Hello and welcome to the podcast. I wanted to spend today talking about grief. Grief is an emotion that is commonly experienced in the world of infertility. Grief is present in almost every turn of our journey. No matter how long or short your journey may be. 

We experience grief each month or each cycle, eagerly anticipating a positive pregnancy test only to be me with Aunt Flo or told our blood work was negative. 

We experience grief when we have a failed stimulations cycle, a failed transfer cycle, or miscarriages.

We experience grief over this journey that we did not chose and what it means for our futures. 

The whole experience of infertility is stained with grief. 

So, talking about grief is so important BECAUSE of how prevalent it is for us. 

Talking about grief allows us to step out its shadow. 

Infertility is what I call an “invisible” grief. Think about the death of a loved one. Your relationship with that loved one was likely clearly defined and you have memories of your loved one to look back on. 

The loss is easily identified and articulated, not only by you but by others that may have known the person. 

Many will openly express sympathy for your loss and give condolences, flowers, and casseroles. You also have the opportunity to have a funeral or memorial service to commemorate the life that was lost.

This is not the case for Infertility. One of the biggest aspects that we grieve is the loss of our imagined or expected family. The loss of the life we dreamed about and planned for. We fear the loss of the entire parenting stage of life.  Yet, we see others experiencing that stage all around us. 

People generally don’t know that anyone is going through infertility, unless that person or couple chooses to disclose that information. That’s invisibility. Since many people experience feelings of shame and guilt around their infertility, they are much less inclined to discuss. Which amplifies the isolation that we experience. There are still many stigmas associated with infertility that also amplifies the grief we experience. 

Since grief comes up so much in infertility, I decided to do a little myth busting around commonly held beliefs about grief. I’m going to cover five myths and why they are so detrimental to our journey. I will preface this with saying many people grieve many different things, but for THIS podcast we are going to be talking about grief within the context of infertility. In future episodes we will talk about other ways to think about the grieving process, so this podcast is just for the myth busting portion of grief.  

Myth #1- Grief is Linear

How many of you know about the five stages of grief? Probably most of you. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. If you are familiar with this terminology, then you are familiar with the Five stage of grief. This concept was researched and developed by a Swiss-American Physiatrist named Elizabeth Kubler Ross; she wrote about them in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. Now, don’t get me wrong, Dr Kubler Ross’ work was pretty groundbreaking in 1969. No one was really talking about death and dying. But the important takeaway here is that she wrote about grief and loss from the dying PATIENTS perspective. NOT the grief and loss that loved ones of the patient experience. Yet, her work was appropriated for this perspective. And our culture cannot shake this strongly held framework; it’s like that annoying ear worm of a song that you can’t get out of your head. We cannot get these five stages out of our heads. 

Laster in her life, Dr. Kubler Ross HERSELF admitted that grief was not linear or had a predictable progression and that she regretted describing them in that manner which led to DECADES of misunderstanding about grief. 

You can expect, most people, to refer to the five stages whenever anyone talks about grief. However, perpetuating this very outdated framework actually breeds shame. Because we are in a perpetual cycle of “Can’t let it go” with the stages, whenever someone IS actually grieving and are reminded that there “should be” five stages. Well, that just means that the grieving person is doing ANOTHER thing wrong. THAT’S why it’s so damaging. There is so much shame that is attached to infertility. Most of us already have a running tally of things that we “can’t do” or “can’t get right”. So, whenever anyone plops down this little nugget of poo for your consumption, I want you to go ahead and flush it down the toilet. It doesn’t serve you to hold on to something that ultimately makes you feel like shit. So, if you’re trying to measure stages, don’t. Just don’t. It doesn’t do anything to aid you on in your grieving process.

Myth #2- Grieve Alone

There is an old saying, “laugh in public, cry in private.” This idea still permeates a lot of our culture. It’s especially pervasive in our Instagram- Pintrest-worthy pursuits for the polished, all put together, carefully crafted image. Ugly crying with snot tears in the bathroom because of another negative pregnancy test doesn’t really fit that mold. There are conversations around the “perfectly imperfect” lives that we all lead, but they are drowned out by social media’s relentless highlight reels. Our society believes that if someone is sad, they should be left alone. On top of that, because of our grief we tend to self-isolate. 

I don’t believe that alone time is bad. In fact, you could ask my husband and he would probably tell you that alone time is my favorite time. What I’m talking about is grief that is done in isolation. We are, by nature, herd animals. We crave community and connection. Two things that we desperately need when we are grieving. We need love, support, and communication with other human beings. Isolation takes us further away from that connection. So, grieving alone I don’t think is particularly useful or accurate concept for the grieving process. 

