I remember being in the “thick of it” trying to conceive. Every month was a scramble through the cycle days, scheduled sex or treatments and then the dreaded two week wait that ultimately always ended with me crumpled on a bathroom floor with my monthly bitch or a negative test.

Oh but if the tests negative we cling on to the fact that it’s maybe too early. Even though we know it isn’t and the fact is we just aren’t pregnant. Not even close.

Damn it!!

Looking back over the last 15 nearly 16 years of trying, 10 of them really really trying all I can think now is …. how much time I have wasted being sad and angry.

It’s a process we Childless mothers must go through. No short cuts. The fact is for some of us the healing never really completes, it’s like any grief you learn to live with it.

In some ways perhaps I will never feel totally at peace with it, but I am pleased to be coming to terms with the reality of not having the children we so desperately wanted. The desperation and utter devastation I felt all the time. Even when I was smiling for the cameras, my insides hurt.

I feel sad that we have to endure it. I feel angry at the injustice or having lost our babies and still having empty arms but I feel like the rawness is settling now.

I can see a life without children. It may not be the plan but then they say you want to hear God laugh tell her your plans.

When we were in the middle of trying, when there was still hope I couldn’t ever imagine this day, but then I never imagined looking back on those years feeling sad that I basically tortured myself for something I had no control over.

I know many of you reading this are at that point now, the thought of giving up or moving on may seem impossible. I want to tell you hang on it will get better. For many of you that may result in getting your dream. For those like me who may never, with time it does get better.

I used to hate people saying to me “Times a great healer” I hate to admit that it’s right to a certain extent. But it’s not just time. It’s resilience too. It’s raising your head like the warrior you are and pushing on. If there’s still hope keep pushing forward for that dream. If there’s none find something to cling to, to get you through.

For me it was my marriage. It’s reflecting on the life we have together even without children. It’s seeing the good in the spare time I may have. Do I still hurt? Of cause I do!! This journey leaves deep scars but there has to be a way to move forward with a new future. To not beat ourselves up for being failures. How can we be? We have taken this life and made the best we could.

I’m not perfect. Far from it. But I am determined to not let this take more years from me. The saddest thing for me is the taint that has left looking back on my twenties.

I’m sure there will be more bad days to come but for now I’m happy with just not feeling like I am silently screaming everyday. No one being able to hear me or reach me. There were so many success stories online when I was a couple of years in. No one really talked about what if it doesn’t happen. I had no hope of seeing a life without children or if I would ever get through it.

It’s hard. It’s brutal. But you will get through it. There is peace to be found again. There is a plan B. You just have to be ready to find it, that’s what takes time.