A while back someone wrote me an email, saying something roughly like this, "Ummm...I don't know the details of your infertility history, but I recall that you've told me that you've moved on. However, I notice that you still share links about infertility and you still write infertility-related stuff in your wall posts in FB and that makes me worried that you haven't really moved on at all."
Cue the sound of me falling off my chair. Okay, not literally, but it seriously made me shocked on several levels. First of all, how dare she tell me whether I have moved on or not, especially since she doesn't know the details and doesn't bother to know the details! I couldn't help but think that she thought I was in denial or something!
Secondly, I felt cold all over a few seconds later because her email left me with this thought: "Is that what the general public think of when they see my infertility-related links in my FB? That I haven't really moved on?" What a staggering thought!
I then asked another individual about her opinion whenever she saw an infertility-related link that I shared in FB. Her response was different. She said, "Well, I know you enough to know that if you tell me X, you mean X. So if you've told me you've moved on, then I know you've moved on. Secondly, it's a huge part of your life, so it's only natural that you'll want to talk about it."
What a relief! But then again she knows my story and she knows the details. Even though she probably doesn't understand fully, yet she has followed my story, but what about the general public? It's not that I care that much about what other people think, but what is staggering for me is the possible misconception about moving on in general (specifically in a case of a childless-not-by-choice life).
Anyway, I explained to the person who emailed me that childless-not-by-choice was like losing a real person. The difference was that I didn't have any memories to hold on to. And if she thought that moving on meant that I had to stop talking about it completely, then she had it all wrong. After all, if you've lost a person dear to you, moving on after your beloved's death doesn't entail never talking about that person ever again, because you loved him/her and even though he/she is gone, you still love him/her.
Just wondering: has anyone of you ever encountered any conversation like this?
