This past week Jews around the world celebrated Rosh Hashana - we brought in the Jewish new year. It is a beautiful holiday, with mostly too much food. We spend a lot of time with family. Many of us go to synagogue for prayers. We dip apples in honey.
I often experience Rosh Hashana in 2 ways at the same time. The first is, “here I am again, on Rosh Hashana, and a whole year has gone by yet again without expanding our family.” It’s pretty pessimistic, I guess, but I can’t help but reflect on the year that was and realize that in this specific aspect of my life, not much has really changed. With almost every other aspect of our lives we have the control, we make the choices. Not getting that deserved promotion? We look for a new job. Hate where we live? We can find a new apartment or house. Feeling unhealthy? We can choose to eat better and exercise more, even if it’s really really hard to make these decisions and stick to them. At the end of the day, we control that. When it comes to baby making, everything is out of control. If a cycle will even work. Our response to drugs. How many embryos will develop to Day 5. If we’ll find a surrogate. If she’ll sign the contract. If embryos will actually develop better with an egg or sperm donor. So much up in the air. All the time.
The rabbi at the synagogue that we go to, Rabbi Rafi Lipner, gave a fantastic sermon this year. He spoke about how in life we’re presented with lots of opportunities and often resort to “it’s just not me”. We think we’re not something or not capable of something. But we all have the potential to do what is presented to us. For Rabbi Lipner, it was running 10km in the Jerusalem Marathon. From a Jewish perspective it might be keeping kosher or shabbat or giving to charity or lighting candles on Friday nights. It might be a new job opportunity that just seems like it’s so much harder or a different type of field or requires more leadership (am I a leader?). For infertiles, it might be doing another cycle, starting IVF, approaching surrogates, looking into egg or sperm donors, adoption. We often think we’re not capable of taking the next step. But we are. We just have to continue to choose it. We may think we have no control, and for the most part we really don’t, but for the things that we do, all we have to do is make a choice and then just do it. Because it is us.
The second way I experience Rosh Hashana is that it offers a lot of hope. Unlike how I reflected on my birthday this year, Rosh Hashana really sets us up to look forward. The whole theme is dipping apples in honey in hopes for a sweet new year. We pray that we will be given the opportunity to live another year. We don’t really look backwards on Rosh Hashana, but look towards a year full of health, meaning, successes, happiness, and lots of sweetness. We also look forward by focusing on a concept called tikun olam - making the world a better place. It changes my focus from, “this is a shitty situation” to “how can I use this situation to help others, plus, what else can I be doing?” I hope this blog is one way that I’m helping people, and I have some bigger goals for Almost in Womb, and then there’s all the other ways that I look towards a year of improving the world.
When Jews wish each other a happy new year we don’t just say “happy new year!” we says shana tova u’metuka - may it be a good and sweet year. We want the year to be good, not just happy. And this offers me hope, where I can truly believe that the next year will be happy, good, and sweet.
No matter what your faith, I wish that we will all experience good and sweet things this year
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