With any kind of grief, there comes a point where those around you expect you to be over it. For many of us, that point comes just as the full impact of loss is hitting us and we are far from okay. So here’s this week’s topic:
The pressure to “get over” your loss
Have you felt that pressure from those around you?
Maybe it is a southern (USA) thing, but we expect people to go through grief at their own pace. We take life slower than most…enjoy the moment…in the summer it is just too darn hot and humid to do ANYTHING fast.
You are allowed to have good days and then slip back into sadness as needed. It doesn’t matter the loss….death, divorce, miscarriage, childlessness, …anything really.
I like it here…I’m allowed to be me.
“I thought we were done with this topic” – husband’s quote
Susann, I’m sorry. Our husband’s don’t always get it. My husband once said to me, “if I don’t want to think about something, I don’t.” So they don’t like thinking about things that give them pain. They also see that we are distressed, and foolishly think that we would feel better if we didn’t talk about it!
Eek – husbands, not husband’s. This is what happens when I start a thought then change it mid-sentence!
Hi Susann & Mali, My husband is the same way .. he thinks I repeat the same thing over but it’s my way of making myself feel better by talking it out .. they are the opposite .. they think by changing the subject itll help .. but it doesnt.
My husband’s comment, “why can’t you be content?”
With any loss it takes time, a LONG time……I am in month 4 of losing my spouse and it is worse than our Infertility Journey. I wil never get over this.
No one understands what someone is going through until they have been there.
I wish we had children to help me, i wish we had family but instead I am alone and expected to always make the first move getting out of the house when sometimes it would be nice to just have someone to visit me
Im sorry for your loss Nita, i want you to know I’ve heard you and im sending you love and strength and kindness from England.
Nita, sending you a big hug fro me. I too lost my lovely husband and it’s so so much harder to deal with than the sadness of not having children. 2 years for me and people expect me to be ‘over it’ and ‘moving on’, to what I don’t know.
Lucy
Since I’ve never talked to anyone about wanting children and grieving, no-one tells me to stop grieving.
I never met anyone to try to have children with, and though I feared, for many years on my own, that it would make me childless, and though I have been grieving for years now, it’s not something I’ve ever talked about.
I’ve felt too ashamed and embarrassed, both about not being able to make a man want to try to have a child with me, and about failing to get what I want in this culture of “create your own success”.
(Adoption or “trying on my own” was never for me).
Only a few times has anyone asked me about children. Not even my parents or my brother or my best friends have ever asked. I don’t know what they think: that I never wanted children, or that I did want them but it’s more polite of them not to ask… I don’t know.
The only one I’ve talked to is my partner of ten years. He didn’t want kids with me either, he was content with the two he had, and our conversations about me wanting children are not good conversations, so we don’t talk about it anymore either.
I suffered infertility and failed to conceive. Since then I have found myself dwelling more and more on the loss of my father who died suddenly when I was 15, 39 years ago. It has, if anything, got harder, and this time of year around the anniversary of his death, sends me into a complete emotional black hole. There’s no time limit on grief.
I also feel the pressure to get over loss…sometimes it is hard even to talk about it.
If only people would have compassion…somehow… I am still praying for all of us…much love…