My Last Trip to the Mikvah

I just went to the mikvah for the last time. I am 28 years old.

I took my time getting ready. As if it was in slow motion, I needed to take in every moment to make sure I remembered what it was like and the pure beauty of it. I suddenly felt aware of how much I used to dislike going sometimes. How often I’d rush the experience and how I never really stopped to appreciate what it meant.

What it represented.

Something special I’d never be a part of again.

When I battled through secondary infertility I found going to the mikvah hard; top doctors told me I’d never get pregnant.

But I never gave up hope.

I don’t know if it’s true, but someone once told me, “As long as you have a womb there’s always a chance,” and I held onto that. We continued to fight to be parents and thanks to a miracle, we were able to have two children.

But this time I walked into the mikvah knowing that there was a hundred percent, no miracle out there, no amount of treatments could ever help me carry another baby.

I’d never have another period again.

That’s a funny thing to mourn when periods are what destroyed my body physically due to my experience with endometriosis.

But there I found myself, mourning the thing I’d dreaded most for 16 years. Not because of what it was but because of what it represented.

So for the last time, I went to the most beautiful mikvah.

It was in a friend’s house, she was the mikvah attendant and made the experience so special for me. For this, I am eternally grateful.

Immersed in the water of the mikvah I felt at my holiest.

I connected with my family: past, present, and future.

I davened (prayed) for them.

I took my last opportunity, I stayed in the water and cried until I felt I had no tears left to cry.

I admitted defeat, that everything was too much for me, and had been too much for me.

I asked Hashem (G-d) for help but I also thanked him for everything he had given me: an amazing husband, my hero. Two miracle children who we still can’t believe we have today. For my family and so much more.

I didn’t always appreciate going to the mikvah but I wish I had.

It’s a chapter of my life that’s over.

My heart breaks to let that chapter go.