I found a note this morning from my younger, sometimes wiser self, stuffed into a hidden pocket of a wallet I no longer use. It's a list of values, of choices I hoped to make when at the cross-roads of choosing fear or love. It's stuffed somewhere with my 2014 resolutions (top of that list: have a baby). It's all the reminder I need on a grey day that our outlook is a choice; and that these repeated choices become habits, which form the basis of our character. There's a Gandhi quote I've always loved, which essentially boils down to: choose your beliefs and thoughts wisely.
"Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny." - Mahatma Gandhi
In this week (and season) of giving thanks, I found myself this morning dusting off my gratitude journal and sitting down with a cup of strong tea in the baby's nursery. Earlier in the morning, I had hastily written down questions to ponder on my iphone. One that I underlined: what matters most to me? Even as I write that now, I can feel a swirl of thoughts competing for attention in my brain. Yet sitting down on the floor of the nursery, the answer moves easily from my brain to my heart.
You see, getting pregnant wasn't easy for us. It's something that high school taught us to fear could happen at any time, and then suddenly when we finally wanted it, we learned it doesn't quite happen on-demand. When we first moved into our apartment in Seoul fourteen months ago, there was this really funny room that stemmed from the master bedroom. The tenants before us used it for one gigantic closet -- and I mean, gigantic! This room had its own window and air conditioning unit, yet was only accessible through the master bedroom itself. When one of my best friends came to Seoul to visit and saw this empty room, she excitedly suggested we use this room as an exercise room. Something within me physically stirred because there was only one thing I envisioned for this room: our baby's nursery.
Over the last year, I ended up meditating quite a bit in the empty room. On good days, I saw possibility and hope. On bad days, it was a visible, physical reminder of an unspeakable emptiness, even shame. We'd joke to friends about this "random" empty room we had in our house, and the doors, for the most part, stayed closed.
Even after we joyfully got pregnant this past spring, there was something about the nursery that kept me from going "all in". It was as though starting to build the nursery would somehow tempt fate and allow the worst that could happen to happen. Even after we started announcing we were pregnant (which we didn't even do on social media until close to 20 weeks), there was something that prevented me from writing definitively: "We're having a boy in January!" -- I kept wanting to do what a mentor of mine did when she was pregnant, and writing "inshallah" after the sentence (I finally largely settled on "expecting"). As though somehow not 100% fully embracing this would shield me from any heartbreak. In this, I'm reminded of Brene Brown's book, "The Gifts of Imperfection" -- which I've already mentally noted to re-read at least once a year. In her book, she talks about finding the courage to be vulnerable enough to openly celebrate those intensely joyful moments, in spite of being fearful that savoring happiness is inviting disaster.
This also reminds me of a Nelson Mandela quote I love: "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." And so with that, shortly after my return to Seoul from my month in the States, the doors of the nursery came down (quite literally: Tyler removed the nails and the doors, much to the concern of other parents who keep warning us, "Um, maybe you want to be able to shut the doors?"). We made a trek to IKEA, opened all the shipped boxes and stuffed suitcases from the amazingly thoughtful baby showers thrown for me in LA and NYC, and got to work. Over the last three weekends, we've finally finished doing all the baby's laundry (he easily has more clothes than Tyler and I combined), and put on the finishing touches:
The Wall Street Journal published an amazing piece last month called, "Adventures in Fertility" (link here). The writer, Jason Gay, a sports columnist for the WSJ, talks about losing all perspective on their adventures in fertility, now that their oldest son is three. But how at night, when the kids are asleep -- that's when he feels it:
"I'll be walking down the hallway to our bedroom, and I'll have my mind on something silly like a basketball game, and I will pass their little room. For a long time, it was this sad, unused room that we never were quite sure what to do with. Is it an office? A guest room? A storage room for unnecessary crap?
'That's going to be the baby's room,' we would say. But there were a lot of long, gray years when it belonged to nobody.
Now it's getting late, and as I pass by, I see the kids, asleep. They're still new, still a mystery.
That room belongs to somebody.
