I'm going to sit in the front row

I was away at a retreat centre for most of the week, completing the last module of an executive development program I've been taking through work. The sessions have been like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When they were good, they were very very good but when they were bad, they were horrid.

Fortunately the one this week was very very good. And it's given me a lot to blog about today.

It was one of those epiphany experiences for me. Of course, it always helps that you're at a beautiful, quiet, private retreat house, nestled deep in the woods, snow falling softly, being fed and catered to, when these epiphanies come along. Keeping them going in action once I've returned to the 'real' world is and always has been my challenge.

The facilitator was a sports psychologist who coaches our Canadian Olympic athletes, and the topic was on coaching, visioning, and mental fitness. The inner journey to excellence. We spent a lot of time talking about reframing - and not in a Pollyanna kind of way - but really reframing our thoughts and responses to situations that do not turn out the way we had hoped or planned for them.

For me, I felt incredibly grateful that I have somehow found a way of doing that internal reframing as it relates to infertility. The session was very confirming for me, as I had been becoming concerned that I was just not dealing with our losses by ... well, just not dealing with them. The most recent example of not even going to the doctor after the last miscarriage was part of what had raised that for me. But I can see now that in fact, I am using my inner strength and naturally somewhat positive attitude to reframe these experiences for myself. And of course it helps greatly that I have a man in my daily life who is just a natural reframer - and with whom I can journey.

The other thing that we spent a lot of time talking about was choices. How we always have choice. Ironically, I actually met up with that old boyfriend who had emailed me while I was away on this course this week.

The retreat facility was in the same little town that he and his wife live in now, and so we decided we would meet face to face for a coffee. It was yet another very confirming experience for me that I had made the right choice all those many years ago. It also confirmed how right a choice having HB as my life partner is for me.

As I sat across the table from this man who had been so much a part of my formative years, and listened to him talk about what he would have done differently had he to do it all over again - I was just incredibly grateful for the choices that I had made in my life. He is a very nice man (I didn't always pick losers and assholes as boyfriends) but I felt so sad for him. He is obviously not able to be happy with the choices that he has made. He has no inner peace. Even as he sat there, talking about his two beautiful children, he was saying "wouldn't it be cool if you were their mother" to me.

Blew my mind. I looked at him and said "but of course I couldn't be their mother. Because they wouldn't be who they are - so we wouldn't be talking about the two same little people if I was their mother".

He couldn't get that. He could not get that who we are is a sum of our life experience, and that the little boys that he loves have life experience because of another woman he has chosen.

I asked him straight out if he was happy, and why he had picked now to reconnect with me. He said he was happy, and that he was just always curious about how my life had turned out.

Then he uttered the words that will echo in my mind for a long time. He actually said .... "besides, you never know when my wife A or your husband HB might not be around ... and maybe then we'll have a chance with each other".

What the hell?

I was flabbergasted. And completely reinforced in my choice of all that many years ago to have walked away from him. Who plans for who they're going to be with just in case their wife dies or leaves? I can't even bring myself to think about the day that my husband might not be with me any more, and definitely couldn't imagine ever finding anyone that could measure up to the partnership he and I have developed and lived through our relationship. To think about being out shopping for a replacement just sickens me.

And again, I realized that I had a choice. I could sit and not say how shocked I was to him - much the way I had never spoken my mind to him in the past, allowing him my tacit approval for his bad behaviour. Or I could show him just how I had "turned out", as he put it, and introduce him to the assertive woman I have become.

I chose the latter. I explained to him in no uncertain terms that I had made the choice to meet with him in person out of nothing more than pure and idle curiousity. That I had no plans of sharing this meeting with my husband, but neither did I have plans to ever see him again in person after this one short get together. I went on to tell him why I loved my husband and my life. How grateful I am to have each and every day. How I had realized that I needed to be fully present to every moment of every day after my brother died. How I am learning to take nothing for granted. How I now understand what a miracle life actually is and how my miscarriages have helped me to appreciate that miracle - not just in the lives of the children I see but in my own life. How that miracle should never be taken lightly, and how the only life I had control over was mine.

I told him to go home to his wife and to decide how he was going to live. But stop playing the past and future game. Live in the moment and make the choices that you need to in order to celebrate the miracle of your own life.

Then I went back to the retreat centre and called my husband, to thank him for loving me.

The last video the coach showed us yesterday gave us five rules for living. I'm going to keep typing them out and sharing them with others, and I've made a commitment to use them in my daily way of life. They are:

1. Sit in the front row of your life - participate!
   
2. When you make a mistake, say "how fascinating!"
   
3. Quiet the voice in your head.
   
4. Live in radiating possibility .... become part of the song!
   
5. Invent a new game called "I AM a contribution!"
   

It's been a great week. Even if I have been a walking hormone because of the clomid. My life is good and I am eternally grateful. I am committed to continuing to make the choices that are right for me and mine.