No Kidding Healing Project: A revisit

Almost five years ago I began writing a series of posts under my Healing Project title. It was early 2020, and I didn’t realise the irony of the title, just when healing was about to become so difficult as the pandemic took hold across the world. We still haven’t healed from the changes that were wrought – societal, biological, political – during that pandemic, and covid still takes lives.

I tried to look back, see what had helped me heal, and move through each concept methodically. Yes, I have it marked here in a separate page on this blog. But frankly, if you read this on a mobile device, you won’t see the links easily, and any new readers might be completely unaware of the project. So here is a summary post, with links to each original post:

Day 1 - Show Up. Showing up is halfway there. Acknowledging that there is healing to be done, and that you are ready to be open to the idea that you can, in fact, heal from the grief of childlessness, is a major step.

Day 2 - Feel. There’s no healing without feeling. What you resist persists. Feel what you feel – that honesty is valuable.

Day 3 - Delight. Delight and joy show that life is always worth living, and they are signs that we will be okay. Let it find you. Let yourself feel it.

Day 4 - Surrender. Surrender. It so often is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of resolve, a sign of hope, and a new beginning.

Day 5 - Love. Love yourself. It brings compassion, empathy and comfort. To yourself, and then to others.

Day 6 - Forgive. Forgive yourself, your body (or your partner’s body), your emotions and decisions (and your partner’s emotions and decisions) and limits. It’s a gift to yourself, and brings new opportunities.

Day 7 - Honour. Honour yourself, honour your partner (if you have one), and honour those you have lost. Honour them all by living well. Honour. It’s so much more productive than guilt.

Day 8 - Write. Writing saved me. At the very first, it simply released me from having to remember, allowing me to sleep. Then gradually became the way I figured out what I thought, how I felt, and how I could move forward.

Day 9 - Appreciate. Learning gratitude is one of the first steps in healing. Appreciating the tiny joys in life, and then eventually seeing the benefits of a No kidding life, help us appreciate the life we have, rather than the one we lost.

Day 10 - Balance. Balance and perspective are what help us know we will be okay.

Day 11 - Dare. The beginning of acceptance is being brave. Shrugging off what hasn’t worked for us. Daring to be positive about our lives. Beginning to hope for something new.

Day 12 - Accept. We need to accept what has happened to us, accept our reality. That brings us to the second step – taking acceptance, and making it part of us. Because when we can do that – without self-recriminations, without judgement, without cringing – we can put an end to the battle. Sure, we carry everything we’ve been through with us, but with acceptance, we carry the lessons, rather than interminable pain.

Day 13 - Connect. You are not alone. Connections – whether in real life or online – help us feel normal, teach us wisdom, encourage us as we develop, walk beside us, and hold us when we fall.

Day 14 - Enquire. Asking questions, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, can silence those negative voices in our heads, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. But we can also challenge the assumptions of those people around us, their thoughts of the childless, as well as challenging our own thoughts about others. It’s my favourite technique of all, I think.

Day 15 - Admit. Admitting the truth to ourselves, the realities of our situations, our thoughts, our expectations, all help us to navigate our lives.

Day 16 - Experience. Living each of our lives is a unique experience. When one choice is taken away, maybe we don’t know what to anticipate. But perhaps we don’t need to. Experiencing life, day by day, can bring great joy.

Day 17 - Speak. I try to choose my moments. I speak here, and I speak up from time to time around family and friends and acquaintances who sometimes resort to false stereotypes or assumptions, and I speak more publicly when I can. Most importantly, I speak these truths first to myself. Maybe that's all some of us might need. I refuse to feel invisible, or diminished, and that prompted me to speak, and feel more truly myself.

Day 18 - Remember. Remembering is not dangerous. It helped me learn from everything I went through. Most importantly, it reminded me of the love I set out with. My memory has to be focused on the love – for my losses, for my husband, for myself. The pain has diminished, and now I can simply remember and feel the love.

Day 19 - Liberate. Liberate yourself from your own expectations, from society’s limitations, from stereotypes and judgemental voices, from guilt and pain, so that you can embrace yourself and your life. Liberation. It’s both the result of, and the penultimate step to healing, living and enjoying our No Kidding lives.

Day 20 - Celebrate. Celebrate your survival, your wisdom, the connections made, your new life and its unexpected joys.

