Surrender and Fertility: A Dizzying Dance of Loosening Grip

Why is surrender so goddamn hard?

I think to myself as I am supposed to be in Vapasana (legs up the wall). My fertility luteal phase (check) YouTube video is running in the background while I take my WFH lunch break and try to get in the zone. I re-center myself. Surrender … surrender … surrender …

With my legs up the wall, I do exactly the opposite of what my OM-ing brain is supposed to be doing. I start down a rabbit hole. I wonder, is enough oxygenated blood being drained down my legs into my reproductive organs? I wonder, how many more times do I have to do this? Maybe I should use my ovulation predictor kit and my Mira device to test my LH surge this month. And on and on the neurosis goes, until I open my eyes and realize my legs are still on the wall but the teacher’s voice, and the gentle stream bubbling behind it, has ended.

Shit, I think. Oh, well. I guess I will try surrendering again tomorrow.

Many things in life are unfair. I write this from a very privileged perspective, having a job I enjoy, and a roof over my head–luxuries not everyone has. But at 33, I get stuck in my gratitude journal when it comes to finding a moment of surrender or gratitude for why I have not yet had a baby.

My situation with fertility is just one example of a place where it’s really hard to surrender.

These days, it’s rammed into our heads that we were able to hustle our way to success of any kind, but that’s not always possible, especially where the body is concerned.

If you’ve watched Bridgerton, the ever-so-popular Netflix show, you’ll remember when Daphne’s mother seriously under prepares her for her wedding night. It feels like such a wild moment, but the funny thing is, this isn’t so far off base for many generations of women. My mother tells a story about her grandmother boarding a train for her honeymoon travels, only prepared with the knowledge that “something will happen tonight.” As the story goes, she got into her pajamas that night, said a thankful prayer that nothing had “happened,” and got into bed … Of course, we know the outcome, because my mother and I are here.

While sex education in schools teaches us the basics, many women aren’t knowledgeable about their own bodies. Often, it takes running into an issue, like mine, for women to seek out the resources and information they need and should have been armed with many years prior.

Some days, I feel like I can get quiet and connect, even momentarily. I spent my teens and twenties searching for the perfect partner, in person, online, through friends, dating apps, etcetera, etcetera. Then one fateful Friday evening at the checkout line in Sobeys, he cracked a joke, and almost eight years later (2.5 of them married) and here we are. Looking back, I can see that was one of those moments that when you surrender, life shows up for you. Or, as the saying goes, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

But what happens when you can’t stop making other plans? I can’t keep my finger off the buy button for everything that claims to be “the most helpful tool” to get you pregnant. I can’t keep my excel spreadsheets of all my supplements from exploding, and my mind from falling down the same vortex of racing thoughts over and over again.

The funny thing is, I don’t surrender in my work. As a classic overachiever, I learned to dig in, set goals, break them down into parts, and start hacking away. Fertility seems to be in exact opposition to my ravenous work ethic, which somehow translates into every vein of my life.

Why is it that I can know surrender is what I need, and yet every time it shows up, my brain jumps on it, packs it back into its ziplock container, and punts it back down the stairs, so instead it can set goals and make to-do lists.

I know I would personally like to punt down the stairs in a ziplock container the next person who says, “just relax and it will happen.” And all the people who have said this in the two years of my fertility journey, however well-meaning their intentions.

I think in the moments when I take back control — because yes, this really is about control, and try to strategize the quickest route to my desired destination, as every parent, prof, biohacker, boss and navigational system has taught me to do, that it comes down to this: I feel most disconnected from my body. I can’t force my body into doing something. Which, again, is the exact opposite of what I was taught to do my whole life as a top level athlete where we trained our bodies until we achieved our goals. But in those few and far between little moments, in between the neuroses and planning, when I am able to tune into my body, I do hear a whisper, or maybe some kind of inner, innate knowing that my body knows what it’s doing. If I can just give it some room, give it some trust, it will do what it knows how to do.

And I will keep trying to bring my mind back to a place of surrender — today, and the next day, and the next…