A week of describing things that have helped me over the years of learning to live with the grief of childlessness and of celebrating the me I have become. Apologies for the gap of two days – unfortunately migraines are no respecters of blog deadlines! This set of blog posts is to coincide with Fertility Network UK’s #YouAreNotAlone Fertility Week. Visit them here to see what they’re up to. Here is a very belated day 4.
Get ‘out of your head’
No, I don’t mean getting blind drunk on tequila slammers! I mean the other kind of ‘getting out of your head’ – doing something that helps stop those painful thoughts and feelings circling in your brain like a murder of crows. You know the ones: “I’m not good enough”; “why her/him and not me?”; “I’ll never be a parent”; …I’m sure you can add your own to this list. I find these thought circles exhausting. They only stop when I do something productive with my hands.
Over the years I’ve tried many pastimes. I now realise I am not:
A knitter
A gardener
A sewer
A painter
A paper-cutting artist
A florist
A potter
What I am is a baker. You could say it’s in my blood – one of my great, great grandfathers was a baker and I learnt the craft from my great aunt, my grandmother and mother. I love the
whole process: the measuring and mixing, the silky feel of flour on my hands, hearing the oven humming, the blast of heat as I open the oven door.
Recipes are prayers. Kneading is meditation.
There is still another layer to the whole baking process for me. There is something ‘time-full’ about it. When I bake I feel the past – standing at my grandmother’s side learning how to judge the ratios of flour, butter and sugar. I smell those aromas from the oven and I’m running home from school anticipating a butterfly cake or an empire biscuit. But I feel the present too – my own individual touches I have added to old recipes, new recipes I research on the internet, the way that baking a cake takes the time it takes.
And then, the final layer – sharing the fruits of my labour. There is nothing quite like watching another human enjoying my lavender scones.
There is a completeness to the whole craft: becoming lost in the physicality of it, bringing past and present together, producing something delicious, watching it being consumed down to the last crumb.
It’s my way of nurturing.
Without Issue 