Tag: loss

Privilege and Grief

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Weeping Willow, Claude Monet

The following reflection was written by Willow. 

I celebrated Mother’s Day for the first time as a mother this year. For 32 years, I had only known this holiday as a time to honor my own mother. When I think back on the Mother’s Days
of my childhood, I remember cheesy Sunday School crafts, carnation corsages, and fancy brunch at the Embassy Suites after church. As I got older, it became a more meaningful holiday because my mom and I are very close. I liked to pick out small but special gifts for her and spend the day doing her favorite things. It was an uncomplicated holiday. I have a mother who loves me and I love her.

I had no idea how privileged I was.

When I was in the early stages of infertility, it didn’t immediately occur to me to that Mother’s Day was an extra-special-sad-day for people like me. I’d only ever experienced this day as a daughter celebrating her mother.  So when a friend handed me a card and a knowing hug at church that day, I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, this is another thing to be sad about. I’m not a mother on any day, but here I am, also not a mother on Mother’s Day.”

My social worker friend Francie says that one of the hardest things to grieve in life is the loss of something you never had. In many ways, infertility is such an ambiguous grief. You grieve for a child that doesn’t exist. You can’t see his face or hear her voice. On Mother’s Day, you grieve the loss of something you don’t have – the experience of being a mother.  It’s not easy to explain this grief, and most people don’t even realize the everyday events and activities that can trigger the grief of those suffering from infertility. I certainly didn’t until it was me.

Mother’s Day is complicated and painful for so many people. It was a privilege and a gift to grow up celebrating this day without emotional baggage. I know that now. But if you haven’t experienced infertility or don’t have any close friends who have, it’s easy to take that privilege for granted. That’s why just simply having an awareness and a sensitivity of the potential suffering of those around us is so powerful. It’s such an important first step in caring for our loved ones who are grieving.

I have been a mother for 9 months. But my son’s story did not begin 9 months ago. He has had several mothers in his life, and we plan to honor their part in his story. On Mother’s Day, we will be thinking about Ms. An, our son’s birthmother. We don’t know much about her, but we will send her love and talk about what she might be like. We will also think about Insook, his foster mother. Insook provided our son with a loving and caring home for almost a year before he became part of our family. We are forever grateful to these two women. Our son will always know what an important role they played in his life.

I got to be celebrated as a mom on Mother’s Day this year. I got the flowers, the special meal, the extra kisses from my son. So many women did not. The silence and emptiness of their homes will have been especially noticed on that day. No words can ease the pain. If you know this pain, please give yourself permission to feel whatever emotion you are feeling on that day, or any day. You are not alone, and your story matters.

You Are Not Alone

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from www.newflowerwallpaper.com

The following reflection was written by Poppy.

 

This is a tough subject for me. I’m tearing up just beginning to think about it.

I’m currently 11 weeks pregnant after a long and hard 9 years of “trying.” Each Mother’s Day that rolled around has brought feelings of jealousy, envy, discontentedness, and of course unanswerable questions to God and my husband. What added another layer of grief was that I lost my own mother at age 15 to Breast Cancer.

My first vivid “bad” memory of a Mother’s Day was about 2 years into trying. I was on vacation with my girlfriends for the weekend and we decided to hit up a brunch spot in Wilmington on our way home. The staff gave each woman a rose at the end of the meal and wished all of us “Happy Mother’s Day.” I can’t put into words the sadness that I felt, but also anger at the waitstaff for not thinking through what they were doing. What about ladies that had experiences miscarriages or still births? What about those with failed adoptions or those of us trying to conceive, some even going broke financially and emotionally to do so, with no baby to show for it? I know this may seem overly sensitive, but those were my feelings.  I still have anger towards that restaurant to this day!

My husband soon realized how difficult Mother’s Day was for me. The next year, he made a card with our dogs’ footprints on it. That is one of the most thoughtful things he’s ever done for me. Over the years, he’s tried so hard to lessen the emotions that I feel on this day, but there’s only so much that can be done.

As the years went on, I actually learned how to handle my emotions on Mother’s Day, especially knowing that we would be going to church. There were 2 or 3 years that I just cried intermittently through the entire church service, and one year in particular that we skipped church altogether after I confessed to my husband that I just couldn’t take it. Our pastor at the time was aware of what was going on with me, and after a couple years of preaching to moms (which I wasn’t) or about moms (mine was in Heaven), he changed his strategy. Perhaps seeing me bawl through the services was enough to make him rethink his sermons. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful.

