The Blessing of a Journey Shared

It's October. How I love autumn.

The days have just begun to cool off here. The mornings are chilly enough to cause my DH to put on a long-sleeved fleece pullover (although he'll continue to wear shorts in the house through the winter). He even went to the store to buy me a canister of instant hot chocolate that I keep in a drawer at work.

The season changes. Time marches on. Where has it gone?

I started this blog in April. It's been six months.

So much has happened.

I've met wonderful blog-sisters. How you've changed and enriched my life!

I've followed your cycles. Your lives. Your successes. Your losses.

I learned an entire dictionary of IF terms and abbreviations (I still remember wondering for the longest time what "AF" was and one day it finally dawned on me).

I forged my own way through a cycle, only to be sorely disappointed when it was cancelled. You were there to console and help me keep going.

I went on to have a successful cycle. And here we are, 16 weeks later, and I'm listening to my baby's heartbeat daily.

I tried my hand at growing my first garden. We watched as those skinny green legs first sprouted from the dirt, then grew into full fledged plants. They leafed out, they bloomed, they fruited. The remnants of those plants have now been plowed under.

I struggled with worries about a new pregnancy.

I waited and watched and hoped and prayed and listened as each of you traveled your own journey.

And I think of each of you now, and where you are in your lives. Some have had their babies. Some are about to. Some are pregnant and half way or more through their pregnancies. Some are newly pregnant. Some are waiting to start a cycle. Some are just waiting. One had 2 beautiful embies transferred TODAY (congratulations, EB!). Some may be deciding whether to keep trying at all.

But wherever we are, geographically, in our lives, in our cycles, in our pregnancies, in our hopes, in our wonderings, in our concerns....we continue to be together. Bound by these experiences we have chosen to share with each other. And we continue to return, on a regular basis, because each of us has found that what we give and what we receive in this blogworld, is something precious and wonderful and irreplaceable.

The kindness of a friend. Support, understanding, acceptance and encouragement without judgment. The knowledge that we are not alone, that we are cared for, that someone is thinking about us and wishing us well. That people worry about us.

These are the real treasures of life.

So as the leaves turn color and begin to drift earthward, I consider all of these things and send a silent prayer of gratitude and joy into the universe. Thank you all for sharing your journey with me.