Angry at the world

A week or so after my mother died, I flew home. From the moment I got off the plane, I found myself getting angry. As I waited for my husband to collect me, I fumed at all the cars illegally parked in the pick-up area, with drivers absent, despite the signs around declaring that drivers must stay with their cars. I could easily have got into a confrontation with people, if they’d dared to come near me. If you knew me, you’d know how out of character this was.

I grew up in a family where anger wasn’t really seen as a legitimate emotion, certainly not for children. We were always taught to not only treat others like we would like them to treat us, but to treat them better, and put others first. My wants and needs frequently came second, or didn’t register at all. (This makes it sound as if I was harshly treated - I wasn’t at all, and had a happy childhood). Anger was considered to be selfish, and selfishness was just not acceptable. Add to that the fact that I’m the middle child, and naturally a mediator, and you can begin to understand me.

Anger was never an emotion I was familiar with, or comfortable with, expressing. If I felt it, it turned inwards. Angry tears are something I feared, especially at work, when I was in a male-dominated environment, and being a woman was hard enough. Standing up for myself is something I have gradually learned, but I know I need to do it only when I feel secure and confident, not angry.

When I went through my losses, failed IVFs, and learning to accept my No Kidding life, I never really felt anger. I kept it quashed, both consciously (the one time I remember it coming out) and perhaps unconsciously. Instead, over the the next years, dealt with the sadness, the guilt, the shame, the despair, and eventually the healing, without ever really dealing with anger. I realised that anger would be pointless. There was no one to be angry at, after all. So I didn’t feel that I had missed out on something.

But since my mother’s death, it has been coming out. We (my sisters and I) were angry at the way she was treated. Maybe that’s what set me off – a legitimate anger on behalf of my mother. Now, though, I know I'm feeling anger on my behalf, not hers. Have the floodgates opened? Maybe. To be honest, it has felt quite liberating, in some ways. Because I think for years I have wondered why I don’t feel free to display anger. Why not? Am I not allowed to feel anger? Is my anger somehow not as legitimate as others’? Is it a feminist issue, that women feel we have to hide our anger? In societal terms, and particularly in career terms, women are damned if we do – too passive – and we’re damned if we don’t – too aggressive. I’ve seen too many excellent women suffer career-wise because of this double standard. (Now that really makes me angry!) Why doesn’t our anger ever seem to count? Why is it okay for other people to express anger, but not me? Isn’t my anger as important as everyone else’s?

Don’t worry, I’m not turning into the Hulk. What I think is expressing anger is probably what other people view as normal self-defence! I’m still a relatively polite diplomat, after all. But I’m tired of being the soft touch, the always amenable <Mali>. I’m tired of feeling ignored, fitting my life around others. Part of that probably comes back to being without children, feeling ignored and isolated, judged and pitied. How many times have I heard someone in this community say that they felt terrible because they wanted to put their feelings first, ahead of a pregnant or new parent sibling? I think that being childless has accentuated this feeling that for some reason my life, my concerns, my issues, rarely feel legitimate or acknowledged. Or maybe everyone feels that way?

I’ve written so often here that my life, our no kidding lives, are just as important, just as valid. Anger is an emotion like any others, neither good not bad, and – as Cristy says – we should allow ourselves to feel it, to acknowledge it is there. When I realised I was angry, when I recognised the emotion, and connected to why I felt it, it began to dissipate. Showing anger, of course, is a different matter, and there are ways to express it healthily, and times and places when we should hold back. I think I’ve got a handle on that. After all, I’ve had years of practice!

I think maybe I’m going to come to terms with anger, make friends with it, and learn to understand it, in the same way I've done sadness and grief. Doing that can't be a bad thing.

#MicroblogMondays: Kicking out at my emotions

Savannah has a great post about venting her emotions by throwing a wet paper towel at the wall. (Read it – it is more than just the physical act.)

When I was going through my ectopics, a woman who has become a friend suggested some ways to get our anger out, and I don’t think I’ve ever shared them here.

• Grab some old lipstick and scrawl whatever you want to say all over your (thankfully, easy-to-clean) bathroom mirror.

• Open a cupboard, and scream into it. (The cupboard - especially if it is one filled with towels etc - muffles sound, so your neighbours won’t call the police).

• Kick the living daylights out of a cushion or pillow - it won't hurt it.

I tried this with cushions from my couch, as they regularly needed to be fluffed-up. As I kicked the cushion back into shape, I gradually kicked harder and harder, taking out my anger at my situation on the cushion, and getting more and more strength from those very powerful emotions that were released. 

I confess I was not a little scared at how strong those emotions were – but I will also say that the release felt good!

Childlessness, pain and healing: the early days of life after infertility

I’ve been thinking the last few days about those very early days of learning we will have a life without children. First, infertility, then childless. I remember those days, even though they were many years ago.  I felt as if I had been slammed into a brick wall.   

