When you talk about letting go (esp. letting go of complicated things), many times over your mind knows already what to do and your mind is totally ready to let go and has probably started to let go, but your heart will have to catch up and it's taking its own sweet time. The mind is knocking your head over and over again while saying, "You should know better! You should know better! Let go!" but then your heart is saying, "I'm not quite there yet, you know? I need more time." The mantra "be kind to yourself, be
kind to yourself" must then be repeated over and over and over again as
you try to let go of your own frustration.
Today is a friend's birthday and it reminded me of something that crossed my mind during TTC. I was born two days before my mom's birthday, so in a way I was her early birthday present. This fact never really raised to the surface of my consciousness until we started TTC (chuckle!). And furthermore, on husband's side, his eldest brother had the same birthday as their dad. At that time the idea of being able to get/give a birthday present this way (either for me or my husband) was really appealing.
I realize now that this was one of the things in my "baby dream package" that I had to let go of. This and the fact that I would like to be able to tell our child her/his birth/childhood stories the way my parents did. These wishes are just a few examples of the many, many, many layers of invisible losses. No wonder it takes a lot of time and a lot of work, especially when your heart is taking much more time to catch up. And no wonder it's so misunderstood, don't you think? When the world scratches its head and responds, "Loss? What loss? Get over it, I'm not comfortable with your pain!", what we truly experience is a complicated maze of losses or rows and rows of buried wishes (some of which we'll only find further away in the journey) and in the depth of it all, it's so overwhelming that it's difficult to even begin to explain it to someone outside the journey. All you can do is find your own tribe and take as much time as you need...
Anyway, this is something unrelated, but I'd like to share this gorgeous video clip with you all. Someone in the comment section wrote this: "this performance was dedicated to their former teammate, who died from
brain cancer. this was the song he used to perform with when doing the
individual competitions. usually group gymnastics have teammates
cheering them, clapping before/after each big feat, but for this they
remained quiet for their said teammate. so moving and so beautiful!"
Yesterday was Father's Day in Finland. Many stores and supermarkets were closed, except for restaurants that offered Father's Day buffets and flower shops. We spent the day at MIL's because I had to work on Saturday. Just the usual: MIL cooked some food and then we played cards.
When we got back home, I checked my FB account and then I felt mellow because there were a dozen Father's Day greetings and cards in my news feed. Funny thing was that compared to Mother's Day (the Finnish Mother's Day that is), I felt more mellow this time. I think even with the barrage of USA and Finnish Mother's Day greetings and wall posts (the amount was at least 5 times more than those on Father's Day that I found in my news feed), I survived better on both Mother's Days.
Why? I think one reason was because I had prepared myself mentally for both Mother's Days, so I didn't really click and read through all the Mother's Day's greetings and wall posts and I had put on my "complete mental armor" to protect myself against Mother's Day. Plus I still have a mother and a MIL, so I can still do something for them on Mother's Day. That means that despite my sadness of being a non-mom, I can still make someone else happy and in turn it makes me happy (so my sadness is counterbalanced by this).
I think I didn't expect that Father's Day would affect me because I thought it didn't really relate to me, so I didn't put on my mental armor when I checked my FB account. Other than those greetings and wall posts/cards in FB, a friend posted this on her news feed: "So this is the 30th Father's Day I've spent without my dad." And several people commented that it was their XXth Father's Day without their fathers.
I've lost both my father and my FIL and my husband is never going to be a father, so I felt that yesterday I felt a bit hollow and mellow when I was reminded of these things. I had to grieve over those three losses when I read those greetings and especially after I read that friend's news feed. I think what made it hard was also the fact that I couldn't even do anything for my father or FIL anymore. Mind you, I was tempted to buy a gift for hubby and give it to him yesterday, but I don't want to remind him of this loss. Plus it feels inappropriate to say "Happy Father's Day, hubby. I knew you'd make a great father if only you had a chance to be one. Here's a gift for you." I think instead of doing that, I'd rather just give him random gifts on random occasions.
Today my mood is essentially much better, especially after a good day at work. But those moments still managed to surprise me with their unexpectedness. They're like sneaky shadows whose existence is hidden from me on regular days, but every now and then they show themselves and remind me that just because I can't see them doesn't mean that they're not there. But that doesn't matter. What matters most is finding out where and why it hurts and then hugging it till it gets better and giving myself time and permission to take care of myself with lots and lots of TLC.
