Infertility's silver lining

The daily pain and struggle through IF encompasses every waking moment. You base your life on your cycle and consider things in two weeks at a time. What days can you be away from your husband? When are doctor appointments? Can you go on a trip? Can you go out for drinks or will you be in your two week wait? 

Plans that need to be made months from now seem like an impossible task. You don't want to plan something that may be during your fertile window or even during a time when you need to be going for every other day ultrasounds. 

Unfortunately, there's no way to plan for this and you realize you have to live your life. If you have to change your plans when the time comes, then you do it. 

During it all, there comes a moment when the despair, pain, anger, confusion, etc seems to not be the worst thing in your life. You find a silver lining. 

Somewhere in my midst of my journey, I realized that without my IF, I would never have spent so much time researching and learning about my body and fertility. And the teachers weren't Google. The teachers were people who would eventually become my friends. 

This weekend, I will have the privilege of meeting two women who I like to call my teachers, cheerleaders, supporters and more importantly my friends. 

Months ago, we were chatting online about something that I can't even remember now. Somehow, the conversation ended up with people talking about the areas they live. Sarah asked how close I was to a certain city. My answer, "Zero miles." 

Come to find out Sarah and Celeste had been trying to figure out the midway point between Mississippi and New Jersey and  it turns out it was the city in which I live. 

It took less than an hour for us to nail down a plan to meet up. Sarah and I were in the middle of the Couch 2 5K program and Celeste was our coach and idol as a marathoner and crazy freak who can run more miles in one day that I can run in a month. I mean freak in the nicest way possible. Holy crap, I can't even imagine moving my legs for 26.1 miles. 

Time has passed and here we are!!!

It's time for the Color Me Rad race. We are running as a way to fight back against IF. It's basically a 5k fun race and runners are bombed with colored corn starch at stages. Why? You ask? Because we can. Because it's fun and because we want to. There's no real point to the CMR. It's just a way to feel awesome and get dirty. 

You'd be nuts to not want to be as happy as that kid! 

Plus, we're doing this too...

Celeste made us some shirts for our team, properly named FU IF. You can read between the letters to know what it stands for. 

I'm literally bouncing off the walls with excitement. I can't wait to get dusted with color. I can't want to run in a tutu. But mostly, I can't wait to meet these two amazing women who have shown me that in every storm, there is a silver lining. You just have to look real hard to find it.