I let my feelings take control this morning and they wanted cheese on toast! Why is it that any time I eat when I am feeling annoyed, pissed off or angry that my food choice doesn’t taste nice? 

So this made me feel even more annoyed. I don’t want to be annoyed at cheese! That stale white bread however – that can go fuck itself!

Okay so now I was really letting my emotions loose, the book I’d just started reading yesterday had already made an impact! A good friend messaged me last week asking if I had heard of the book ‘Making Miracles in Forty Days’ as there was a challenge in it that she thought I may be up for doing, seeing as I was working on being vulnerable. 

I immediately bought the book, even though I’d put myself on a book ban! Okay I bought another book along with it, but now…….now I am on a book ban! In my defence I was being economical! 


The books arrived yesterday and as I had the day off work I got stuck right in. For now I’ll just share a brief overview of the book – as I feel I will be discussing this further in another post. 

For 40 days (in a row) you spend 10mins each day acknowledging {negative} events and feelings that you are the least grateful for. Starting each exercise with ‘Today I am grateful for…………..’ and then writing a list of 5-10 things, whatever comes up.

And write I did! Polite, conscious Emma started off the proceedings – typing with poise about feelings and events I was already aware of. It didn’t take too long to delve deeper and I was surprised with some of the details that appeared on the once blank page. 

I continued to type through the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I only stopped when the alarm I’d set rang out loud after my 10 minutes were up! I could have written more but reminded myself that I had another 39 days for that. Triple checking and checking once more the email address for my other account, I hit send! Day 1 done!

It was a release, it was therapeutic, it was me letting go and being vulnerable – dusting away the cobwebs from some of the skeletons in my closet. 10mins clearly wasn’t enough as I appeared to open the negative trap door, my thoughts and feelings playing pinball in my head! I would have to wait until tomorrow morning or so I thought!

As soon as I got to my desk, I pushed my usual greeting aside and instead ‘was grateful’ for being messed about at the fertility clinic. My colleagues taking place of my morning email to myself. I told them that I’d just come from an appointment to become an egg donor where I was told I wasn’t suitable. 

It wasn’t that my eggs were too old – they were still good for a few months – until I turned 36, to be exact! I hadn’t as yet been through the vigorous health checks to be voided at that hurdle! Oh no – I got a big black mark against my name because I couldn’t provide my family’s medical history. For my mother, father and grandparents on both sides. 

I let it spill to my work mates that I was fuming that it took me to interrupt the member of staff to ask if it was important that I didn’t know my birth family from my dad’s side. As she instead chose to start with information on: 

  • my rights as a donor
  • how many children my donation could make
  • that they were crying out for donors, especially from my ethnicity 
  • and yadda yadda yadda! 

She didn’t need to answer my question as her face did it for her. 

I stood up, smiling politely and offering feedback that they should have stated that on the application, like they did with the age thing – 36…………to be exact!! And then I left, supressing my feelings, letting numbness and really bad cheese on toast take over.

Bless my colleagues as I didn’t stop there – now came the hidden emotions. ‘I am grateful for……….. (my negative emotions)

  • The fact that there is a shortage of donors.
  • That couples that are aching to be parents don’t even have the opportunity to choose whether they mind that a donor doesn’t know their family history.
  • That a lot of people who really want to help out may not have an inkling about their family history. 
  • That donor babies are genetically selected or as it is now coined ‘a designer baby’.
  • The fact that I was reminded again that I don’t know my birth father and that he didn’t want to know me.
  • I miss my {foster} parents. 

So I let my vulnerability out and I no longer felt angry, annoyed or upset.  I didn’t let the feelings fester into the crevices of my mind or give them a chance to set up camp in my body to maybe cause illness. It was just an event that happened not to go my way and I gave myself permission to feel all my feelings. 

And for that I am truly grateful.

Emma x

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