Dank je wel! :-)

Dank je wel voor het lieve bericht! Ik ga soms naar de kinderboerderij, dat is volgens mij een beetje hetzelfde. Meestal probeer ik mijn neefje ofzo mee te nemen, maar soms ga ik ook gewoon. Dat is eigenlijk een beetje hetzelfde. :-)

Thank you for the kind message. It is good to hear that it is possible to have it great even after a miscarriage. I have had two miscarriages and two biochemical pregnancies. I did not really have time tomprocess this yet, as I had to continue treatment as my fertility is further declining due to my age. I think that might be part of the emotions as well.

It is difficult for me to not wager my personal happiness on it. I have a small nephew and when I take care of him, it just makes me very happy. It makes me feel like I would be as happy or even happier with my own child. Also, I was abused as a child and I feel that I did not have parents that really loved me. It feel unfair that I am not able to experience the mother/child bond from the perspectives of a child as well as that of a motger.

I also tried to take care of my younger siblings when I was a child. I was able to provide them with some of the emotional support my parents failed to provide, but because I was too young myself I always felt like I was not able to give them what they need. I am an adult now and I feel like I am capable now of providing children with a safe and warm environment. And I feel like I have all this love to give, but there is no child to give it to. I do not know where to put it.

I don’t know. Having a child will not fix all of this and a child does not exist to fix this or to make me happy. However, it could have been an area of my life that could have been beautiful and where I might have been able to give something and be valuable. And instead, this also does not work out and is another thing that goes on the pile of things that have failed in my life.

I agree that staking my life’s success on it is not a good idea. But I am not sure what else I have left. I am trying to become a writer and I am writing down all my experiences from my youth and with my sister who passed away and my fertility treatments, and so on. Maybe it can help some people who experience the same things. I think that might be fulfilling maybe and a way to create something positive out of the things that feel negative now.

Sad and empty. I love kids. I had fertility treatments for years, but that did not work out. I will start IVF again in a couple of days. Hopefully it will work this time. It is one of my last chances.

I would like to adopt or have foster kids. However, I suffer from PTSD and in my country it is very difficult to adopt or foster if you have a background with mental illness. Even though my psychologist and the people in my environment all say that they think I would be able to do it and my partner does not have any mental illness, my chances are very low.

To be honest, looking any further than the next IVF makes me panic. I do not know how to live with not having kids and how to deal with that. I had a lot of bad stuff happen to me. Having children would be something I believe would have made me very happy. It feels like I failed at life. However, I just turned 40, so I know I need to give up at some point.

( ͡°❥ ͡°)

There are a lot of people with eating disorders that result in them being overweight. Some people who have been neglected and abused as children can turn to food as their only source of comfort. If you have not been safe as a child, you will likely not have a basic sense of safety as an adult. If no-one has been kind to you and took care of you, you will likely not know how to be kind to yourself and take care of yourself.

So, you use food to feel safe and to get a sense of comfort. You use it to numb the feelings, to feel something nice. Because you do not have the resources to cope with the world that others that were loved as children do have, you do not know how to deal with it another way. And you survive and fight to make something of your life after all that has happened to you.

And then you get overweight. And society will tell you that it is your own fault. That you should show more restraint. That you just should eat less. That you lack willpower. That you are repulsive. That you are inferior to people who are not overweight. That you are unlovable. Basically, that you are everything that they used to tell you that you were when you were a child.

And you try to lose the weight, but you feel awful. You feel unsafe. You have nothing else that gives you a nice feeling. People will compliment you and be nicer to you and say that you look better. But you are constantly stressed. You think about food day and night, constantly, until you break. And you eat and you gain the weight back, and more. And you will feel like a failure, and you will feel unlovable and repulsive. And you do not know how to deal with these feelings in any other way than by eating.

And so, the stigma around being overweight actually makes it more difficult to love yourself and to be kind to yourself. The focus on food and the idea that everything will be okay if you just lose the weight will make you put all your effort into weight loss, instead of solving the real problem. Namely, that you need to process trauma and find other ways of coping with feelings and the world.

I think this is what is happening to a lot of people who are overweight. And they might not even be aware of it. They might think it is just about food, because that is what everyone is telling them. That they should just work harder at losing weight. That they just should have more willpower.

But I think that many people who are overweight do not lack willpower at all. They have survived horrible things. They did not get basic life skill lessons that others did. They did not grow up with a sense of safety and feeling good about themselves. But they survived. And they try to make something of their lifes. And that takes a lot of willpower. And for them to get better and to lead a more happy life, they need help with learning new ways to cope, they need their strength to be acknowledged, they need to be accepted, and, above all, they need to be loved.