Grief has got to be the most unpredictable emotion I have ever encountered.
After already having fought the storms of grief from infertility and miscarriages, I expected a significant bout of grief when we definitively decided we were resigning to be childless. I think I knew I was done with trying to conceive over a year before I made the actual conscious decision, and that I delayed the finality because I was fearful. Fearful of the looming dark cloud of grief I imagined would just appear over me the minute I fully realized I would never be a mother the way I wanted to be. I didn't want to be swept away in the deluge downpour of difficult emotions.
So I took it slowly. Step by step.
I had the conversation with myself. Decision made. I waited. Nothing.
I had the conversation with my husband. Decision agreed upon. I waited. Nothing.
I told a few of my closest friends about the decision. I waited. Nothing.
I wrote a blog post about the decision. I waited. Nothing.
What the heck.
This was not what I expected. And I felt much more relieved than I thought I would. I felt an excited anticipation actually. I felt a lot of interesting emotions, but grief was not really one of them.
In the coming months, there were definitely some of the same old triggers that gave me twinges of grief. But I would sort & separate which hurts were because of something else about the situation versus if I was really experiencing denied parenthood pangs. It ended up it was mostly the former. I went through the first year surprised by the rainbows of feeling like a mother in other ways, and grief hardly made an appearance at all.
As time went on, I found I was usually quite ok around pregnancies (wanted ones anyway). And I was more than ok around babies, even eager to hold any and every baby. I was excited about baby showers and crocheting gifts of beautiful baby blankets, made with love and prayers poured over the stitches. It was so nice to feel like I could just exist around such a normal part of life without being triggered anymore. Was it really just a matter of time healing all things? Was it my acceptance that I had a meaningful purpose elsewhere, which gave me value outside of my reproduction abilities? Was it owning my story, no matter how different it seemed from anyone else's? I wasn't sure but it was a welcome change.
However, grief has a funny way of changing the landscape and suddenly there were other losses that became evident in the permanence of childlessness.
"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape." ~ C.S. Lewis
Like loneliness. It's official now, I don't fit in with any demographic other than women in their 40s with no children. Or like floundering in the pursuit of purpose. This is where I have to find my meaning now, so failure hits extra hard. And having spiritual kids who find you as a young adult - you know, the time in which they are too busy learning to adult to want to spend a lot of time with parents. A friend of mine, a fellow childless Enneagram Two, pointed out that our personality longs most for loving connections and the purpose of being able to help people, which all happens naturally & frequently in the framework of a family. Without that 24/7 access to that through a family, us childless Two's have far less access to our deepest desires. Ooof. This is where it gets real griefy, as she says.
The thing about new landscapes though, is there is a learning curve along with the curve in the road that brought you here. There is an adjustment period as you learn to navigate the new terrain. You have to learn new approaches, new landmarks, new terminology. I had been living like a foreigner here, hoping to find the familiar so I wouldn't have to change further, but this was not the place I used to live and trying to live that way would only continue to disappoint me. I would never find my safe landing place, surrounded by beauty and joy, while I lived in that denial. And I am a firm believer there is beauty in every landscape, I knew this new space would become really beautiful once I fully embraced it. So that's what I did.
Rather than wait for the old friends to finally make room for me, I opened myself up to pursuing whatever connections came my way, no matter our age or any other demographic or distance. I realized that just being wholly myself and completely honest about who I am, people of all walks of life were drawn to me, not the things I check off in a census survey.
While I'd love it if I had a little more success in my multitude of self-employment endeavors, ultimately I am happy because I am helping people, and when finances are getting tight, somehow God always provides enough to get us by. It may mean taking on casual side work now and then, and even if I don't love the work, I have been blessed by the new friendships that have come as a result. Double blessing!
So, yes, grief showed up. I didn't recognize it at first, but it helped me see the losses I hadn't acknowledged yet, which is always the start of the road to healing. The journey it took me on led me to explore my new landscape, seeking out beauty and joy, and the thing I learned about losses is that there is so much more gratitude for the small wins than there ever was before. As one of our spiritual daughters realized through the loss of her own pregnancy,
"When grief has had enough time to settle, it has the capacity to fashion itself into joy." ~ Vanessa Kolthoff
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