Those first days and weeks were awful. There's no other way to say it. At first, the truth of my situation hit more and more deeply. Each time I would think “when I have a baby ...” or “my children will ...” the truth and the pain hit anew. I would not be having a baby. My children would never ...  never … This hurt more and more, as the realisation set in. It was as if I was repeatedly punching a bruise that was already very painful. I had struggled under the stresses of trying to conceive, of repeated losses, of pregnancies that turned lethal, of IVF and IVF failures. But I had always, even at the worst, had some hope. Now, though, all hope was gone. It was final. There would be no children, ever.

I could not imagine ever feeling better about it. I was exhausted at the thought of having to navigate my way through a new future, a future that seemed to me to be pointless, without meaning, without joy, filled with nothing but pain and darkness and regret. Along with hope, the light had gone, and I could see nothing but sadness, pain, guilt, and hopelessness. Briefly, I even imagined the relief of not having any future at all.

I felt a failure as a woman and a wife and a human being, and thought that I would never be whole. I felt isolated, that I didn't belong anywhere. And I avoided people, except for one or two special souls. I stopped going places I might meet someone I didn't want to see. Even trips to the supermarket were torture; hoping to go when it was emptiest, but finding it was filled with old folks and young mums; the cashier cheerfully asking how was my day, and my mumbled reply.

But it did get better. I quickly realised that punching the bruise was pointless, and so made efforts to train my brain not to think about the babies I didn't have, would never have. It worked. I stopped thinking of myself as a potential mother. It took a little time (weeks/a few months), and I slipped often. It was a struggle and painful in itself, consciously turning away from those thoughts and dreams. But this was really my first step to healing. 

The other feelings – pain, anger and guilt – lasted longer. The shock ended, but turned into a year or two of, I think, a very low-level depression. Tears were close to the surface. So too was envy, for those who had what I would never have, and for those who still had hope. They were reminders of my failures, of what I couldn't achieve, of what I would never have, reminders of what I couldn't give my husband too, an additional pain. Sure, I had good days and bad days, two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes it felt as if I was back to square one. But gradually the good days outnumbered the bad. I found joy and fulfilment in helping others. But still, I was grieving, and grieving takes time. Trying to imagine a new future, a future different to the one we had imagined and longed for, takes time. You think infertility is tough? Coming to terms is tough too.

There’s a phase we go through when we are angry, when we believe we will always feel angry, when we refuse to accept our situations. How dare someone suggest that I accept, that I “move on,” that I forget? Didn’t they know how much I wanted this? How much it hurt? How could they suggest this? They didn’t understand. Their suffering wasn’t as strong as my suffering! It couldn’t be!

I worried that it would look like I was wallowing in my grief, that I was self-pitying, or self-indulgent, so I hid it. After all, most people thought that I hadn’t lost anything, because outwardly, nothing had changed for us. But the pain I was feeling from that lost future was real, like the phantom pain of an amputated limb.  I remember how much it hurt, how angry I was!

In particular, I resented the idea that I should or would accept my childlessness, and all the negatives I saw in that life. (Yes, though I don’t like the term now, I very much felt childLESS in those early days.) I fought against acceptance, because acceptance seemed like betrayal - of ourselves, our pain, our grief, our dreams, and those two babies we lost. Acceptance implied that we didn’t want it enough, that it was okay we couldn't have children. Yet my whole being was screaming silently, "it was not okay!"  Likewise, after any feelings of happiness, I felt guilty. Did that mean I hadn’t loved or wanted my lost babies? Did that mean I didn’t really want it after all? 

Acceptance (and feeling joy), though, is none of these things – it’s not a betrayal, or a shameful admission that it was our fault for not trying hard enough. Acceptance is simply an acknowledgement of the situation we found ourselves in, the situation where we had no children, and would never have children. And there was no denying or changing that.

So I healed. It took time, there are many ups and downs. But if there is one message I want to convey in this blog is that it gets better. Now (11 years after learning I would never have children), I am no longer in the trenches; I climbed out and put my face to the sun a long time ago.

I hope that this gives hope to any of you who are struggling to imagine a future without children. I know that some of you will not believe my words. That you cannot imagine feeling anything other than the way you feel now. I can’t convince you that you will be happy, that you will heal. You probably feel that my words of hope and promise of a good life are as empty as those people who tell us to “just relax” or  that “miracles happen.” Maybe, for a rare few, they will be so immersed in their grief that they never come out of it, never let themselves imagine a life that they did not choose. 

But over the years, on blogs and messageboards and in personal life, I have seen so many people come through this. I think it is human nature to move on, survive, and thrive. Life is a joy, not a struggle. I'm not kidding.

Note: I've linked in the text to several of my posts which go into these feelings, and perhaps how I feel now about these issues, in more detail.