That's when I know how lucky we are."
And so, with great awe and humility in how things somehow always magically work out in the end ("If it's not okay, it's not end"), I open up my gratitude journal this morning, surrounded by all the baby animal decals we lovingly put up floor-height, and begin to write...
"Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny." - Mahatma Gandhi
In this week (and season) of giving thanks, I found myself this morning dusting off my gratitude journal and sitting down with a cup of strong tea in the baby's nursery. Earlier in the morning, I had hastily written down questions to ponder on my iphone. One that I underlined: what matters most to me? Even as I write that now, I can feel a swirl of thoughts competing for attention in my brain. Yet sitting down on the floor of the nursery, the answer moves easily from my brain to my heart.
You see, getting pregnant wasn't easy for us. It's something that high school taught us to fear could happen at any time, and then suddenly when we finally wanted it, we learned it doesn't quite happen on-demand. When we first moved into our apartment in Seoul fourteen months ago, there was this really funny room that stemmed from the master bedroom. The tenants before us used it for one gigantic closet -- and I mean, gigantic! This room had its own window and air conditioning unit, yet was only accessible through the master bedroom itself. When one of my best friends came to Seoul to visit and saw this empty room, she excitedly suggested we use this room as an exercise room. Something within me physically stirred because there was only one thing I envisioned for this room: our baby's nursery.
Over the last year, I ended up meditating quite a bit in the empty room. On good days, I saw possibility and hope. On bad days, it was a visible, physical reminder of an unspeakable emptiness, even shame. We'd joke to friends about this "random" empty room we had in our house, and the doors, for the most part, stayed closed.
Even after we joyfully got pregnant this past spring, there was something about the nursery that kept me from going "all in". It was as though starting to build the nursery would somehow tempt fate and allow the worst that could happen to happen. Even after we started announcing we were pregnant (which we didn't even do on social media until close to 20 weeks), there was something that prevented me from writing definitively: "We're having a boy in January!" -- I kept wanting to do what a mentor of mine did when she was pregnant, and writing "inshallah" after the sentence (I finally largely settled on "expecting"). As though somehow not 100% fully embracing this would shield me from any heartbreak. In this, I'm reminded of Brene Brown's book, "The Gifts of Imperfection" -- which I've already mentally noted to re-read at least once a year. In her book, she talks about finding the courage to be vulnerable enough to openly celebrate those intensely joyful moments, in spite of being fearful that savoring happiness is inviting disaster.
This also reminds me of a Nelson Mandela quote I love: "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." And so with that, shortly after my return to Seoul from my month in the States, the doors of the nursery came down (quite literally: Tyler removed the nails and the doors, much to the concern of other parents who keep warning us, "Um, maybe you want to be able to shut the doors?"). We made a trek to IKEA, opened all the shipped boxes and stuffed suitcases from the amazingly thoughtful baby showers thrown for me in LA and NYC, and got to work. Over the last three weekends, we've finally finished doing all the baby's laundry (he easily has more clothes than Tyler and I combined), and put on the finishing touches:
The Wall Street Journal published an amazing piece last month called, "Adventures in Fertility" (link here). The writer, Jason Gay, a sports columnist for the WSJ, talks about losing all perspective on their adventures in fertility, now that their oldest son is three. But how at night, when the kids are asleep -- that's when he feels it:
"I'll be walking down the hallway to our bedroom, and I'll have my mind on something silly like a basketball game, and I will pass their little room. For a long time, it was this sad, unused room that we never were quite sure what to do with. Is it an office? A guest room? A storage room for unnecessary crap?
'That's going to be the baby's room,' we would say. But there were a lot of long, gray years when it belonged to nobody.
Now it's getting late, and as I pass by, I see the kids, asleep. They're still new, still a mystery.
That room belongs to somebody.
That's when I know how lucky we are."
And so, with great awe and humility in how things somehow always magically work out in the end ("If it's not okay, it's not end"), I open up my gratitude journal this morning, surrounded by all the baby animal decals we lovingly put up floor-height, and begin to write...
