In August 2004, I created a username full of hope and optismism of what I wanted my life to be: Twonycmoms. I trolled around fertility bulletin boards and met other like minded lesbian and queer woman at one specific site which I won’t name now because they pissed me off (long story) with their draconian policies and homophobia.

I noticed  a lot of these wonderful women were blogging and a couple of  clicks brought me to the amazing world of TTC/Infertility/Adoption blogs. My first blogs were “Chez Miscarriage” and “A Little Pregnant” and then I found the lesbians. So in November 2005, I started with “Journey to an Ewok” a blog about our journey to get an “Ewok”, the name we were going to give our baby during my pregnancy.

7 home inseminations with two known donors, 1 Natural IUI, 2 Clomid IUIs, 1 Injectable IUI, 1 agonist IVF cycle, 1 antagonist IVF cycle with ICSI and AH and instead of an Ewok we have no insurance, no savings and a diagnosis of Diminished Ovarian Reserve (a.k.a., Premature Ovarian Failure, Prematurely Aging Ovaries, or Kiss those biological baby dreams goodbye!) We received the good news on February 16, 2007.

As I spiraled into despair, I remember one commenter giving me encouragement about “rising like the phoenix”. The phoenix is a mythological creature associated with the astrological sign of Scorpio. I am a Scorpio. Added to this my love for Fawkes, the phoenix in Harry Potter, it didn’t take me long to create a new identity: Nycphoenix. Note: I kept my TTC AOHell email because it’s been disseminated too widely to retract it now.

With a new identity came a new blog: Forever Reaching. I chose that name to describe my life at the moment, striving and reaching for a new life, a way to heal from the pain of the past three years and to find a place of serenity and peace again. I was a lot of things once before infertility took over. Now I’m rediscovering who I used to be: queer, Christian, Latina, Scorpio, activist, reader, wife, sister, friend, daughter and person in recovery.

We’re still don’t know what the next step is but we know as we reach up and out we have God and our Love as our strength and salvation.

Well the next step for us was a Haily Mary IVF the III in November 2009 which ended at retrieval due to no fertilization. Now I am fully embracing my life as the Phoenix with a new email: nycphoenix1 at gmail dot com.