When you are in the midst of overwhelming despair and teetering on the brink of the abyss it seems impossible to believe that healing and acceptance is attainable. You KNOW deep down that you will never get over the devastation that being childless not by choice has caused you. I KNOW this is how people feel because I felt exactly that for many years and yet …..
Never is a very long time ….
and when we are so close to our pain it is hard to imagine that a day will come when we are no longer engulfed by it. I felt this level of grief when my father died. I felt it again, 18 months later, when my mother was killed. It reappeared 7 years later when my much-loved stepfather didn’t recover from a kidney transplant. I most certainly felt it when the horrendous finality of our situation hit home. I was NEVER going to heal and accepting the unacceptable was an impossible task.
The circumstances of my mother’s death were so horrific that they made the national newspapers. More than 20 years later I met someone on holiday who remembered the story and they had lived on the other side of the country at the time of the accident. Yes, at 27 I KNEW that I would NEVER recover. However, ….
Time is a great for healing so
gradually, as the years passed, it no longer hurt to breathe, hurt to smile, hurt to plan for the future. Eventually it didn’t feel as though I was being an ungrateful or disrespectful unloving daughter during the moments when I feel truly happy for a while. There were still wobbles though: times when the world came crashing down around my head again. Being walked down the aisle by my brother and not my stepfather was a very bitter sweet moment. Then seeing the faces of my mother’s best friends as I walked down the aisle yet knowing that my mother wasn’t sitting in the front pew drove a new and different knife deep into my barely healed heart.
There were good times though. Like when I went to a fancy-dress ball to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the first broadcast of the original Poldark. I met the delectable Robin Ellis and even stole a kiss, much to the annoyance of his wife. I told him how my mother adored Poldark and he laughed when he heard why. You see it wasn’t only because of the script and his portrayal of the main character. At nine I suddenly became the most obedient and helpful daughter imaginable because I was only allowed to stay up after my bedtime if I had been good ALL week! My mother wished, often out loud, that every series of Poldark could last 52 weeks of the year. Yes, Ross Poldark and I shared a laugh about my mother’s perspective and that is a memory I will treasure always.
Healing from infertility grief is hard
I have often said that infertility and CNBC grief is like no other grief that I have experience. There are no happy memories that help to gradually take the rawness out of the pain. There are future events and triggers that can crop up many decades later such as the first “woo hoo hoo I’m going to be a grannie” announcement by one of your friends who did have children. If this is the case, why are the experiences I’ve describe above relevant?
They are relevant because our experiences, both good and bad, change who we are and how we deal with situations in the future. Even during the deepest, darkest days of my infertility grief I now believe that there was the tiniest seed of hope hidden away in the recesses of my mind. Without realising consciously my mind KNEW that I had survived, and eventually healed, from bereavements in the past.
The healing grains of hope …
remained dormant for years as I was overwhelmed by my situation. Yet they did not wither and die. They were still there, in the recesses of my soul, waiting until my mind was ready to accept that I could heal. Over time the grains of hope started to show signs of life and began to grow. When I looked at people like Jody Day (Gateway Women) I know longer thought “I will NEVER reach that level of healing”. Instead I started to think “I wonder IF I will ever reach that level of healing”.
As the grains of hope grew bigger and stronger my attitude changed yet again and I began to think “I hope that I WILL reach that level of healing”. More time passed, and I discovered the powerful affirmation of Canbace. The grains of hope are large enough that I can feel them inside me. They are something tangible that I can latch onto and use as I embrace proactive healing. I have finally reached the stage where I am confident that “I KNOW I WILL reach that level of healing”. I am not quite there yet: however, IT WILL HAPPEN.
They say that you can NEVER unlearn knowledge. You may not have ridden a bicycle in years, yet you don’t forget how to ride one. My mind has now learned that healing and acceptance IS possible, and that knowledge will remain with me, even through the worst wobbles that may happen in my future. If you are not quite ready to embrace CANBACE yet, it may be that your germ of hope is still too small. You need to wait a little longer until it is large enough for you to recognise it and then your healing, and acceptance can truly begin.
Having mentioned the gorgeous Robin Ellis I could not be expected to miss the opportunity of sharing a clip of the man I wanted to marry about I was only nine: be still my beating heart!
Next Friday I will be exploring why “Existence can be hard when you focus on the impossible”.
In CANBACE friendship!
If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about so if you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website please let me know and I will keep your words private.
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