anger-denial-bargaining-depression-acceptance
It being the week of thanksgiving and all, I’ve been thinking about what I’m grateful for beyond the usual (friends, family, roof over my head, etc.) and realized that I can actually say that I’m grateful for my infertility. Now this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have chosen to avoid it completely, but I have come to the point where I have finally accepted it as part of me and part of my life.
That got me to thinking about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief. I haven’t read her work (but I have seen All That Jazz and that counts, right?) so I don’t know how flexible the stages are but I’d say that I wandered in and out of them. Anger, for example, lurked frequently in the background. But depression definitely came before acceptance.
I was so damn depressed this past year. I’ve been passing signposts lately that remind me of this time last year and remembering how very, very unhappy and hopeless I felt. I used to think, “If I’m not pregnant by [insert time here], I don’t think that I can stand it.” But I stood it and I’m still here.
Now that I’m happily abiding in acceptance, let me tell you, the view is much better from here. What I’ve gained in going through infertility has been tremdendous. I feel much more compassion for other people. I feel very grateful for all I do have. I have a sense of time moving forward that is profound and beautiful and ties me to generations before me and those yet to come. Life seems many layered now in a way that it didn’t before. I can see that grief and tragedy come to all of us and that people carry around secret sorrows. I have a sense of the feminine nature of God weeping for us and loving us.
That’s been kind of huge.
The God of my mind has always been the Judeo-Christian male God. You know, big beard, angry gaze. Punishing. For a long time I could only see my infertility as some kind of punishment, a sign that I was failing. Failing as a mother? As a wife? Failing in the domestic sphere that in some way indicated that I shouldn’t have another kid? I don’t know. Everybody else around me was getting knocked up. Their marriages were falling apart and some of them were mean and selfish but they were having kids. I was so angry and and I felt so ashamed. But then one night I was crying while Noah and Brett slept and suddenly I had a vision of a woman’s hand soothing my forehead and I realized that I had missed an entire aspect of God.
Since then, when I have felt at my most lonely, I stop and visualize a loving mother God, who is sorrowing with me.
I don’t think God is a magic wizard who can grant my every wish. I think perhaps that God really is made up of all our good intentions. And that maybe God is all of the women who have gone before me and who have nursed babies and cradled dying children. Maybe God is all of that and the man with the flowing beard. The mystery of God has deepened for me but also God is present in my life now in a way that seems friendly and approachable and my own.
I see the hand of God in my own life now. I see how the child that will come to us through adoption will be an amazing gift that will tie us to another woman and another family. I can see how that child will make real for me the web that binds us all together. I am awed by privilege of being part of that.
And I am amazingly grateful for the comfort of my loving family and friends. I would never have known how much I was loved if I didn’t see other people look at me with tears welling up in their eyes. I would never have known the depth of resiliency that my own mother gave me by loving me so hard throughout my life. Her fierce love for me gave me the strength to rise above my shame and sorrow to here, where I can respond to infertility with gratitude and peace.
What a wonderful life I’m leading. How lucky I am!
Beautifully written.
As always, you’ve said what I’ve thought — and done it much better than I could. I, too, am grateful for what infertility gave me. I know I am a much, much better parent because of all we had to go through just to become parents. And I’m also so much more aware of, as you said, others’ secret sorrows.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you for such an honest and beautifully written post.
The image of a comforting mother-god is beautiful. Thank you.
Beautiful.
I think one of the hardest things to do is to let go of the image of God as some kind of cosmic gumball machine that gives you what you want, and come to the image of God as a loving parent/friend figure who rejoices with you when things are good and weeps with you when things are bad.
but once you do, there’s more peace.
and don’t forget, you and Brett and Noah (and Peanut) will be an amazing gift to the baby that enters your lives through adoption.