Letting it slide

Some years ago I wrote an angry post about the way parents seem to assume that they are the only ones who have compassion towards children.  The use of the “as a parent” or “as a mother” precursor to an explanation of why someone feels compassion or empathy for a child or parent in a particular situation.

Lisa’s post over on Life Without Baby prompted me to look at my original post again.  I realise I still feel pretty much the same.  Yes, I still take offence at the assumption I don’t share empathy or compassion.  But I think I have one or two things to say about it again.

I don’t accept that people don’t intend to cause offence in all cases.  The “as a mother” comment deliberately excludes me.  And if they’re saying it to me, then there is offence, and it is possible the person is intending to cause offence.  People like to feel superior.  Parents - perhaps when they feel they're drowning in guilt, debt, anxiety, doubt, love, stress, sleep exhaustion, you name it - seem to like to feel.  But in order to feel superior, they need someone to be inferior.*  And if they’re saying that to me, then they are intending me to feel that way, to feel inferior, to feel less.  Perhaps not deliberately, but somewhere in their consciousness they must understand what they are doing.  I suspect I felt this way in 2010 when I wrote the original post.  I think I was just scared to say this. 

And that’s a difference.  I am not prepared to feel put down any more and just let it slide.  It doesn't serve me well.  And to be honest, I don’t think it serves anyone very well to just let it slide (depending on circumstances of course). 

By letting it slide, it allows parents to keep making non-parents feel less.  By letting it slide, we let them do it, and perhaps reinforce those negative, shameful feelings in ourselves. 

By letting it slide, we stop parents from seeing that in fact we are compassionate.  By pointing out that we too feel the same way (without the fear of these things happening to our own children), I hope they can see that we can play positive roles in their children’s lives, and that perhaps we understand more about their own lives and feelings than they have previously given us credit.  It helps everyone feel more included and understood, less alone, less riveted by shame.

And maybe it helps them fear less, recognising that there are good people out there looking out for their kids.  Because I think there is a lot of fear out there in parent-land.

All of this can only be good for the children too.

So I'm making a promise to you, and to myself.  I'm not going to let it slide any more.  I will, in the future, gently point out that non-parents are capable of loving a child and feeling compassion and empathy too.

Update: An article in our local newspaper reported on a teenager and a man who rescued a young girl from a river in flood.  "We did what we hope any person would do," they both said.  Amazing how just replacing one word - parent with person - makes a situation so much more inclusive, and gives me the feeling that society in general is a much better place.

*   I wrote about that last year, with - I hope - some degree of compassion and empathy.

Two lives lost, or one life lived?

I was thinking, as I was responding to a blog comment elsewhere, how differently I feel about having no kids today, than I did even five years ago, let alone nine-ten years ago when it was all so raw.  Yes, I've mentioned before I'm sure age has a lot to do with it, but the old cliche is true.  Time really does heal.

And letting this happen is really important. Reading other blogs and comments, and in the years where I volunteered on a pregnancy loss website, I have seen so many women who have pushed against the idea of acceptance and healing.  I have seen them stamp their feet, as I have done at times too, determined not to like their new lives, determined to keep trying or keep grieving, terrified that acceptance means forgetting.  And so they haven't healed.  And they wonder why they are so angry, so bitter, so stuck.  Yet I doubt they could articulate that, filled as they are with so much grief and anger and turmoil.  And so they stay stuck, often for years.  I'm not saying we shouldn't be angry.  Anger is part of grieving.  But we need to move on to the next stage.  I wish I could hug them and tell them it really will be okay.  Tell them that they don't need to stay angry. That it is okay to heal.

Anger only eats you up.  It's a negative emotion that turns on us.  It achieves nothing else.  I mean, it's not even as if there is anyone we can be angry at, is there?  After all, there is no-one to blame.  (And what would that achieve after all?) Healing means eventually letting go of the anger,and letting go of the anger and bitterness means acceptance can take its place. And acceptance is healing, and healing is acceptance.  Healing takes time.  You can't one day decide not to be angry and wake up the next morning feeling healed.  (Oh, if only it worked that way!) But it opens the door, and lets some light in, so that healing can occur.  Healing doesn't mean forgetting.  Ever.  But it does make remembering easier.

And acceptance isn't a betrayal of what I wanted, or a denial of the love I felt (ever so briefly - yet lasting a lifetime) for the babies I lost.  Acceptance is simply an acknowledgement that this is my life now.  And accepting and embracing my life now just means that I'm accepting and embracing my life now.  It doesn't mean anything more, or less.  If anyone reads more into it than that, then we all have a good reason to get angry!

The alternative - not accepting or embracing our lives now - would be just too sad.  It would be as if we lost two lives.  The one we hoped for and the one we have.  And that is too awful to contemplate.  And if you're going to be angry, then maybe that's what you should be angry about, rather than the loss of the future you (and I) couldn't have.  Me?  I'm not going to waste any more time on anger.  I'm going to live what's left of the rest of my life.