A Wealth of Community Wisdom

Recently, I found myself reading some old posts, and the very wise comments from my very wise readers. I found comments from readers in the midst of their pain, fighting against my message of hope and positivity, and smiled, knowing that they get it now, and are shining their own light for those who follow. I found comments from parents both during and after their infertility, from non-IF/ALI readers, and from those who have been through loss and childlessness. The variety in perspective, and the self-knowledge, curiousity, and understanding in the comments heartened me. They should all be celebrated, I thought. They/you deserve it!

So today, I thought I'd focus on some of the comments just on my 2020 Healing Project. They are wise. They explain things differently to my posts, maybe bring up something I hadn't thought of, maybe disagree with me and make good points. They are all inspiring, and I wanted to share them with you:

1       Show Up
“Showing up is halfway there, for sure. I try to remember this and when I heed it, I proceed. When I don't, I stay stuck.”

2       Feel
“there's no healing without feeling”
“It took me awhile to get that "what we resist persists" -- especially when it comes to feelings. It does take a good deal of courage to go there and feel them, doesn't it?”

3       Delight
“Yes, yes to joy!”
“It was hard. I felt guilty, but I loved how you put it - that joy helps the sadness pass.”
“... you've reminded me to be OK with joy.”

4       Surrender
“... love that you made this discernment between surrender and acceptance. I didn't realize that sometimes I aim first for acceptance, which doesn't go very well. I see that surrender is an important step that shouldn't be skipped.”
“Surrendering the effort to try and control that which is not within my power to control. To be very clear about what I can influence and what is outside my sphere. That these are not giving up or not caring but simply accommodating the real, even if not welcome.”
“I'm learning that if I can't get to gratitude, then go for acceptance, now I see that surrender is the first step.”
“The reminder that surrender is not a weakness, it's the way to a new beginning.”
“At some point you have to change the way you look at the thing.”

5       Love
“I love this idea, to give comfort, forgiveness, love and compassion to ourselves. I feel like it's the upper limit to what we can give others, so it is worthwhile to work on.”
“it's often so much easier to give compassion and kindness to others than to yourself. Being kind to myself is something I have to actively practice, as my inner voice is that 7th grade mean girl. But I love the idea of imagining the hurt child and comforting her.”

6       Forgive
“Those what-ifs and navel-gazing moments are killer.”
“I'm also of the school of thought that there’s no point in self-recriminations or in feeling guilty, or constantly blaming. It's futile and will suck the joy out of life”
“Another way I find helpful to deal with guilt or self-blame is "You are not a slave." It is not right for another person to force us to use our bodies or time to fulfill their desires or needs. And by the same token, it's not right for us to do that to ourselves, either, although that might seem less obvious. I am not a slave to my desires, nor should I ruin my body or mind forcing it to do something. It can be hard to find a way to articulate this concept when we value individuality and personal choice to so highly. But like all ways of looking at the world it has its limitations.”

7       Honour
“I would not have thought of honor and guilt as opposing forces, but you make me see how they are.”

8       Write
“processing something with words helps me clarify, release, and heal. Doing in on my blog also helps me feel not so alone.”
“Even just writing down stuff to get it out of your head, listmaking, is such a great way to alleviate anxiety.”
“writing to connect with others was a game-changer.”
“the lesson in kindness, too...using writing to discover good things nestled in with the bad that you might otherwise not see as clearly.”
“writing, for me, definitely helps, no matter what the forum!”

9       Appreciate
“I notice I always find whatever I set out to look for. So I might as well look for things to be grateful for ...”
“I started small and started cultivating gratitude one little moment at a time. Over the years, it added up to a lot of gratitude and a perspective shift. I do not deny all that I've lost, but I am also grateful for all that I've gained.”
“It helps so much to know that you can actually appreciate your life for what it is, not what it's missing -- because in the very beginning that seems impossible.”

10   Balance
“the (im)balance changes as we move through the stages of grief and readjustment. And that no one can balance for us. ... so important to know that perspective and balance do eventually come.”
“I remember the horrid imbalance in those last years and feeling like I could control the uncontrollable if I just tried harder (nope), and then the bizarre sweet relief of resolution I didn't think possible.”
“It doesn't happen overnight... but over time, some sense of it does return.”

11   Dare
“It IS daring to go against the norm the way we have. And while we're not the first ones to do so, I think we're the first generation of women giving voice to this particular experience, writing and talking about it and what our lives are like, both the good and the bad. It's not always easy being a trailblazer, and I know we make a lot of people who aren't in our situation uncomfortable when we speak our truth. (Too bad! lol)”

12   Accept
“Acceptance is a powerful concept. My younger self really appreciates your examples of what acceptance does NOT mean.”
“I accept the ups and downs that I feel as I live my life after infertility without children.”
“… how you've defined acceptance. It does NOT mean that we like what's happened... only that we're shifting focus.”

