Healing from Endometriosis Surgery and Allowing Life to Affect Creativity

How IVF is changing my version of a good creative life

The café is one I’ve never been to before. I’m sipping an iced spiced matcha, the sun is out. I love the big windows. The little nooks to sit along them. I’ve brought a book and my tablet, can take my time, have nowhere I need to be.

I had surgery for my endometriosis in the beginning of May. On this day, four weeks on from surgery, I've been to see my physical therapist. She was satisfied with my recovery progress, gave me green light to pursue movement in whatever way felt good and joyful.

Yoga, I said. She smiled and nodded.

The road to surgery

Ice cubes clink in my matcha and the coffee machine lets out a big puff of steam. I bring out my tablet, open an empty document.

The journey here has been long, like for so many other endo warriors. I first experienced endometriosis symptoms when I was 21. I never got a diagnosis back then, and after a change in birth control pill type, my symptoms subsided.

I assumed I didn’t have endo after all, because I didn’t have have pain that made me vomit and faint and go to the ER. Those were the only versions I ever saw described in the media.

Instead, my diagnosis finally came three years ago, at 33, after not managing to get pregnant.

Stage 4. Endo cysts on both ovaries. Depleted egg reserve. Deep infiltrating endo. Adenomyosis. Severe endometriosis.

I'm grateful that my symptoms have been comparably mild, but they didn't correspond to the level of severity. They didn't give me a clue about how bad it actually was. How much damage was being done.

I was recommended IVF. And that’s the path I’ve taken.

IVF and infertility

Since spring 2023, I've been on the rollercoaster of IVF. It hasn't been a straightforward journey in any way. Two egg retrievals, two embryo transfers. An uncooperative endometrial lining. One hysteroscopy. Cancelled cycles due to poor response. One very early miscarriage. One pelvic infection and emergency surgery. New endo symptoms. Endless hormonal shifts.

And now, surgery. To remove the endo that could be removed. Not all of it, or they would have had to remove my reproductive organs. But much is now, actually, gone. It feels weirdly difficult to grasp.

It has taken me a long time to figure out how to deal with infertility. It is a really shitty journey, for various reasons. The uncertainty, the grief, the hormones, the hope, the fear, the being in it for sooo long. Two years into IVF, I feel like I’m finally learning. Finally starting to understand how to properly take care of myself, as I navigate this, for however longer I need to be on this journey, and however it ends.

I’m not sharing this to become an infertility blogger, but simply to share the context I find myself in. Because I do find it affecting me, my creativity, and what a good creative life looks like in this season of my life.

Wounds healing

The sun is shining in through the window in dappled streaks. I move one seat down, rest my back to the wall. Gaze at people walking by outside. I think of these weeks of sick leave, how they’ve been healing more than simply my internal surgery scars.

I have rarely rested this intensely in my life. Weeks of just existing, unproductive, living quietly. Reading, watching Netflix, sitting in the sun, drawing tarot cards, going on short walks, eating.

This past year in particular has felt very long. I deeply needed rest. Here, in my last week of sick leave, it feels like I’ve finally caught up with everything the past 15 months or so have thrown at me.

Allowing life to affect creativity

It goes in waves. In the most intense periods of IVF, I crave comforting creativity. I let journaling and cosy notebook spreads be a healing force, and put more demanding projects on hold. In the least intense bits, I’m back to my regular self. I work on my novel draft. I have ideas and get inspired and reflect.

How the waves will fall and rise is often difficult to tell in advance. So to a certain degree, this journey is about letting myself rise and fall with the waves. Not battle them incessantly, not try to predict them exactly, but adjust my strokes accordingly.

For creativity, that means I need more flexibility than before. I’m less able to plan ahead, and to stick to habits. As a planner who has loved shaping creative habits, it’s an ongoing adjustment that I’m still figuring out.

It also means I’ve simply had less to write about here. I started this Substack as a space to mainly reflect around the creative life and creative projects - what I’ve always loved to blog about. But with less time spent working on projects and less mindspace for in-depths reflections, that focus has become somewhat misaligned with the reality of my life right now.

I’ve craved a simpler way of writing. I want to write a little more about life, a little bit more about small moments, little joys and stories from everyday life. Like I did in my post about self-caring my way out of February.

It feels exciting, a step out of my comfort zone. I’ve tried to write more like that before, and found it tricky. I’m so used to blogging about creativity. But that’s also what’s exciting - it’s something new. A way to grow in my writing.

Sitting there, in the nook in the café, I feel at peace. Experiencing life, in the small and big, in the light and dark. Reflecting about it. Learning from it.

Then I leave the café. A week goes by. I’m back at work now.

And I carry with me an excitement for figuring out what a good creative life looks like for me in this season. Allow it to change with me, as my creativity always has.

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