Rubbish.
What are wish lists except an active way of ensuring that your wishes have a chance to come true? While wish lists are usually tied to material items, there is no rule in the universe stating that the only wishes that can be announced are those of the baby registry variety.
Which brings us to the Wish Project.
An online friend has been struggling to conceive with donor eggs. Pretty much everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong and it has been an emotionally painful, financial suffocating endeavour towards parenthood. A few days ago, she wrote to ask me to add my wishes that they get to embryo transfer. Things weren't looking well with the cycle. Only two eggs had fertilized at the time and it wasn't clear that they would still be viable come transfer. I sent out her dilemma to a group of friends and the good thoughts started pouring in...
People who had never met Mary added their good thoughts to her wishes. Not only was she touched by the outpouring of kindness from strangers, but the wish came true: she made it to transfer even though at first it looked as if no embryos would be viable. On the spooky front, though only two eggs were fertilized prior to the wish going out, after the good thoughts started pouring in, she was notified that two more eggs fertilized and they had three available for transfer.
*****
The Wish Project came about after that exchange. I thought about all the times I have sent good thoughts to another person or made a wish on their behalf. And how it just feels less lonely to know that someone else is sharing the burden of your hope--someone else is believing alongside you.This is the driving thought: if you post your wish or your hope in this space, I promise to add my energy to your words and wish alongside you. You will, at the very least, have an additional person wishing for you too. But my other hope for this project is that if you have a few minutes in your day and you can send some good thoughts out there for another person, you will read through the comments and repeat their words to yourself, holding their hope for a moment in your hands in order to add strength to the wish.
Do I believe that it is as simple as speaking words and making them come true? No. But I still wish on stars and I still drop pennies into fountains because I think putting those feelings into words gives one a sense of purpose and direction. We can all use some hope--and the point is not even the wish itself. It's that there are hundreds of people that have your back on the days when you can't have your own back. And that is the power of community.
It would be nice, when wishes do come true, to return and leave a comment about that and spend a few minutes reading through the other comments and helping them with their wishes. It is simply a way of offering a hand back to those who are still waiting for their wish to come true.