Myth #3- Give it time

There is a belief that somehow time will heal all. As if there is some magic in the passage of time. I speak to so many women that are still surprised by their grief many years later. One of my clients had a miscarriage several years, long before we began working together. She talked about how she was still surprised several years later when certain anniversaries hit (the day she found out she was pregnant, the day she lost the baby, and the expected due date for her angel). As there years went by, she was still experiencing that loss. Maybe not as viscerally as the first year but for some, every year is like that. 

Many people also believe that by putting time between us and our loss then we are “dealing’ with our grief. We think we can put it in a dark corner of or closet and only bring it out when we’re ready to deal with it. We believe that eventually, we open the closet door and the grief will be gone. But that’s not how it works, loves. Grief will wait. It will always wait for you. 

So, when we avoid our emotions, when we avoid processing and talking, when we avoid the idea that anything that has happened or when we try to bury what we’re feeling and just go with time; we’re often disappointed that time didn’t actually take away the pain. 

Because it doesn’t. That’s not how it happens. So, it isn’t really about how much time passes but rather, what we decide to do with that time, that heals us. 

Myth #4- Keep yourself Busy

How many times have you heard this or said this to someone? I know I’ve heard it many times over the years. This comes up in a lot of the infertility Facebook groups I am in. Whenever someone experiences a loss or has an unsuccessful pregnancy attempt, a lot of the canned advice is “distract yourself, keep busy”. It’s kind of in the same vein as the “time heals” thing. The common belief is that is if you keep busy, then somehow the busyness will prevent you from feeling the pain. But that’s not the case, is it? In fact, I’ve found that the more I try to distract myself, the worse I feel. Because, again, grief will wait. It’s very patient like that. By resisting the grief through distraction you’re just suppressing the grief. And distraction doesn’t just mean being busy. It can look like a lot of things. Overeating, overdrinking, over-shopping, over-social media-ing (I’m pretty sure that’s not a real word but it’s totally a real thing). It’s really anything that takes us away from feeling the emotions that are associated with our grief- whether it be sadness, anger, resentment, really any of it. 

The only way through grief, is right through it. You can’t go around it or avoid it. You have to feel it. No amount of busyness or distraction will take away the pain. Again, grief will wait patiently for you. 

I do want to pause and say that I don’t believe you can do the work of grieving ALL THE TIME. That’s exhausting and will overwhelm the part of your brain you’re using to process the grief. Sometimes it is useful to take a break from grieving. But not out of fear for what you will feel or experience but as a way of allowing your brain to process what is happening, without overwhelming it. Wonderful opportunities for this are anything that might put you in a “zone” do you know what I mean by that? Have you ever done something and were so focused on that one thing that you tuned everything else out? For me it is painting. I like to refinish and refurbish old furitnure pieces and when I am painting, I just get into this zone and HOURS can go by. For one of my clients it’s shoveling snow. She lives in Colorado so she has plenty of opportunities for that and she talks about how peaceful it is to just shovel the snow. It could be yoga, meditating, gardening, or any other create outlet where time just passes, and you aren’t thinking of your grief or trying to process any of it. Think of it like a brain-break and it’s a really important aspect of processing your grief. 

Myth #5- The “Don’t feel Bad’s” and other silver lining crap-ola

You know what I am talking about, “Oh, don’t feel bad, you’re still young. You have plenty of time to have a baby.” Or, “Don’t feel bad, at least the miscarriage was early.” Or, “Don’t feel bad, you can try again.” Or one of my personal favorites, “Don’t feel bad, you can always adopt.”

I do want to note that I believe adoption to be a beautiful gift, however, it is not in everyone’s heart to adopt. So, treating it as a consolation prize for infertility, undermines the beauty of that process and the pain felt by the person who longs to grow a healthy baby. 

Can you imagine not feeling bad about a failed cycle, another month without a positive home pregnancy test, or a miscarriage? I can’t! Feeling BAD is part of it. Feeling bad means that it was important to you. That is was a significant part of your life. 

I don’t want to feel good about my infertility or failed transfers. I don’t want to feel good about my friend’s infertility struggles either. It feels bad because we want something different. 

I am here to tell you that I want you to feel as bad as you need to feel for as long as you need to feel it. 

Telling yourself that you shouldn’t feel bad when you are feeling bad, is a recipe for disaster. So, if you’re feeling bad, it’s because you’re having a normal response to loss. Feeling bad is a part of that. So, please don’t try to talk yourself out of feeling bad or guilt yourself out of it by saying things like “It’s really not that terrible, I don’t have cancer or something.” You don’t have to minimize your pain. You don’t have to find a silver-lining. You don’t have to make lemonade out of lemons or any of that crap. 

You get to have your pain. Just as your own and no one else’s’.

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Until next week, I adore you and you’ve got this my loves. I’ll talk to you later.