I always wanted a family and a home. I was in love with a good man, and he was as ready to marry and have kids as I was.
As usual, life showed up and wrecked it all.
I was on my way to 8:00 Microbiology one morning, and a drunk frat boy ran a red light and plowed into my car - top speed. The two legs that my boyfriend loved to touch were both broken in multiple places, and the ovaries that were supposed to help me produce those children I was dying to have were both severely damaged along with the rest of my internal organs. So, during the semester that I was supposed to finish up junior year as a premed student, I was forced to withdraw from my classes and watch the world from my comfortable traction frame in the hospital. The doctors who operated on me had been kind enough not to go for the full hysterectomy on the day I was hurt, but when I came to I was very delicately told that the odds were not good. My boyfriend stayed right there with me, and he was holding me when I took my second first steps. That was nice, but the “there’s still a chance” thing evaporated when the ovarian cysts and the scar tissue forced me to agree to a hysterectomy – at the ripe old age of twenty three. That was about the time that my boyfriend started to become distant, and then I didn’t have him anymore.
I won’t lie, I was fairly suicidal then. Without him, and without hope for children, I really didn’t see that I had that many reasons to live. I was so in love with kids and family that I had been determined since high school to be an OB/GYN. After a year of coming back from the crash, I was extremely behind and my entire peer group had moved on by two semesters, so there went my great college experience. I also couldn’t bear the thought of being around pregnant women and infants – maybe that’s cold, but the pain was incredible, and it still is. I couldn’t just keep spiraling, so when I could drive and get around again, I made an appointment with my advisor to try and sort out what to do with my life post-accident.
She listened to my story, and then she gave me a life-changing piece of advice – if the pain of losing out on having children was too much to let me bring them into the world, maybe I should consider helping those who’d had the same pain. She pointed out that I had enough psych hours to put me three semesters from a degree in psychology. That would allow me to pursue a master’s degree in counseling, and then I could work in mental health. That was at least a glimmer of hope, especially from where I was sitting, so I took the opportunity. I started taking classes again, and I even met the woman who is my best friend today. Danielle and I became friends in our Early Childhood Development class the first semester I was back, and we shared a schedule and an apartment all the way through grad school. When we were done, we even got jobs at the same school. She was a social studies teacher, and I was the school’s guidance counselor.
Life was good then. I built a career, I had close friends, and I was seeing a guy that I really liked. I still wasn’t over my last boyfriend (and I’m still really not), and I don’t believe that a woman ever gets over being unable to ever have kids, but my life as a counselor and a woman with good friends was a hell of a lot more appealing than the life I had lead confined to that bed with pins in my legs.
I was a little itchy to stretch my horizons, and Danielle had said multiple times that we ought to have a private practice together. I didn’t think much of it, but then one day at a staff lunch I mentioned the idea to the vice principal. She loved the idea, and she encouraged me to look into it. Thus encouraged, I started researching ways to establish a private office. The prospects didn’t look great, but then the VP told me that she’d spoken to her husband (a surgeon in the Air Force) and that he’d said that the military contractor that coordinated healthcare for the base he worked on was letting contracts for someone specializing in family and early childhood therapy.
I figured it for a long shot, but I took the number she gave me and called them. For the first time in a while, an unexpected good thing happened, and shortly Dani and I had a private office with a steady flow of clients. I really do care about people and mental health, but I can’t help but say that for the first time since I’d given up medical school the prospect of an above-teacher paycheck was pretty sweet. It also, more importantly, would give me more of a chance to help my patients in the long term instead of a thirty minute session during school lunches with kids I didn’t really know. We rented a small office, hired a secretary, and suddenly I was a woman with a boyfriend, good friends, and a business.
The clientele took some getting used to. This was around 2010, and the vast majority of my referrals were for women and kids who’d lost husbands and fathers in the Middle East. I worked hard to help them, but there is only so much you can do in those situations even as a therapist. I spent more than a few hours crying with widowed moms, and more holding their crying children.