filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
Graduation season is upon us and social media has been abuzz with snapshots of proud parents and their offspring. So it seems like a good time for this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
Feeling left out when friends and relatives celebrate the milestones of being parents and grandparents.
As always, your other whines are always welcome.
By Lisa Manterfield
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
This simple phrase is the one thing I wish someone had said to me. It would have meant that someone—one person—acknowledged that my inability to have a child was an enormous loss for me and that I needed to grieve that loss, as if my children had existed.
In Western culture in particular, most people don’t know how to behave when someone loses a loved one. They follow accepted protocols such as sending cards or flowers. Some may call to offer help or just show up on the doorstep with the ubiquitous tuna casserole. A few will know to give people space when they’re mourning, expect unexpected behavior, and be ready for tears or anger. Still, most people struggle with how to handle those in pain.
Our society also has an unwritten hierarchy of loss. Someone who’s lost a spouse, a child, or a parent is given different allowances to someone who’s lost a boyfriend/girlfriend, a friend, or an elderly relative. Further down the ranking come pets, coworkers, and ex-lovers. Even people who’ve lost houses, jobs, and limbs are allowed a degree of understanding, sympathy, and mourning. But most people have no idea how to react when they can’t see the thing that was lost—in this case, motherhood and all that it encompassed. Many people won’t understand—or even acknowledge—your need to mourn at all.
In her 2010 memoir, Spoken from the Heart, former first lady Laura Bush writes about her experience with infertility. “The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence,” she writes. “…For someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like slant, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?”
The fact is that your children and your idea of motherhood did exist for you. If you had planned on having children, you undoubtedly made room in your life for them. This might have included creating life plans around the assumption that someday kids would be part of that plan. In some cases, making room for children in your life might have included making physical room, perhaps dedicating and even decorating a room in your home that would one day become a nursery, or it may have involved moving to a bigger house or a more family-friendly neighborhood. Did you pick out names for your children? Did you imagine which family members they might take after? Did you fantasize about your daughter winning a Nobel Prize for her research or your son bringing home a gold medal from the Olympics? You probably thought about the kind of mother you wanted to be. You collected data as you went through life, putting check marks through things you observed that you’d do better when you became a mother and striking red lines through the things you’d never do with your children. And you undoubtedly imagined what it would feel like to hold a child that was yours.
Here are some other losses you might be feeling:
Your children and your identity as a mother existed and were very real to you. You have experienced a great loss, and the only way to begin coming to terms with that loss is to acknowledge it and mourn it.
This post is excerpted from Lisa’s book, Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
A friend recently shared this with me on Facebook:
While I strongly disagree, I do feel compelled to share some of my thoughts on this.
Seriously, what would be an appropriate response to this? If you got it, would you simply un-friend the heartless dimwit? Let’s have some fun with this: Assuming you have no intention of sending a reply, but want to get it out of your system, what would you say? (By the way, I did not reply to her. I sat on this for a couple of months, steaming, until I figured out I could vent here.)
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
It’s Whiny Wednesday and this is one that always makes me scratch my head:
“Kids made me grow up.”
So, does this mean I’m not a grown-up? Because if so, I’d like to relinquish all these grown-up responsibilities I seem to have. How about you?
Facebook has been the topic of many Whiny Wednesday rants, and rightly so. Social media in general has perpetuated a myth of happiness that can make any kind of pain feel worse. So this week, our topic is this:
“Other People’s Perfect Lives”
Let us know how you feel.
We could easily compile an entire encyclopedia of unhelpful, and even hurtful, things people have said to us. I think this one stings as much as any:
“Everything Happens for a Reason”
Do you agree? Or do you have your own favorite “helpful” slight?
By Lisa Manterfield
I heard this beautiful interview with poet Edward Hirsch on the topic of grief, and I wanted to share it with you here.
You may be wondering why an interview with a poet about the death of his son has a place here, but listen carefully to what he says about loss, mourning, and the process of healing. So much of what he has to say is what I’ve also learned about healing from loss.
“There is no right way to grieve, and you have to let people grieve in the way that they can. One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don’t get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don’t get over it. You carry it with you.”
In his 78-page elegy to his son, he writes that mourning is like carrying a bag of cement up a mountain at night. There is no clear path to follow, but when you look around you, you see everyone carrying their own bags of cement.
As a poet, Hirsch used his writing, not as a way to escape grief, but as a way to express what he couldn’t otherwise say. One of the most striking points he makes is on the topic of healing and how our society talks about the need to heal. But, he says, in order to heal, you have to be able to grieve first.
Most of us have faced a lack of understanding about the loss we’ve experienced because we didn’t get to be mothers. We have no place to express that loss, and without facing it and acknowledging it, we don’t get to grieve and we don’t get to heal.
If you’re struggling with loss, have you found a way to express your grief? Even if you’re not a writer, could putting your feelings down in words help you move through your grief? I know it has helped me through mine.
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
“I am on the swim up, but I haven’t broken the surface yet,” Lynn* says, in answer to where she is on her journey. “At the same time, I feel scared to break free of it, to let it go. I feel stuck; I’m scared to turn the corner.”
Now 41, she’s been on the infertility/ran out of time rollercoaster for several years. Although she’s starting to make peace with her path, she continues to wrestle with the heartbreaking losses of the dream of holding her newborn and looking into familiar eyes in a new face, the memories that will never be made, and “all of the love that I have to give to that child that will never be given.”
Yet she continues to look for hope. “Some people come out the other end of this situation and say that they now know how strong they are, and that they can get through anything,” she says. “What I am learning is that I can survive, and that it’s okay to feel all of it. It’s even okay to be weak sometimes.”
After reading her story, I hope you’ll reach out to her in the comments. Perhaps you can share with her your own answer to the last question.
