Today’s HAWMC post (#5) asks us to find a random photo on Flickr and write about it, hopefully linking it back to our health topic of choice.
(You can start at HAWMC #1 here)
Though I can’t show the image here due to copyrights, I’ll link it up for you:
How eerily beautiful is this photo?! Love!
The first thought that came to mind as I saw this photo was that it’s dark…very dark, indeed. But, the moon’s rays coming through the trees in full force brighten up the darkness and are softly stunning. As I looked closer, I saw the stag’s antlers peeking up out of the thick brush. I felt awed.
I wonder if he’s stuck, I thought? I wonder if he’s struggling to move in all of that density? Can he see his way? Why is he moving around at night?
I immediately linked this to the journey of infertility. The stag is alone in the dense brush. Infertility is extremely isolating. It envelops one’s every moment. It mires one down in its thick, barely penetrable mess. It’s all one can think about at any given moment: How…just how am I going to get through this?
It feels dark. Yet…
There’s that ray of brightness that the stag is moving toward. Okay, perhaps it’s not sunshine. Perhaps the moonrays aren’t in full force, and the trees mar their glow a bit, but they’re there. Similar to infertility. Even in the midst of another negative, there’s the tiniest bit of hope that the next cycle will be “it.”
In my imagination, even though the stag seems stagnant and not moving, I feel he’s moving toward the brightest moonray. He knows that’s where he wants to be. So close and yet so far.
Someday he’ll step into that moonray. He’ll be in the full of its glow. He doesn’t believe it yet, but he will be. Just like infertility: The struggle feels never ending, and resolution is there. Maybe not in the way first imagined. But it’s there.
May your moonray be just around the bend.
Be well,
~M