Reiki for Infertility

For all of us walking this journey, anywhere on it – immersed in it now or years later – the trauma lingers. It sticks. Like any pain, it ebbs and flows. It’s impossible to explain the bad days to anyone who hasn’t endured it.

I can’t promise a magical happy ending, but I can provide a space for comfort, support, and compassion that was missing on my journey. I believe that reiki is good for your soul during this time. It can help move the stress and pain and grief that is in your body. All you have to do is arrive and lay down for an hour. There will be nothing invasive in our safe space. I can lay my hands on you gently, or I can float them a few inches off of your body if you are feeling “touched out,” or we can do an entire session remotely. The reiki energy will work just as effectively any way you choose. If you need to scream or cry, lay in silence or chat your heart out, you can. I am here to hold your hand on your path. In this space, it is your journey and for once, you get to say how it happens.

My journey involved months and years of “trying” with no success. Tentative trips to various doctors and clinics. The heart-wrenching and non-specific diagnosis of “infertile.” No concrete explanation of why other than “bad luck” and a vague group of words that held no comfort.

We decided to proceed with assistance. Instead of an exciting journey, we were on an anxious one. So many appointments, so many questions, so many tests. So many personal invasions – needles, tubes, scopes, questions. I felt judged, most of all by myself. Why won’t my body cooperate? How hard can this be? Humans have done this for millennia!

I set alarms so I wouldn't forget anything; there are so many things to remember! Appointments, pills, shots, rinse, and repeat. I meditated; it helped with bearing the needles sometimes, but the emotional pain was relentless. It still is sometimes, so many years later.

Phantom pains after an egg harvest and a transfer that didn’t take. Pain that there was “no medical reason” to be having. The transfer didn’t take, your ovaries have returned to normal size, you should be fine. Never mind that they just cut me off from all the hormones and pills and shots, cold turkey, after months of preparation and a still empty uterus. You should be fine now. Sure, fine. Explain that to my abdomen, the stabbing pain that doubles me over repeatedly until a pleading call from my partner to the doctor -  you have to do something for her – and relief from a few doses of something strong to “break the pain cycle in your brain.”

Another cycle… I almost ruined a favorite song, pumping myself up for the embryo transfer on the way to the clinic. This would be it! This one would work! Only to receive a call as we pulled into the parking lot… a call to inform us that all the cells had seized overnight. What?! No transfer that day. A long car ride home in deafening silence.

One day I met a machine called the Hysteroflater 2000. I wish I was kidding. They left me laying in a cold room, naked except for the hospital gown and paper cover over my lap, waiting for longer than you should for a scheduled appointment. I looked around the room and saw it over there. I had to laugh. I took a photo of it and sent it to my girlfriends – can you believe this?? And it’s gonna do exactly what you think it’s gonna do! The doctor blew me up and stuck a camera in to take a look around. Another inconclusive test. Why was that necessary? Could it have solved anything? Maybe… but for me, it was just another invasion with no thought for my emotional well being.

We went to one of the best clinics in the country, maybe the world! The doctors and most of the nurses were friendly, some even helpful and kind… but through the entire experience I felt more and more like just another sad and desperate woman. The only psychological service was at the very beginning of the process, then they never spoke to us again. Sure, the medical side is important, but what about the person who is going through this? She was completely neglected.

On my own I had acupuncture appointments. The clinic offered it as an add-on, on the morning of the transfer, and then forgot to schedule it for one of my transfer days, despite my enthusiastic YES I definitely want to do that! But I was also surprised that the "comforting" piece also involved needles... the last thing some women want on this journey is more needles.

Where is the humanity? The compassion for the woman on this journey? Beating herself up as she repeatedly stabs and shoots and swallows and averts her eyes from screens and strange machines, and shivers in cold, sterile rooms and bright lights… when all she wants to do is curl up in a warm, dark room and cry, or SCREAM! Not even a support group for all the women in the same clinic was available. Why not? Where is the support?

I’ve been there. I know the heartache and hope and disappointments, the crushing blows and the euphoric highs. Thankfully my journey ended with healthy twin girls. It took three cycles of IVF and donor eggs, finally. Even with the happy ending, the pain of the journey still lingers. I know others who had no happy ending. Their pain is often unbearable, but they have to carry on like life is normal, like they aren’t walking around with a permanent knife in their heart.

I would be honored to accompany you and provide interludes of peace where your only job is to be a human and breathe. Let me help relieve your pain for a little while.