Anyone who has gone through infertility and/or childlessness will have experienced comments or actions that are completely tone deaf to their situation. After telling a relative about my second ectopic, she told me to come to her country for a wedding, and I could hold her baby, because that is "good luck!" And last week I saw a monumentally bad example, during a CNN International interview with the founder of World Childless Week, when all the background graphics were of babies or pregnant bellies. It went on and on and on. I think they must have used AI to generate or compile images, because surely no human could be quite so ignorant or tone deaf. Except we all know that a human can and will be tone deaf like that. I see Loribeth at The Road Less Travelled has written about this too. Go and check her post here, and see the link to the interview. Warning though - the images are very confrontational, even for an old hand like me!
I am experiencing this differently at the moment, around my husband's death. In a conversation with friends, we were expressing sadness that she had also lost a friend to cancer recently. It was a notorious cancer and her friend had lived with the diagnosis for two years, longer than we usually think for that particular cancer. "She was determined she was going to last longer than the odds gave her," said my friend. "She was lucky," I said, both agreeing and disagreeing with the premise that "being determined" led to her longevity. "No, she was very determined!" my friend countered, looking at me pointedly. Was she being tone deaf, or did she actually imply that my husband wasn't sufficiently determined? She has been very supportive to me, so I'm hoping it was just the first. I just replied that she could not say that to me, not then, maybe never. And we changed the subject.
Other discussions have been difficult. As friends deal with elderly and dying parents and relatives, conversations of death and the aftermath arise. They are real issues, and it is natural to talk about them. What to do with the remains of your elderly loved one? I have been involved in those issues with my parents, and my parents-in-law. And now my husband - but that is very different. Whilst my very supportive friends probably didn't even realise I was struggling not to cry, it was of course not central to their reality. Needless to say, I did not volunteer my own quandaries around that issue during that part of our otherwise lovely chat.
Little, throwaway comments can give us stabs of pain. Another friend casually commented that she was at the "stage of her life" where she needed a partner. Similar ages, but I had just lost mine. Now, it was not the same, as she had been through a difficult divorce and has been single for 15 years or so. Whereas I am just coming to terms with this. But it felt like she was implying, at our age, that we needed partners. And so of course I winced at that.
And just yesterday I received an email from a friend of my husband's, who opened cheerily with, "I hope you had a great weekend." It has not yet been three months since my husband died. No weekends are great. Nothing is great, not yet.
Book or TV/movie recommendations that have painful reminders seem to pop up regularly. This happened several times during my pregnancy losses. 24 years later, TV recommendations have had painful bedside death scenes. These are not deliberate, and although very distressing to me at the time, the recommendations were made with the best of intentions. Though I appreciate more those friends who have warned me off certain films or TV shows, because they are just too sad.
I know some people going through infertility and childlessness have lost or changed relationships when people have made tone deaf comments. Perhaps I never had the worst comments made to me, but I kept those relationships, even if they changed. I guess, over twenty years on from permanent childlessness, I am again being reminded that:
- people don't fully understand what you are going through, even if they have been through something similar themselves
- even if they make every effort to understand, my experience does not enter their every thought, and so mistakes are bound to happen
- my experience should NOT enter their every thought, although it does mine, and I understand that, and I accept the mistakes, because I also recognise my hypersensitivity right now
- they don't mean to hurt me
- the relationships and friendships are valued, especially the ones I have mentioned here, where they have all been extremely supportive and loving over the last year or so, and that is far more important than an occasional slip up
- no-one is perfect - I have made mistakes like this on occasion myself, once in particular that still makes me cringe and feel mortified about 20 years later
Not every comment that causes me pain is tone deaf. Sometimes there are slip ups, sometimes I simply can't join a conversation because I can't talk about something so difficult just yet. And sometimes someone says something that needs to be corrected because it is wrong, thoughtless, or even unkind. CNN International should have known better. So should my friend who thinks "determination" might be a cure for cancer. I may be understanding. But I also want to inform and educate - when I can, when I'm ready.
