OK, so the close friend who had a baby about two months ago has been sharing updates about the baby's growth progress and I must say that even though there are some things I can't relate to, there's still a benefit coming out of my ignorance. For instance, when she shares things about what the baby can do, I can rejoice fully with her because I have no idea what babies can do at different stage of their developments. No comparing with any other babies/kids. I find this to be comforting and encouraging he he he...
The other day we received her baby card and I must say that it was tough to open it. She printed out plenty of photos (the baby's very expressive and cute) along with a poem and then taped them onto the long homemade card (all four pages filled with photos/text). It was hard because I couldn't help thinking what I would have done if I was the one who had the baby - what kind of baby card I could have designed, the kind of text I'd be choosing for the card (or perhaps the kind of poem I'd have written for the card) etc. And a line in the poem made me feel some pain: "We don't remember life before." A gentle ouch forced me to close the card.
I only glanced at the card very quickly because my grief was in the way of my being able to enjoy her card. However, I was then reminded of the verse: "love others as you love yourself".
OK, so time to give myself some love...
I started thinking that if it were my own baby card, what kind of card would it be? So I did allow myself to daydream a little. Because I'm a practical person, I imagined I would have ordered the cards through an online printer so that I wouldn't have to do anything else other than just send them. But I'd surely have taken a lot of time thinking about the text. And I imagined how happy I would have been to send the cards to my friends and family and I imagined them smiling when they opened it (OK, I know this is oversimplifying the matter, but it's called the best-case scenario in a daydream).
Because I wouldn't have known whether the baby would have been born in which season and whether the baby would have been a boy or a girl, I felt some glee in daydreaming about all the different choices of theme I could have chosen for my baby card. Daydreaming was fun, because I could easily change things without having to pay a dime he he he...:-)
That made it easier. I picked up her card again and this time I could really focus on what she'd created: all the photos she's carefully picked, etc. :-) I'm gonna try this trick again for next time. :-)
glitter-graphics.com
I wrote this the other day in Gateway Woman Google+ community and it's about time I posted it here for my own personal record.
"Last night the pregnant close friend finally disclosed the gender of the baby. It's a girl, she said.
And
then the clash between two worlds started again (I could almost see the
two worlds coming closer and closer together, threatening to overlap
each other). Then I remembered my word of the year: Disentangle.
The
thoughts that came to my brain were: "If only...this could've been my
experience...if it had happened to me, my MIL would have been ecstatic
(she only has 2 grandsons and three sons, no daughters or
grand-daughters and when we were trying she jokingly said she was hoping
for a grand-daughter)..."
But then I remembered my word of the
year and I had this superhero vision in my head. I was standing tall
(pun intended 'coz I'm only 145 cm) in between those two worlds: her
experience (her feelings, her happiness, her reality) versus my
"could-have-been" (my feelings, my grief, my reality) and I imagined a
blast of energy coming out of my palms, separating the two worlds.
Funnily
enough, it worked. I could respond to her emails normally, without any emotional burdens. I may not be able to be a superhero in real life,
but I can have super powers in my own mind LOL!!!
OK, I must admit it helps that I'm
not having my PMS, but just wanna share that the visualisation was so
strong that I was amazed at its benefit on my psyche. :-D
P.S. Because blue is my fave colour, naturally I had blue energy shield coming out of my palms LOL!"
glitter-graphics.com
I must write down some notes here to make sure nobody misunderstands this post above.
First of all, disentangling doesn't mean that I deny whatever it is I'm feeling. It doesn't mean the refusal to deal with my feelings. On the contrary, it helps me be there for my friend without having my own losses and/or grief dampening the cause of her happiness. After being there for her, I can then deal with my own feelings in my own space of choice: either here in my blog or in GW community, which has been such a beloved community for me.
Secondly, I felt such a HIGH for a few hours after writing that post in the GW community. Seriously, when I went to work after writing that post, I felt like walking in the air. I felt so light and I felt like jumping up and down in joy and I felt a rush of energy in my entire body. :-D So I'm writing this down here because I want to know how useful this technique is for the future.
I've been wondering about something ever since I heard that one friend of mine had a miscarriage. I can't help reliving my IF journey or moments whenever she shared some things that resonate with my IF losses (or moments of losses) and I have to really stop myself from getting "sentimental on my behalf" on my emails to her. I've been bothered by this 'coz I wonder why on earth I feel this huge force to "relive" the moments whenever I read about her emotions concerning this current experience of hers. I felt "selfish" for having averted focus on HER grief and instead turning inward towards my own, even though my loss did help me understand her grief, too.
Last night I was browsing online for grief and I found this blog post entitled "Is This My Grief or Yours?". This is the paragraph that hit me the most and made me nod in agreement.
When I first began to do my inner work with my own grief it was “an unknown”
part of me – it was in my shadow. Other people’s grief, if it was resonating at
the same frequency as my own unconscious grief, would trigger my grief. Kind of
like tuning forks on the same pitch setting each other to humming, only in this
case, we are speaking about emotional resonance rather than pitch
resonance.
So that's it! :-)
Then I started thinking about how many times I
"relived" my own happy moments when I saw other people's wedding pictures 'coz it reminded me of my own wedding day. I guess my friend's grief has the same sort of effect on me, except that the emotions it brings out are the direct opposite of such a happy memory. It's not that I cried over my own loss, though. I cried for her loss, but at the same time her loss made me remember the hollow part in myself that will never ever go away. If I have to describe the feeling, it's probably like hearing a low thud or echo on the hollow part. I'm not in pain, but there's this uncomfortable feeling of being reminded that it's there.
Then I started thinking about losses in general. What about my IF loss that is different than other losses? If I compare it to my Dad's death in the beginning of this year...if I hear about someone's dad's death, I think I won't really feel as "hollow". But why? Why is that so? Probably because with my dad's death, I have had closure. Even though I wasn't able to attend his funeral, but I'd had the best kind of closure ever. Not long prior to his death, I called him on his birthday and I could tell him verbally how much I appreciated him as a dad. And Mom told me that the morning before his sudden death, he had told Mom that he was satisfied with his life and he was happy to have kids like us. I couldn't have asked for a better closure.
When it comes to my IF loss, I'm unable to say (at least yet) that I've had closure, even though we've decided to surrender to life without kids. One big reason is probably 'coz we've never really had a chance to "say goodbye" properly. There had never been a positive HPT. No due date. No anniversary date of the loss.
NOT that I want to experience a real loss of a baby/fetus. It's not that. I suppose her loss just reminded me of how "hollow" mine sounds and that makes me feel sentimental. I suppose her loss made me realize even more than ever how "disenfranchised" my grief is.
*** Additional note (22.10.2012): One possible reason for the sentimentality factor was that I felt I had been robbed of the opportunity of showing hubby a positive HPT, of being able to see the joy in his eyes.
I've also been wondering why her grief has a different impact on me than others, 'coz there are others who've told me about their miscarriages as well over the past year (thankfully, though, they've gone on to conceive again and they seem to be doing OK now). I think one reason is because this friend is a very close one and we've been sharing our lives in details with each other whereas with the others, I'm not that close.
Anyway, it's nice to sort through some jumbled mess in my head that's been bugging me for a while. :-)
