‘There’s more to life than just getting married and having kids, Yvonne’, said my confident, beautiful, perfectly organised blonde P.E. teacher, during a return visit to my old school with other friends from my year. It was the 80s, a decade of documentaries on the perils of teenage pregnancy and gender equality; all packaged up in shoulder pads and suits for women… I could do anything that a man could do, and I believed it…

I went to art school (ha!)… My best (gay) friend there told me he liked me because I wasn’t obsessed with being female; ‘just being’… I liked that… We met for tea break in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery every morning at 10am and put the world to rights.

I had a boyfriend back home, who later became my (first) husband; and the plan was to wait until we’d secured our mortgage before we secured our family… He became an ex-husband after I decided I didn’t want to see the world through his eyes…I got a job, did a post-grad’ degree, progressed my career in education, dated an older man, learned loads and didn’t give a moment’s thought to my body…At 33, I met my current husband and we more or less immediately set about trying to make our own little bundle of joy.

The IVF journey began, for me, at 38. It took us time to ‘officially’ declare our infertility after following advice on trying to conceive. One miscarriage and two further rounds of IVF later, I said I’d had enough and decided to stop any kind of intervention. I was overweight at the time; so after a period ‘in a very dark place’, I decided that instead of dwelling on what my body couldn’t do, I’d find out what I could do.

I trained for a marathon(!) and two years later, ran it… I ran 5kms, 10kms and half-marathons. I lost bucket-loads of weight and could finally wear anything… I cried one day because I felt like I’d also lost a little bit of me with all that weight and I didn’t recognise myself… All the running was great; but it was a bit like running away, a brilliant distraction. I made loads of friends; and that was the greatest part of it all. I got back on my bike, having been a keen cyclist during my childhood and early adult years. Cycling was how I’d met my second husband.  I rode endurance events, closed road events, sportives, duathlons, time trials, club rides etc... Eventually I didn’t know what to do if I wasn’t on my bike… After the IVF, my husband had also started running and cycling again. We had some great times through our running and cycling clubs.

But I’m not going to tell you that sport saved us… It didn’t… Like lots of phases in my life, I was distracted by ‘performance’ (and the short doses of endorphins)… It’s a great distraction; at school, at art school, at work and in sport… I gave my ‘all’ to each phase trying to keep up and meet targets… But the sad fact was that when I went home, it was just me and my husband; and if we weren’t out ‘performing’ at something, we struggled to find a sense of purpose… We now have a dog and a cat… We love them (and they love each other!)… We talk about our ideal house and place to live… I’m a part-time manager in HE; my husband is a gardener. I’m also a successful part-time artist who would like to go full-time… It’s hard work…

I want to live somewhere quiet and beautiful, but near a community. I don’t want either of us to end up alone eventually. We’re downsizing our stuff because there’s nobody to pass it on to. It’s time to stop ‘talking our dreams’ and to start living them. We have to celebrate this life and the miracle that is us… I said that sport didn’t ‘save’ us, like it saves some people… But it made me realise the miracle of our very being… It taught me so much about my mind, how my body works; and how my mind can work against(!) my body. (Watch the film ‘Gravity’ where medical engineer ‘Ryan Stone’, played by Sandra Bullock, finds the will to survive. It’s not just the mission that she endeavours to survive…)

My husband and I love nature, the planet, eco-systems and animals; and we’ll do whatever we can to protect all of them. We even rescued four orphaned baby field mice after their mother had been killed by a car. We drove them 40 miles out to an animal hospital, so they’d survive. We feel that we don’t need to procreate to serve the world in some way. Humans have done a lot of damage; so we’ll take one for the team and help other vulnerable ‘beings’… We’re leaving all our worldly goods to animal charities when we go… They need help.

The perception I have about my life is all in my head… What’s in my head won’t change my world… What I do, will… I’m not going to waste headspace on what I can’t do or on what I don’t have. I’m a true believer that if you really listen to your mind hard enough, you’ll hear the dreams and aspirations that have been chasing you around, remind you to be your authentic self without dancing to someone else’s beat… Do those things you know you’ve always wanted to do. (Read Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic: creative living beyond fear’.) There are still many artworks yet to be created, friends yet to be met, animals yet to help, books yet to read, silent moments yet to be felt; and much much more to be done… We may not have created lives, but we can still make a difference to our own and others’ lives.

I had a sound-engineer friend at work. His CV included working with the BBC and a very famous rock band. Anyway, he’d take his lunch in the refectory; and one day we were there talking about ‘being creative’. He told me that a young intern had asked him (I’ll call my sound-engineer friend ‘J’) if he could watch him work in the studio one day… So ‘J’ said ‘yeah, sure; though I don’t really know how that will help you…’. The day in the studio came; and the intern watched ‘J’ working. ‘J’ sat watching the musicians in the studio, and listening; and once or twice pushing and turning the mixing dials… At the end, the intern said, ‘ you don’t actually seem to be doing much, but I’m sure you’re doing a lot…’. ‘J’ said, ‘well yeah, but you can’t see how I listen or that space between me, my brain, and the music’…

Well, that was a real ‘WOW’ moment for me; as I realised that there is much of what we do that others can’t see, but that makes a difference… Nobody can live your journey… You ARE that space between your vision of the world and what you make happen… Even when you don’t shout it out loud, you do make a difference, by your very being.

Vonnie