It has been a little over a year since Dan and I made the choice to stop trying to grow our family. In a lot of ways, I didn’t think we would make it. That sounds really dramatic, but it’s true. I never once doubted if our marriage would be okay, but there were several days that I doubted that I would be okay. I spent my entire life dreaming of being a Mom. What happens when you realize the one thing you thought you were meant to be isn’t going to happen?

If I am being honest, for much of the past year I have felt like a cosmic experiment gone wrong. It’s like God created me just to see what would happen when everything goes sorta right, but mostly wrong. Please understand, I know the list of things Dan and I have to be thankful for is long. We have amazing family, wonderful friends, sustaining jobs, great cars, a beautiful home and so much more. However, the past few years have felt ridiculously hard. Bad news has followed us around like a dark cloud. It’s almost like we have learned to expect bad news. Being a Mom was more then a dream to me, it felt like a deep part of my identity. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I honestly started to question who I was and why I existed. Dark days followed.

A few weekends ago, we painted the nursery. No, we never actually had a nursery fully set up with a crib and the all the decorations. However when we started fertility treatments the last time, I just knew that our baby was right around the corner. We installed a feature wall and painted the room special colors. We made plans. I sat in that room often and dreamed of holding our babies. I dreamed of playing blocks, reading books and making subpar racecar sounds.

However, when we made the decision to stop growing our family, that room became a constant reminder of emptiness. Sure, we did our best to transform it into a usable space, but somehow the painted walls still reminded me it was an unused nursery. A dream that would never be. It felt very symbolic to me. A space that was always meant to be a nursery, but we were trying to dress it up to be something else. Kinda like me, a woman who was always meant to be a Mom but dressing up to be something else.

It was difficult to paint. I cried. It was like saying one final goodbye to a part of me that I always held close. However, now the room has been painted and the dreams of a nursery have been replaced with a wonderfully inviting guestroom. Somehow painting those walls, while very difficult, was also very healing. Now that room has purpose again. It’s a cozy warm guest room. Somehow, I feel like maybe I’m finding purpose again too. That’s not to say that some days still aren’t impossibly hard, but most days are better days.

As the heavy cloud of grief lifts into a lighter fog, I am starting to see a little more clearly. So much of life is messy. It doesn’t wrap up into pretty boxes with clean bows. It’s not all black and white and there isn’t as many happy endings as I once believed. However, I am learning that part of the journey is the end.