On Mother’s Day in 2015, I wrote a blog post entitled “On This Day, It’s O.K.…” It was from the heart and mostly about not having a mother around on Mother’s Day. But I did touch on our infertility for the first time ever on social media and how difficult it is to want motherhood, but not have it.

I don’t remember saying anything to my girlfriends about my feelings in the restaurant that long-ago day, but in the years following, they became a huge support system. Two out of the four of us required In Vitro Fertilization to become pregnant. The statistics are that 1 in 8 couples have trouble getting or remaining pregnant, but it seems higher than that. Why it is still taboo to talk about when so many people experience infertility is mind-boggling. In my experience, being open about infertility helps others admit their own stories.

For those women who have never experienced infertility, you have friends that have–no question about it. If you know of a specific friend or acquaintance that’s experiencing infertility (especially on Mother’s Day), I have found it really helpful to simply acknowledge it and tell them that you’re thinking of them in a personal message. It may seem like a lot to ask, but it really does have a significant impact. You may become a person that they turn to in difficult or joyful moments following an exchange like that.

Mother’s Day is difficult and emotional for both men and women who are infertile, have experienced miscarriage, still birth, infant loss, or failed adoption. It’s too much for words sometimes. And if you fit into any of these categories, please talk about it to someone you trust if you haven’t yet. The connections I’ve made because of infertility with women experiencing the same things are bonds that can never be broken. We share a deep pain that in many ways, only this community understands. Talk to them on your hard days–not just Mother’s Day. We all deal with things differently, and I learned how to deal with my emotions better because of these connections. Cry, yell, scream, go out, stay in, don’t shower, do shower, get dressed up, put make up on, or don’t. However you deal with it, just know that you will get through Mother’s Day and each hard day, especially with help from your loved ones and friends.

Never Forget

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photograph credit: Guthrie Whitby’s Website

The following reflection was written by Hawthorne.

 

For those of us who have experienced infertility, Mother’s Day is a loaded and weighty phrase. I believe that infertility changes everything about us as human beings, and how we view such a simple holiday doesn’t escape that change.

Growing up, Mother’s Day had little to do with me, really. It was the day we got flowers for our mom, wrote her cards, and my dad would take us out to eat so mom didn’t have to cook. As a young adult, Mother’s Day became a day that also celebrated my sweet sister who had become a mother too.

Then my husband and I started trying to have kids and month after month, nothing happened. By the time the first Mother’s Day rolled around, we had been trying for exactly a full year. I remember trying not to think about it, trying not to relate myself to the day in anyway, but I got a card from someone who said she was thinking of me on this “hard day,” and suddenly it became that.

I dreaded going to church, specifically, because most church services do something celebratory of moms on that day, like having them all stand up and people clap, or doing a sermon dedicated to motherhood. I am beyond grateful that that has not been the case at the church I attend, at least since I’ve been infertile. My brother-in-law is the worship pastor and usually says something about the complicated nature of the day: How it is sweet for some who are moms and some who have moms, but painful for moms whose kids are in trouble or who have passed, and so heavy for those whose moms may have passed or those whose moms have been unkind, harmful, or abusive. He also acknowledged the heaviness of those who would love to be mothers but can’t. Hearing him say that made me realize that Mother’s Day could function essentially as a day to mark my grief, my pain of not being able to have a baby after a lifetime of assuming I could and would be able to.

For three years, that’s what Mother’s Day has been to me: A day to remember and process a little of that grief that I carry. To find a corner and cry, and realize that I am not alone in my grief. There are so many women in my life who fall into one of the categories my brother-in-law listed, and for all of us, Mother’s Day can be a day to remember our grief. Infertility is such an intangible, hard thing to explain to people. It is grieving for the non-existence of someone you desperately love and want to know, and in that very real way, it is grieving a death. Unlike grieving someone who has died though, there is no death date or birth date to mark the loss. For me, that is what Mother’s Day became.

This year will be different as after three years of trying—with many I.U.I.’s, an IVF, an embryo transfer, and another year of having given up the idea of having biological kids–I am pregnant. I’ve been thinking about Mother’s Day coming up with incredible confusion and complicated emotions. I still feel the need to grieve the lost years, the pain I experienced, the babies I miscarried early through IVF, and the permanent change that infertility caused in me. But I also want to be able to celebrate the life growing in me. I don’t know that I’ll ever figure it out or that it will ever be easy for me to know how to handle this day, but I never want to forget the road I have traveled or the countless friends I have who are still there.