Temporary? Insanity

Disclaimer: I’m an idiot.  No, really.  I wrote this awhile back and prescheduled it to publish without adding any explanation.  I wrote this for a pregnancy and infancy loss forum a couple weeks ago and wanted to share it here as well, but no, nothing has happened recently.  Sorry for the scare!

You can’t know what it feels like.  You really can’t.  No matter how close your own experience may seem.  No matter how many people you know who’ve gone through something similar.  You just can’t know what it feels like.

Even if you think you do.

For so many women, it is a roller coaster.  It is the gradual building of hope and then the plummeting, oh the plummeting.  The negative test.  The sudden onslaught of blood.  Thinking everything is okay, everything is finally RIGHT, and then oh so suddenly it isn’t.  Nothing can be certain anymore.  Everything is overwhelmed by trepidation, anxiety, and fear.  So, so much fear mixed in with the hope.

The world is full of women who mean well.  Who offer advice in hopes it will somehow help.  But so many of them say the wrong thing because they don’t realize the depth and many facets of grief attatched to such struggles.  They say foolish things like, “You should be happy with the one(s) you have.”  “It will happen when it’s time.”  “It’s just your body’s way of making sure you give birth to a healthy baby.”

They don’t know.  They can’t know.

That it is more than a simple, on the surface event.  They don’t know about the constant questioning.  Is it because I did too much?  Too little?  Am I being punished?  What if I had…?  Is it because I…?  Self-doubt becomes a poison.  One that simple platitudes can’t even scratch the surface of.

Compassion though.  Compassion helps.  To give voice to the fact that it’s hard.  Discouraging and dispiriting.  To validate the negative feelings and the fear rather than judge based on them.  Of course you’re hurting.  Of course you’re scared.  How could you not be after what you’ve gone through?  Compassion lifts up.  Advice all too easily translates into judgment.  It comes across as a questioning of a person’s level of faith, gratitude, and hope.

You can have faith, be grateful, and be filled to the brim with hope, and still be scared out of your mind.  Really.  You can.

So please be gentle with those who have lost and are living the up and down life of hope and fear interchanging.  I don’t know what they’re feeling.  I can’t.  I only know the hills and valleys of my own emotional roller coaster.  I know too little of other womens pain to feel anything but deeply, and profoundly sorry that they are having to endure it.

Stay tuned for details about the conference and my suddenly renewed passion for writing.  Today, however, is not a day to write.  I’ve missed my kids too darn much.