Well, here I am...sitting down to write
this first blog post, hoping for something transcendental to reach down and
grip me up and tell me what to write here but so far it looks like I'm on my
own...So here it is, from me to you -
In my life I’ve always found that things happen
for a reason. I know that’s corny and cliché to say but it’s 100% true. Every
trial, failure, misstep, sidestep, stumble, mistake, hardship – you name it –
has ended up bringing me somewhere better. Usually that place is completely
different from where I originally anticipated it would be but I’ve ended up
there and happier than before. In many ways I feel like a lot of my life
experiences have pushed me into Beachbody coaching but there’s one key
experience that has dictated my life, my mood, my family and my choices for the
past 2.5 years. I have yet to share this story publicly and am still hesitant
to do so but it’s the real and honest reason why I decided to become a Beachbody coach.
When my husband and I first met and sooner rather than later started talking about marriage and children, we discovered our shared desire to be "young" parents. Seeing as he is five years older than me, we talked about timing and what that meant to both of us. We ultimately agreed that "young" would mean having our first child before we were 30 and 35 respectively. As if I didn't already know we were meant to be, I was thrilled to have found someone so in tune with my own dreams about a future family.
Well as things turn out, here I am, 3 months shy of 30 and there's no baby in sight. But I should backtrack a little bit before coming back to the present...
About a year after we were married we decided it was time to "stop preventing" children and just sort of passively see how it goes. I was thrilled to find out that (even after having been on birth control for almost 10 years) my cycles were regular, I appeared to be ovulating normally and so I sat back thinking it was only a matter of time now! I dropped some hints to friends, family and people at work so they wouldn't be shocked when I started showing up with a belly looking like I ate too many donuts or couldn't drink at that upcoming bachelorette party. In fact, in the beginning I even hoped for "just one more month" to enjoy myself, drink my beloved prosecco and eat as much sushi as I wanted. And for a few months the negative test was a relief.
But at some point the relief turned to mild disappointment. And a few months later the disappointment turned to sadness. And a little while after that the sadness became full on heartache. And soon the heartache wasn't just happening a few days a month, it was happening all the time. But even through all this you still think it will happen "next time." And since it's "going to happen next time" and you're POSITIVE life will be totally different for you in a matter of weeks, you say no when you're asked to be a bridesmaid in a great friend's wedding or to tropical vacations or really any longish-term plan that could be effected by a big belly or a newborn in 6-12 months. You start OBSESSING over everything - moods, cramps, any "symptom" that typically would get ignored is now seen as a SURE sign of pregnancy...even though it never is.
So finally after a year and a half I decided it was time to seek some help and find out WTF was going on. We went through all the tests - all the blood work and the poking and the prodding and the x-raying and the wearing of a diaper for 24 hours after having iodine shot into my uterus only to find out - THERE'S NOTHING WRONG! So there I sat, half in shock in her sunny 12th floor office, nodding blankly as the doctor described the statistics of being able to have children naturally, my mind racing with thoughts about how this "unexplained infertility" was standing in the way of all of our "young parenthood" plans...I'm sorry, what?!
God bless my husband, who has been a ray of sunshine in all of this. He has remained positive this entire time, believing that we're on God's clock and that it will happen when it's meant to happen. His rosy attitude has caused a lot of different feelings/reactions in me over the past two and a half years - everything from uplifting and inspiring to straight up irritation and anger. But still he goes on, unwavering in his dedication to positive thinking.
So there we were, plodding along, talking about buying a house but never committing, talking about getting another dog but never committing, talking about going on a vacation but never committing. Another 6 months go by and I'm still pretending I'm fine but really feel like I'm slowly dying on the inside. I'm also not so slowly gaining weight and even less slowly spiraling into a place of self-remorse and pity. Meanwhile, all the pregnancy announcements start to roll in in record numbers because the rules are written such that:
1) Once you are old enough that your friends are getting married, they are also going to start having babies at an alarming rate and,
2) When you have heightened awareness you will automatically see pregnancy and babies EVERYWHERE. There is not one place you can look without being reminded of your own empty uterus.
So New Years Eve 2016 rolls around and hubs and I do our normal NYE routine. I make us a fancy dinner at home and just shy of midnight we bundle up for the walk down the street to Penn's Landing to see the fireworks and ring in the new year with 10,000 of Philadelphia's finest. So we do our thing and on the way back home he says we should talk about all the things we did in the previous 12 months. So I think, and think some more and do my best to type different key words into the search bar of my brain and come up with this: NOTHING. Literally, not one interesting thing that I could find. I realized I was so busy waiting for this non-existent baby to materialize that I ended up taking all the joy away from my own life. ME! Someone who LOVED fun and adventure and excitement and laughter and living in the moment had literally existed in a self-induced emotional coma for not one year, but TWO. Not wanting to feel disappointment, I shielded myself from feelings of excitement. Not wanting to say yes to fun stuff because "maybe I would be pregnant by then," I missed out on what could have been an epic vacation for my mom's 60th birthday. The realization hit me so hard I actually stopped walking and stood slack-jawed in the middle of the street. He stopped at the tug of my hand in his to realize I was rooted to that spot.
"What? Are you okay?" he asked and I quickly word-vomited the information I had just pulled from my skull. And his response was so simple, so pure and just what I needed to hear. He said, "so let's change that."
So let's change that...I'm not sure four little words have ever had such a profound effect on my life (they highly contest the four he asked on bended knee in 2011). And so change that we did.
Early in 2016 I made myself a pre-30th birthday bucket list. Since January of 2016 I cut and dyed my hair, lived out my dream of playing the Emcee in a packed-house cabaret performance of Wilkommon, I ran the Ben Franklin Bridge at sunset with some amazing new friends I made through a local running clubs (shout out to City Fit Girls and Run215!), I trained for and ran a 10k, I lost 12 pounds, I committed to a workout and clean eating program, I got a puppy, I donated a respectable amount of money to a charity that meant something to me and we bought a house. WE. BOUGHT. A FREAKING. HOUSE. And maybe most notably for me, I got over my fear of exposure and finally, after two and a half years of going back and forth, I applied to become a Beachbody coach.
Now let me be completely clear here - I'm not here to sell anything. I'm not going to convince anyone that this is the right path for them. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. That's not at all my thing. What I AM here to do is to share my story and be living proof that you can go through your own personal hell and come out the other side better then before. If we chat and you decide you want to join me in taking this path to health and wellness, then I'm 100% all in with you and we're going to do this together every step of the way.
What I hope you take from this is that no matter how bad things get, YOU POSSESS THE ABILITY TO CHANGE IT. For me, the road included creating a routine, using 30-minute at-home workouts to help clear the worry from my brain, filling my body with food that was good for me and taking the time each day (even 5 minutes) to reflect on all the things I'm grateful for. I refer to the overall idea as "wellness" because that's really what it is for me - an overarching commitment and dedication to me own wellness, physically and mentally. This vehicle worked for me and I would be doing others a disservice if I didn't share my experiences with everyone I know and then some.
So am I pregnant? No. But am I happy and am I working towards a better me every single day? 100% hell yeah. Because now I decide what I let through my filter and what I choose to direct my attention and energy to. I choose joy and laughter and self-love everyday and I will continue to choose those things over everything else.
I don't care what the source of the feelings are or how you got there, if you in ANY WAY feel similar to how I did over the past 30 months, don't wait another minute...
Let's change it.
Inquiries: claudia.j.iannelli@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/claudia.jeanette.1