13   Connect
“…The shame of suffering alone and the balm of finding a tribe who understands. And online interactions do give you space and time to process complex emotions.

Connection is a huge factor in healing. In living, really, as we are getting super creative in finding new ways to connect even amid the quarantine.”
“. I often felt "seen" most by you guys, most of whom have never seen me in the flesh! This connection is such an important part of healing. It's such an isolating experience. The connections of this community help break those walls down.”
“don't know how I would have survived the past 22 years without my online friends -- first through an pregnancy loss email list, then infertility & then childless/free message boards and blogs. I've only met a handful of them but I've felt more "seen" & supported by people like you, Mali, than many of my friends & relatives. I too expect to be in touch with many of my online friends for years to come. :)”

14   Enquire
“You've really touched on something important here, that we can't always believe what we think, and a closer look can often help identify faulty assumptions and ultimately help us find contentment.

This is one of those posts that I want to carry with me throughout my day, my week. I want to be more Inquiring with my negative thoughts about myself and others.”
“it helps break down the nasty little voice that tells hurtful lies. And that question, "what makes them behave like that?" is such a great one for empathy. I use it a lot in special education, for parents as equally as for the kids. There's a quote that says "kids (people) most in need of love and understanding ask for it in the most unlovable ways."”

 15   Admit
“t was so hard to admit that feeling of relief to be done with the process of trying to add to our family, and to admit that I love our family of two because sometimes it feels like a betrayal to how much I wanted children, in those emotional ouch days. Admitting I'd hit my enough was the doorway I had to blow through the get to a life that is better than I'd expected it could be without the dream we fought for. That contradictory feeling things is the hardest for me.”

 16   Experience
“I finally realized that I am responsible for my own happiness, with or without the one big thing that I wanted to achieve! It was quite an epiphany. I now try to live my daily life in a way that I don't have to wait for something to change in the future. That meant adding small elements that would contribute to my wellbeing …”
“I remember when I "just began to experience my life as it was," which ended up being a big life event for me.”

17   Speak
“Your point about degree of openness is important. Similar with the filters people have who are listening of our stories. It's something I've really struggled with as they often blindly apply their truths. My hope is that this recent pandemic will make people more open when listening, but the filter is always there, meaning that impact has to come through understanding that filter. That said, I think speaking is important as normalizing the conversation is long overdue.”
“It's more than not being afraid about talking about my own experiences and my own reality (which is all very much shaped by living life without children after infertility). My voice has grown from that topic to a stronger, more generalized groundedness... If that even makes sense.”
“Everyone needs an outlet of some kind, for sure!”

18   Remember
“the recognition of how the story we tell ourselves changes over time, as emotions settle.”
“There's power with triggering this memory of pain and grief, but what people fail to see it that in the process of doing so, they don't allow themselves to grow from it, creating something beautiful and wonderful from the ashes. Remember is so important. It sets the foundation for so much good that can come. But part of that means allowing for healing and growth out of the pain and tragic, harnessing that memory to do so.”
“I'm a firm believer in the importance of remembering & memory-keeping, for all the reasons you've given here and more. People marvel at my memory, but it's not infallible (especially as I get older!), and so I'm grateful for the writing I've done & the photos I've taken that help me remember both the good & the not-so-good in my life.”

19   Liberate
“Too many are stuck in conforming as there is a feeling of safety with being part of the crowd, and yet it also can be limiting. Breaking free is scary, but I have found so much benefit from doing so, which started with infertility and continues in all other aspects of my life.”
“And as for updating our definition of success? I find I have had to do this in an ongoing way in terms of what it means to be successful …”
“ … I'm at the point where I can be grateful for the things childlessness brings to my life. And feel free!”

20   Celebrate
“I find myself applying it to all sorts of other things I'm seeking healing for.”
“Liberate, then Celebrate!
I particularly love your idea of celebrating the following things: the tiny and often painful steps that I took toward healing, my survival and resilience, my relationship with myself, and the other women who write and share their experiences so that we all feel more understood and less alone.”
“I agree, celebrating is so important. Resilience, hope, new life, milestones, joys, and the wonderful network of women.”
“it is important to celebrate and give ourselves credit for what we survived and how we make progress”
“We absolutely have reasons to celebrate!”

 

Note: I’ve referenced the comments to each of the Healing Project topics, and provided links. You can read the posts again, and check out who made the wise comments!