LWB: Describe your dream of motherhood.
Lynn: I can’t honestly say that I spent my younger years yearning to be a mom like so many women do. I did want children, but it always seemed like a goal for the next phase of my life: when I was a little older, when I had a better job, when I had a husband, etc. I had a long-term boyfriend in my early 20s, and I wanted to get married and start a family, but he was not interested. I did finally leave him and spent the next 10 years being very single. By the time I was in my mid-30s, I was overwhelmed by the desire to be a mom. I had spent so many years concentrating on my job and dating, but I felt no purpose in my life. Most of the men I dated were a mess, and I started to doubt that I would ever find something real. I met my husband when I was 38, and he was definitely worth the wait. We started trying to get pregnant even before we got married, then quickly learned it was not going to be an easy road for us. We did all of the drugs, intrauterine insemination (IUI), and then in vitro fertilization (IVF).
LWB: Where are you on your journey now? (for example: still in denial, angry, hoping for a miracle, depressed, crawling toward acceptance, embracing Plan B)
Lynn: Can I be all of these things at once? (LOL) I guess I am crawling toward acceptance, but still struggling with a little bit of depression. And I would be lying if I said that I didn’t harbor a secret hope for a miracle way down deep inside of me.
LWB: What was the turning point for you?
Lynn: Not sure I have totally hit that yet, but we did a round of IVF a little over a year ago. They were only able to harvest one egg, and although it looked good at first, it didn’t end up taking. We have thought about using an egg donor, but my husband is not willing to put us in $25,000 worth of debt to do it. At our age, we wouldn’t have that paid off until retirement (if we were lucky enough to pay it off at all).
I had an early miscarriage a few months ago. It was the first time in my entire life I had ever been pregnant. It came and went quickly, and it has been awful. I had just started down the road to acceptance, and then it happened. After fighting the anger, depression, and heartache of not being able to have a child, there is a part of me that wants to come up out of the depths of all of this and see what the next part of my life is going to look like.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Lynn: My husband and I are seeing a counselor, and she told me that I am grieving and that it’s so important to try to channel the emotions I have into something healthy and constructive. I have been journaling a lot, and it seems to be helping.
LWB: What advice would you like to give to your younger self?
Lynn: Be aware of your fertility and be proactive about it at an earlier age. Don’t just assume that you have forever to make it happen or that because celebrities have children in their 50s or your aunt’s cousin’s mother got pregnant when she was 47 that you can too. It’s harder than you think, and much harder than we are led to believe by our culture and media.
LWB: How has LWB helped you on your journey?
Lynn: The honesty and empathy shown here is everything. When I read women’s stories and read your posts, I don’t feel alone. Thank you for that.
LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?
Lynn: That I could reach past the survival phase and reach a place where I can thrive. I want to find myself again. I feel like my personality, my “mojo,” has been lost through all of this. I hope my husband and I can start to embrace our lives and celebrate that we found each other. I want us to fully enjoy the rest of our lives together.
LWB: What’s your Plan B?
Lynn: I don’t have one. However, I am in the market for one if you know where I can find one. 🙂
*We allow each contributor to choose another name, if she wishes, to protect her privacy.
What is your Plan B? Or are your wounds so raw that you can’t even imagine a happy future? We can all benefit from hearing about your experiences, plus we’d like to support you. Please visit the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire, and consider sharing your story with women who truly understand what you’re going through.
Did you know Kathleen Guthrie Woods is getting ready to tell her own story? The Mother of All Dilemmas follows her journey of pursuing being a single mother then embracing a life without children, and explores the reasons our society still presumes to calculate a woman’s worth based on whether or not she’s a mother. Keep an eye on LifeWithoutBaby.com for announcements about the book’s release.
When you’re deep in your grief—and even when you feel like you’re finally in a good place—it rears its ugly head:
The Baby Aisle.
Has it caught you unprepared? Did the sight of binkies, diapers, onesies, and teething toys bring on an epic meltdown?
Here’s your chance to vent.
By Lisa Manterfield
Following your response this Whiny Wednesday post, I decided to add my own two cents to the adoption discussion.
When I would tell people I didn’t have children and the topic of infertility came up, they would often ask if I’d considered adoption. Can I tell you how hard it was to keep my sarcasm at bay and to not answer, “Adoption? Really? No, I’d never thought about that. I’m so glad you brought it up.”
But now I’m in a better place I can answer that question easily and in a more friendly and helpful way. I’m doing it today, not for those people who want to make sure I’ve thought of every avenue, but for those of you on this site who might be thinking of adoption and wondering why I didn’t do it.
My answer could be very complex and I could talk about how our adoption options were limited by age and finances, about how much more complicated and heart-wrenching the process was than we’d expected, and about how we didn’t have the emotional strength to risk being matched with a child who could be snatched away again in an instant. But having some distance from that time in my life, I see it more simply now.
We didn’t follow through with adoption because we hadn’t yet dealt with the loss dealt by infertility.
During our adoption training we were warned about the importance of resolving our infertility before diving into this new avenue, but at that time, I didn’t want to hear that. Now I think it was perhaps the most important piece of advice we were given. Adoption isn’t the next logical step on an infertility journey; it’s a step off that road and onto another completely different path. But the infertility journey still needs to be brought to a resolution. You still have to work through that grief.
When we ventured into adoption, we didn’t fully understand this. Perhaps if we’d taken some time to heal first, we might have been better equipped to deal with that wild emotional rollercoaster, but we didn’t, and we weren’t, and that’s the way that story went.
I know that some of you are still weighing your options and making some big decisions. My story is unique to me and my opinion is based solely on my experience, but I hope hearing it helps you.
~ "a raw, transparent account of the gut-wrenching journey of infertility."
~ "a welcome sanity check for women left to wonder how society became so fixated on motherhood."