I've been thinking about infertility grief/loss lately. When I first started my infertility journey (after 12 months of TTC), I read as many infertility blogs as possible because I felt mostly crazy or weird or over-the-top. The message I got from non IFers at that time was that, "Just be patient/relax. It's not that you've tried that long anyway. Have you tried finding out what's wrong?" But I was convinced that my feelings of loss/grief were valid and I didn't want to deny them, so I just had to find others who voiced the feelings that I had churning inside me.
With the kind of "invisible loss" that we've experienced (we've never been pregnant), I felt the need to "own" the grief and grieve fully, but at the same time I didn't want to "prolong" the process either, but it was hard to find out which is which. However, by joining some forums and reading about how other people have grieved (those who've gone before me, esp. those who don't end up with children), I realize that the grief waves come and go and many times you just don't know when it's gonna hit. The initial wave that I felt on my darkest moment was just so overwhelming. In the beginning I tried to "numb myself" because I felt a bit scared of the height and depth of the grief I felt at that time (Btw, Brené Brown has talked about numbing ourselves in Oprah show) .
I didn't want the wave to engulf me and drown me and "kill" me (or a huge chunk of me) because I was afraid of not being able to pick up all the pieces and carry on after that. After I finally let go and just let the wave wash over me, though, what I found was that it actually cleansed me. I had to start over again, to find myself, my place to belong, a new dream, but it didn't "kill" me (or a chunk of me) per se. And I found out that after the initial wave that felt like a tsunami, other waves did come and go, but they weren't as overwhelming anymore. I suspect that the cleansing also came from the fact that after reaching rock bottom, I sort of got the feeling that I couldn't possibly fall down even deeper than that, so the only way to go after that was up.
When a close friend experienced miscarriage some time ago, I reminded her to grieve fully a few times, but she said that she felt the right to do so, so my reminder wasn't really necessary. I wrongly used my own IF experience to try to "guess" what she may have felt, but that made me realize an important difference between our losses, because when she announced the miscarriage, all of us including a few other friends she had told about it acknowledged her loss in the blink of an eye, but when I shared my "ambiguous" loss, my closest friends were confused about the height and depth of my grief. They basically weren't ready to acknowledge or validate my grief/loss until I told them what I needed. And boy was I really so desperate in getting others to validate my grief back then!
At that time I didn't really understand why I felt so desperate until I read these words:
"An important factor in the resolution of grief is social supportfrom others.
The bereaved need support, not only for the reality of the loss, but for
the validity of their grief, and of themselves as legitimate grievers.
As Fowlkes (1991, p. 532) wrote, "Because loss entails a loss of self-validation,
the starting point for recovery is the validation of the loss itself."
Ambiguous losses receive little or no public recognition, and if members
of the social network are unable to recognize the loss as real, they will
not be able to validate the grief of the bereaved. Others may find providing
support difficult to do, since people are more comfortable with "normal"
rather than what is perceived as "abnormal" losses and grief
responses. Thus, an ambiguous loss may be experienced as irreconcilable.
This may, in turn, lead to disenfranchised grief...
....Because of the lack of social recognition, disenfranchised grief is a hidden
grief and this "hiddenness" can paradoxically increase the reaction
to loss. There can be an intensify emotional reactions. It can intensify
feelings of anger, guilt and/or powerlessness, thus resulting in a more
complicated grief response. Rituals may be absent or the grievers may be
excluded from rituals. The reduced or absent social support promotes a
sense of generalized isolation on the part of the griever.
Disenfranchised grief may lay hidden for years, only to be triggered by
later losses. Seeland (1990) proposed that this hidden grief can lead to
incomplete resolution of the tasks Worden outlined. There may be delayed grief reactions where new grief
may build on or trigger old, unresolved grief responses. This may result
in chronic grief reaction where grief is never resolved, life becomes stagnant,
and new emotional growth cannot take place. Grief reactions may be masked,
and grief may express itself in a variety of physical, psychological, or
behavioral manifestations."
Absent rituals? That's spot on. When my friend who experienced miscarriage buried "her baby" in the backyard, it was the first time I'd ever felt the strong need for a ritual. I felt that I needed a more "real" closure. I was again reluctant to grieve, but in the end the need grew stronger and stronger so I let go. Due to a non-existent normal rituals, I had to create my own. And I did feel more healing after creating the ritual.
I find that during my IF journey, I'm taught to let go of SO many different things (not just letting go of the dreams that include children) over and over again. Letting go of control, of "trying to hold it together", of whatever other people may think about my loss and my grief and how I grieve. And I bet there will be many more other lessons in the future, so bring it on! I can't wait for more enlightenment to come!
