DC Day One

Ok, forewarning, this post will be picture OVERLOAD!

We have had such a good time galavanting around the Capitol. The 10+ miles we have walked today sure has made me feel better about the outrageous amount of calories I have taken on today. I haven’t completely fallen off my IVF diet wagon, but I have definitely been more relaxed with it today. I thought it would be extra important to just enjoy each and every moment without thinking “will this help or hurt my ovaries?”. While I think that is an important question, I think remembering that I am not just a factory for babies, but a real live autonomous human being and it’s important to enjoy yourself shamelessly sometimes.

SO, enter pics! (Because, you know, pics or it didn’t happen, right?)

So, here we are! BRIGHT and EARLY folks! This was about 4:30 this morning as we were waiting on our 6am flight to board. I am just so thankful that Memphis International is easy to navigate and wasn’t crazy high volume this morning. 3am came realllllyyyy early this morning.

As soon as we landed at DCA (about 9am, eastern time) we hit the ground running! We stowed our bags at our hotel and took off to explore DC!

We walked right from our hotel to the Mall. We started at the Capitol Building end. Seeing it in pics is cool, but nothing quite compares to seeing its enormity in person. Also, side note, the parking lot for this building is just outrageous. It really give you a different perspective. This place houses SO many working people daily. It was amazing.

I especially loved all the flowers 🙂

While I am by no means a scholar of architecture or structures i absolutely ADORE old buildings. I love the aesthetic and I love to think about all of the history and important people who have passed through each of the buildings, what type of things they accomplished there and how all of those things have effected how I live my day-to-day right now. As Allie said, it really makes you realize how small you are (in a good way).

Some more amazing monuments we got to check out today! As you can tell, I’m pretty excited.

This next one really hit me in the feels. It was such a beautiful structure and even though it was incredibly loud, it was so peaceful. I think it really helped me to truly appreciate that, as a few wise family members have told me, I am genetically designed to handle deployment well. It helped even more to have another strong woman going through the same missing pains as I am through this deployment. Even though I was never able to witness my grandmothers endure deployment after deployment with ever growing families, I have witnessed the aftermath of such a life. I learned how to be strong to a fault from them and something about this monument really spoke that to me.

And, as this all really hits me in the feels and I am feeling one with the strength of the women that came before me, my gaze settles on this:

I am so proud to bear this burden of womanhood through the quest of motherhood during a deployment. I’m genetically made to bear this weight and I am so thankful that I have amazingly strong women surrounding me to remind me that my situation is not unique and I need only look back a little to the women who paved the way for me today in my own family. The women who were strong through deployment, the women who struggled through infertility until they achieved their goals and the women who struggled through infertility and were given the fortitude to accept that and pursue the millions of other facets of their womanhood.

I don’t know what he future holds for me. Is there a baby at the end of this struggle? As much as I want that right now, I know that it is completely out of my hands in the long run and I have to be prepared for the possibility of that outcome. I know that there is so much more to who I am, what I can achieve and the difference in the world I can make than my ability to reproduce mine and Tim’s own children. I want that more than anything and I will be eternally grateful if that’s what the cards hold for me. But I am so lucky to have examples of women close to me that have risen to more than motherhood because it was never in their stars, I know it can be done.

The last thing we we saw on our touristy tour of DC is what I will leave you with today as my food coma is ever looming. It defines my whole purpose here this week, and yes I know that it wasn’t the original intention of this inscription, but it certainly suited my purposes today. I have a dream. I don;t know what the end of it looks like, its not quite in focus yet, but the spark is there and I’m so ready for whatever is next.

Til tomorrow

❤ Katie

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