Trigger warning: I wanted to make sure that I put a trigger warning at the beginning of this episode. I am going to be talking a lot about loss and how we grieve. Yes, I realize that is the name of this episode but because this is a very triggering topic, I wanted to put that warning out there. If you need to turn it off that’s totally fine. You can come back to it when you’re ready. There’s no wrong way to do this, love

OK, friends. I hope you are all doing so well. It been a pretty amazing few weeks. I have gotten more and more involved with the new app Clubhouse and I am all kind of here for it. 

I think I talked a little bit about it last week but it’s an audio only app and you can kind of think of it as the old school chat rooms except you get to talk back and forth instead of writing back and forth. It’s an amazing platform and there are now so many infertility and IVF groups, clubs, and rooms that are on there. It really is just a tremendous opportunity to collaborate and support each other and this amazing community.

I am on Clubhouse, my username is of course IVFthiscoaching- you guys know I love to stay on brand. I host a call on Mondays at 1:15 CST that is an open coaching call. I had my first one last week and it was so much fun. We covered topics like anxiety, relationships, managing expectations- it was so much fun. So, if you’re on there come find me. There are tons of other rooms and clubs that are also amazing so get on there!

Another thing I want to mention is that I am opening a few more slots for clients in the coming weeks. So, if you’re liking this podcast and you’re interested to see what it would be like to work together, there’s a couple of options: one way to do a mini session together. That’s a 30 min call that exclusively for coaching. You come to the call with one thing you would like to work on and we just dive in. The other way is with a consultation. That’s about an hour and you can think of it like a strategy session. WE’re going through and finding out the areas where you could be most supported and we create a plan around that. Both options are totally complimentary and are a lot of fun, so what do you have to lose, right? You like the podcast come chat with me. You can find the links for both of those on my website: www.ivfthsicoaching.com or in the bio links on my IG page. Either way will get you to the same place. 

Ok, now let’s talk about today’s topic: Grieving losses

If you’re listening to this podcast, I am going to guess that you have experienced a loss. If you’re human, I am going to guess you have experienced loss. It is a normal and expected part of being human. There are many losses that we experience during our lives. 

I’m not really going to talk about How to grieving, like the specific steps- I talk about that in episode 7- Feel better now. That three steps process can be used for ANY emotion, including grief.  Today I am going to talk about the different types of losses, how many of experience grief, and I’ll share an amazing analogy for how grief changes over time. 

So, during my SW careers and in working with grief and loss you learn that there are five different categories of loss:

1. Necessary loss- this is losses that are replaced by something different or better, natural and positive part of life. A couple of examples are kids going off to college, and leaving behind family and friends to make new friends and build a career. 

2. Actual loss- These are losses when one can no longer touch, hear, see of have near them the person or object they love. This is experienced in many different ways, like a treasured object, a pet, a loved one, a job, things like that. 

3. Maturation Loss- This is the loss we experience going through life with normal developmental processes. Things like children going off to college, retirement

Now the last two are the ones that we’re going to spend some more time talking about: 

1. Situational loss-This is a loss occurring from unpredictable life events, that usually creates many other losses. Things like break ups and deaths being the most significant. 

And finally,

1. Perceived loss- This is one has always been interesting to me because it is a very unique experience because it is a loss that is deeply felt by the individual, but it is often less obvious to others. But it is VERY real to the griever. I often feel like this is so much of what we experience during infertility. 

Within the context of infertility, a situational loss would be no viable embryos after a cycle, a failed transfer, miscarriage, stillborn, and infant loss. All of these things are incredibly traumatic events. These are the very definition of a “worst-case” scenario and yet they are all too real. These types of losses create a sense of injustice. Because it’s not just the loss of that embaby or baby it’s the loss for the potential and the unfulfilled dreams. I grieved so hard for the image I had in my mind for that last little boy embaby. We had a name, we had plans, we had a future- and that was the grief that was so real and guttural, and visceral. 

The perceived loss of infertility is not as commonly acknowledged as the situational losses. Infertility is best described as a disenfranchised grief, meaning that it is not widely accepted as grief by society. There are no ceremonies associated with infertility or grief rituals that accompany infertility. This type of loss also invokes feelings of injustice and anger. The ease of getting pregnant that we all hear as we’re growing up is the expectation, I think most of us walk into TTC with. The irony of me spending the better part of 15 years trying to NOT get pregnant to only be faced with the inability was rage-inducing. WE have a plan for the way our lives “should go”. Like the expected course that we all know. You get an education (high school, college, trade, whatever), you start your career, you meet someone, you fall in love, you get married, maybe you even get the house and then the baby. It’s that expectation that we are grieving. The potential for a loss of that ENTIRE stage of life. 

