding didn't start. I've been in this state for about 5 days now, feeling on the verge of starting my bleeding. I had two shifts at work that were difficult for me to endure, but I didn't get bad enough to have to go home sick. I was mainly concerned about fainting, so I drank lots and lots of salt and took licorice root pills to keep my blood pressure high enough. 

Since I can't read my symptoms reliably, thankfully my Oura Ring gives me a clue that I can almost rely on:

(I recorded my period start day one day earlier last month, so the apps don't agree. That's because I started bleeding a tiny bit the day before, but without all the symptoms of my first cycle day. So I recorded a different day in each app to help me predict my next period.)

Ok, look at the body temp graph. The line is my baseline average body temp. Each day marks if I was higher or lower than my average. I tend to increase by a half degree to a full degree in the last 5 or 6 days of my PMS, and when I see my body temp drop below average, I'm usually ready to start bleeding. So you can see why this month is confusing: 3 days ago my temp dropped, but not below average. Yesterday it did drop below average, and I had all the symptoms that said my bleeding should start (including my breast pain going away.) But I only bled a tiny little drop all day. Ok, so today my temp was below average again. I checked my Diva cup this morning and it had a small stream of very dark black blood on the edge. I haven't bled more since then. 

I called in sick to work today. I am only writing this blog because I drank enough green tea to help warm me up, and I hoped the caffeine would encourage bleeding. The reality is that I'm sitting very still at my computer to type this. I'm taking lot of breaks to breathe and rest. I'm getting really dizzy at moments. I'm getting immense pain for brief moments. There's no way I can stand up for 5 hours to do my job like this. And I won't improve until I bleed. I am in limbo. I'm unable to function until I bleed. 

This is a glimpse into my reality with endometriosis. When I say it dominates my life, you can see why. I get maybe 1-2 good weeks per month where it doesn't limit me or control me. 

Florence and the Machine - You Can Have It All

This album was about her ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage that nearly killed her. She wrote many songs about the grief and the reaction of her fans. It's an album that will make you cry. This song, although about miscarriage, reminds me a lot of my experience with endometriosis. "Am I a woman now?" Is this what it means to be a woman? The loss of a child/ inability to have a child. Being controlled by our bodies. How to exist in the circumstances of our bodies?