I name thee: Grief

The last few months, I have lost my appetite, my enjoyment of food, of company, of, a lot of things, except for sleep and being in my husband's arms. I found myself dragging to get to work, being at work and just feeling annoyed at anyone around me who talked about anything besides how much I hated my life. I lost track of time passing, I didn't know what day it was. And yet, I didn't know why. I thought it was the hormones, or the new drug: Spirinolactone messing with me. Making me weepy and such. I lived in an irritated state. I tried so very hard not to take it out on my gentle, kind, husband. It was until he asked if I would go see my therapist, whom I hadn't been to in a few months, that I realized that I should probably do something about the state I was in.

I went to her yesterday, without a plan of what to talk about. I just told her how things were going, didn't particularly feel like dwelling on any topic. She looked at me and said "You know what I'm going to say before I say it: You are grieving." The second the last part of that sentence came out the tears welled up in my eyes. That is exactly what it was. I knew it, just like she suggested. I felt the grief as if it had been tangled up inside me, unwinding, and I felt a sort of relief... I am not turning into a bitter old woman, I am grieving. It is real, and it is ok. I asked her if it would ever end, because I am so tired of being sad when no one is looking, and not being able to handle pregnancy announcements, and friends joyfully struggling in parenthood. She said, it would get better, but that I had to let myself, let us grieve.
She suggested a closure ceremony, of accepting a life without biological children. It didn't mean that we would never be parents, since we are determined to adopt, but of that dream that we both had, when we were younger, and when we were first married of those beautiful, smart, children that looked like us, that had our quirks and interests, and how much they would be like, and not like us. To see our loved ones in them, those here and those passed on. I loved it. I am currently trying to figure out what would be most healing for both of us. I found some cool resources online: 

• http://www.ritualwell.org/ritual/tashlich-ritual-accepting-infertility
• http://www.meredithwheeler.org/?page_id=96
• http://www.labeletterouge.com/2013/01/life-after-infertility-how-to-let-go-and-move-on.html

I don't know yet if it will be private, just the two of us, or if we will have others there. I am toying with the idea of perhaps asking a friend who was my pastor, to "officiate" if she were able. I do know need this. We need to acknowledge our loss, and how it affects our lives. I read in a Christian blog recently something that has really stuck with me recently: Singles and childless adults are the most ignored and the least ministered group in a church. Any church. Its true and it's sad. A part of it is the symptom of infertility, the silence, of being guarded and suffering in silence. One of the reasons I started this blog, to break the silence, and help others get through this. It is difficult enough to go through this, why should we have to go through it alone?

Another thing I realized in thinking through my grief is that I still hold on to that glimmer of hope that people insists on giving me, about God's miracles, and how others have gotten pregnant after treatment, after adopting. Even though I know the stats on that is less than 1%. Every month when my cycle does something funny, I question, I hold my breath... but what is worse is that when my period comes, as it does, I grieve all over again. Those comments, benign and kind as they are intended to be, do not help me, they keep the grief fresh in my mind, for me to suffer from the idea, over and over again. 

In reading other blogs, of women who have gone through what I am going through, of not having miraculous resolutions, I realize that the grief will never really ever be over, even after I adopt and after life has gone on. But it can get better. I doesn't feel that way right now, I cannot see a light at the end of this tunnel right now, but maybe next month, or the month after that, or the year after that. Maybe some day, I will not wake up with my fate as my first thought, and the tears, and the bitterness, and the deep deep emptiness, will be a memory of things that made me who I am, someone stronger, kinder, a better follower of Christ.

In Your name I pray. Amen.