we are trying

belonging, unbelonging and the liminal realm of infertility

The Lawn

I’m sat in the living room of my friends house, next to relatives of hers I barely know.

The relatives are here for their nephew and grandson’s first birthday. On the lawn outside, are my friends with babies and toddlers, in the sun. In the kitchen are my friends who don’t have children (yet). They’re hungover, drinking hair of the dog beer and wine, retelling tales from last night - one we didn’t join because..

WE ARE TRYING.

We are trying to drink less, sleep more and coax our bodies into fertile beings. We are trying to have a baby. But no baby has come.

I could join them in the kitchen. But I’m not in that place right now, the carefree, pre-trying place. And I don’t think they know what to say to us. Do we bemuse? Evoke pity? Am I ceasing to fit in? There’s an unease now, an elephant I bought into our dynamic when one of them publicly asked if we were trying and I stumbled out a yes. So I self-exclude.

I definitely don’t want to be On The Lawn. Except I do, so desperately.

I am half bored, half sad, talking to Uncle Martin who pulls on not one, but two classics ‘so when are you two going to do all this then?’, gesturing to cards and cake. Our non committal shrugs are quickly followed up by ‘you know what they say, tick tock, tick tock’.

I reveal some sadness to a close friend later (a lawn friend) who, tired no doubt, says ‘you can borrow ours for the night if you like’. We leave, rather than linger. I remember enough about that day, ten years on to be writing about it now. Flesh wounds heal - but we don’t forget.

We fall through the maps

The eternal dance with our perceived belonging in spaces and places is universal. Perhaps the very bedrock of psychological contentment is to feel seen, accepted, valued. That we belong matters.

We take all of our shadowy relationship with belonging into our Fertility Era. For many, questions of belonging amplify as they arrive in motherhood. The cliques of baby groups is a veritable thesis in itself.

But in the trying years, we’re at an intersection of where we once were and motherhood. The lights are changing over and over and we are stuck. It isn’t so much a feeling of not belonging, that familiar birthright kind of ache of fitting in. It’s an unbelonging. Otherhood.

We’re between worlds for as long as we stay trying. I’ve always visualised this as being trapped between two panes of glass. Looking in, looking back and.. waiting. The neopagan archetypes of maiden/mother/crone don’t speak to this. We’re the unseen mothers in waiting, grown out of maiden things.

So, how do we occupy the liminal?

I think here’s the part where I’m supposed to extend some form of offering, the suggestion of a gratitude journal, a walk in nature etcetera. I’m not going to do that (though I will be sending out a meditation for liminality this month). This isn’t something we get to ‘fix’. It’s a location. It helps to know where we are and to really look it in the eye.

If we take time to really know we are in the liminal, between the glass, it makes things make sense. People don’t see us fully, don’t hear us clearly and deep connection is difficult. But we can see ourselves in full technicolour. We can make our liminal space more comfortable and decadent, when we’re ready. We can turn the lights on this shadowy place and we can know that no one stays in the liminal forever. That isn’t how the liminal works.

There is a scene in my favourite childhood film, Labyrinth, where a wall into the labyrinth conceals a doorway in plain sight. Maybe we don’t get to see the door of our own liminal until, somehow it makes itself known to us. We might not even know we crossed the threshold until, we have. No neat solutions or magic practices but, change.

Everything changes, this much is certain.

This closing of the year time is a magnifying glass on where we aren’t. We’re encouraged to reflect, look back, imagine the future, choose words for our year. We’re told unthinkingly ‘it’s for the kids really isn’t it?’ (it isn’t). We have places to be, more living rooms to sit in. We wonder if that glass of champagne is OK to drink (it is).

So, for all my liminal readers, please know that I see you, that I was you, for so many years. Know that next year does hold unknowns and I hope that the door is revealed. There is beauty in the liminal and that beauty is you.