One of the all too often themes that women who struggle with infertility experience is a sense that their body is betraying them.This is sad because rather than supporting your body through this process, it becomes easy to feel angry at your body, and alienated from yourself. Finding a way out of this destructive cycle, and reconnecting with your body, becomes an important part of the healing process.

Not long ago, one of my clients came upon a way to do this that really seemed to work for her. Carmen has always been a physically active person, and throughout her fertility treatment, had continued to do some jogging, with her doctor’s permission and under his supervision. In the past weeks, however, she had gotten into a funk and stopped doing everything, which only seemed to worsen her depression.

One day, her best friend called her on a spur of the moment, and asked her if she wanted to run a local 5K coming up that weekend. “My first thought was, ‘No way, I don’t want to move,’” recalled Carmen. “But my friend kept prodding me, so I thought, ‘What the heck, even if I can’t run the whole thing, I could walk it.’ So I went and you’ll never believe what happened. We got there, and it was crowded, so I decided to go off and kind of stay behind the pack. I started off slow, and was able to move into a slow jog after a while. About midway through the race, my body relaxed into a nice even clip, and seemingly out of nowhere, I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘I can count on my body!’ over and and over again, keeping time with my running. I was probably one of the ones who finished last, but by the end of the race, I felt so good about myself. It was amazing! It was the first time since I can remember that I felt good about my body, proud of what it was able to do. I remembered that I can count on my body.”

You don’t have to run a race to make the connection that Carmen did. The idea is to do something, anything, that moves your body and lets you remember that it has worth and value–learning a new dance step, stretching into a yoga class, even going for a leisurely walk. Just keep reminding yourself of the miracle that your body is–and celebrate it any way you can.

Marina