For most of society, infertility is invisible. There is so much stigma and shame that is prevalent with infertility that also keeps it invisible. I have a couple of other podcast episodes that talk about this: episode 3 talks about the myths of grief that are all too common in our society and episode 4 is specifically on infertility shame. I won’t re-hash what those episodes were about but if you haven’t listened to them, make sure to go back because it is important to understand how both shame and societies misinformation around grief impact our infertility experience. 

What I do what to talk about is HOW to grieve. 

This one question that I get pretty regularly. 

People will either ask me how to grieve or they will tell me they are not doing it well.

Have you ever heard that or said it yourself, “I’m not handling this well”? 

Ok, so first things first I want to set the record straight from GO, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no objective measure for what good grieving or bad grieving looks like. NONE. 

The reason that people say things like, “I’m not handling this well” is because grieving is very, very, very uncomfortable. It is painful. It is excruciating. 

And, I know I’ve said this a million times but I will keep saying it, in our society we are not taught how to experience an uncomfortable emotion. There is generational programming that has been modeled for us that emotions, particularly grief, sadness, anxiety, etc are inappropriate and inconvenient and we cannot and should not talk about them and that if we are experiencing something like that, it means that something has gone wrong. 

This thinking perpetuates this belief of “not handling things well”. 

For women, or even female gender norms (I’m trying to shift my words to be more inclusive so please bare with me because I am trying) but female gender norms pretty much dictate that everyone elses needs come before ours. That we have to take care of everyone, physically and emotionally, that we are responsible for how other people feel and that we come last. 

No one says these expectations out loud, right? But its messaging that we receive from Day1. 

Because of that, we do not give ourselves permission to feel these things. We resist, or avoid these feelings. We argue with them. We judge ourselves for experiencing them. And none of it serves us. 

So, think about that within the context of grief. If we spend our time resisting, avoiding, arguing with, or judging our emotions – which ALWAYS creates MORE of the feeling we’re doing that with. What do you think that does to our grief? 

You guessed it, it makes it a SHIT-TONNNNNN worse. This is what makes grief feel unbearable. 

This is what makes people turn to alcohol, drugs, food, sex, social media, shopping- whatever it is that will give them a sense of control, or pleasure, or numbing. It’s not the grief itself, it is the added layer of bullshit that is thrown on top of the grief. It’s what we make the grief mean about ourselves that makes grieving THAT much more excruciating. 

So, going back to the title of this episode, Grieving losses. 

There’s a couple of things that I want to highlight. 

1. I talk about this in that myths of grief episode but I think it bears repeating. There are some general stages that we all experience while grieving but I don’t even want to use the word “stages” because that implies that they are supposed to happen in a certain order or that you’re supposed to experience all of them. Neither of those are true. It’s not a sequential thing, its more like these are typical “phases” or “experiences” that people have. Like the denial, bargaining, acceptance, anger- all of that. People grieving experience those things but it’s a very individualized experience. I think my biggest with what people consider the stages of grieving is that last one of acceptance. Many people make that mean that at some point you’re healed from your grief. Like that there is an end-point to grieving and there’s not. 

I want to share an amazing analogy that was first shared on twitter by a woman named lauren Herschel. Those of us in the helping/ mental health field went crazy-go nuts over this because it is so beautifully true. It’s called the ball in the box. 

<Read from the article>

1. I want you to remember that there is no wrong way to grieve. All that I want you to do is allow yourself the space and opportunity for you to actually grieve. This goes back to that resistance and avoidance. Grief will ALWAYS wait for you. This is true for either the situational or the perceived grief. Even though we have different classifications for our bodies and brains don’t differentiate between them. Your brain isn’t like, oh well this is JUST a perceived grief- no, it doesn’t work like that. If you’re experiencing grief then you’re experiencing grief. So let yourself experience grief. For a lot of us, just thinking about feeling grief, we think if we allow ourselves to feel it then we will just fall into this hole and never be able to get out. But that’s not true. We do climb out. We do get better. Remember the box and the ball. Our grief will change but it doesn’t really go away. And that’s ok. I love this quote, and I don’t know who first said it but grief is just love with nowhere to go. So think about that in terms of your loss. You love that embaby, baby, that picture in your head about what you want your family to look like. THAT’s love. That’s why we grieve. For me, I don’t know that I want to ever NOT grieve the loss of that embryo. That was already a fully formed human, little person in my mind. He was already walking and talking and playing with his big brothers in my dreams. I will forever love and hold that love and grief in my heart. It is precious to me. 

I want you to consider that with your grief. That it’s this beautiful expression of love. Not that it’s just this terrible, painful thing that you experienced. It was both of those things but it is also LOVE. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that. 

Ok, my friends. This is what I have for you today. I will talk to you next week and remember, I adore you and you’ve got this.