Is grief forever?

Is grief the last act of love? This was the subject of an interview, quoted by Mel in her post here.

Whilst I don’t think that grief IS love, I definitely agree that grief is a result of love, and an expression of the love we felt and the loss of that love. In the context of our No Kidding situations, we have loved either the babies we wanted (conceived, birthed, or not) or the role of mother (for me it was definitely the babies I had loved, I was still coming to terms with the idea of being a mother), or the future we had planned. We had already invested love into this. And when we didn’t have it, we grieved.

It was described in the article as the last act of loving someone. “You get to … translate this last act of love for the rest of your life,” said Ocean Vuong, the interview subject. Whilst it is beautifully expressed (click over to see it), I don’t fully agree with it. Because if it is the last act of loving someone, then in means that grief is eternal. And it does not have to be endless. (To be fair, the person is three years into grieving, and so maybe cannot see this yet.) The loss doesn’t have to be felt forever.

More importantly, we can continue to love someone without actively grieving them. I don’t think I grieve for my parents anymore. I mourned them, and I am sad for different aspects of their deaths. But I no longer actively grieve. Instead, I remember with love. Sure, I may feel sadness occasionally thinking about them or wishing I could tell them something. But it doesn’t feel like grief anymore. Continued grief would be pointless - I can’t change anything, I can’t continue to pine. So the best thing I can do is remember the good times, remember what they taught me, and remember the love.

We can love someone, and show that love by honouring them in our actions, when we have already moved through grief. It’s how I feel about my lost babies, my lost motherhood, and my lost future too. I remember them with love. I remember the love I felt towards those tiny flickers of life, the love I felt towards their and our future. I was filled with love for them, and although that led to grief at their loss, now I remember and focus on the love. It sustains and nurtures me. 

I remember and honour the loss of my babies by living well. I honour them by appreciating what I have, rather than focusing on what I have lost. I honour them by becoming a better person, and by giving my love to others. I honour them by writing this blog, and through it their loss means something. I honour them by (I hope) helping others who come after me. I honour them far better this way than by continuing to grieve, or to focus on the grief. Honouring them is a better way of loving them.

I honour my losses, and my pain, the grief I once felt. I do that because of love. Love outlasts grief.

 

Grief, attitude, and hope

Today I noticed a headline on a national news website, even though it was listed under Parenting and then – warning -  featured lots of happy photos of the author with her family. The article is called “Rediscovering joy after baby loss” and was published in recognition of Baby Loss Awareness Week this week. It comprised an excerpt from a new book, “Your Soul is Wintering” by Annie Anderson, telling her own story after losing babies in utero.

The excerpt itself doesn’t go into any details of her losses, though maybe her book does, or her other children (two of whom look young enough to have been born afterwards). Instead, it talks about her grief afterwards, turning to others who had experienced similar losses (as we have all done here), and observing that whilst some people had recovered and were full of joy and gave her hope, others gave the appearance that they would never recover, and implied that there was nothing they could do about it. The excerpt notes the debilitating experience of being told that life being “bearable” was the best she could hope for after such a loss, and when she realised that she wanted to be happy, and her fear that she never would be.

Grief, as we know, can be different for everyone, but I also see so many similarities too, regardless of the type of loss. The author gained great hope from this quote:

‘I am convinced that life is 10 per cent what happens to me and 90 per cent how I react to it. The same is true for you.’ Charles R. Swindoll

Although I might quibble with the exact numbers, I like the idea of the overall quote. Ultimately, how we react influences our future happiness. I touched on this last week here. Attitude, perspective, acceptance, and approach can also influence how we can recover, and long-term, how we might bounce back from setbacks, the occasional ouch moments, or hurtful comments. For me, as I often say, learning to deny those negative questions, learning to show self-compassion, knowing that I am more than my loss or childlessness/No Kidding status allowed me to feel free to embrace my new future, and allows me to continue to do that every day.

Anderson also talks about another key feeling that motivates me too. She wrote,

“I was deeply moved by a strong urge to live a life that honoured our babies, not defined by our suffering but by our love.”

I’ve used very similar words. We can, I think, all relate to this sentiment. Because whether or not we suffered a pregnancy loss, we all suffered the loss of the children we had wanted, the children we already loved so much. Honouring our love for them by living a good life can give us meaning. It honours the difficulty of what we might have been through. It makes us think of love. And it allows us to hope again, and feel true joy. I, and so many others, can attest that it is worth it.

 

 

 

No Kidding 2020 Project: Day 20 - Celebrate

When you think about living a life that was not your first choice, you might find it odd that I encourage you to Celebrate. But synonyms of celebrate include mark, commemorate and honour. I know many of my fellow No Kidding bloggers have reached this stage in their lives too.

But many of you who might be just saying good-bye to your hopes of building a family will be aghast at the idea of celebrating the end of their dream. I am not suggesting that’s what you should celebrate at all. We need to remember to be kind to ourselves when we fail. But we should also praise our achievements, and congratulate ourselves, not just for the big things, but for getting through life – for each time we recognise progress, or realise we did something hard, or wince and move on when something hurts or someone said something hurtful, or speak up against stereotypes, or remind people of our situation, etc. And as time passes, I think we all realise that there is, in fact, much to celebrate.

• Celebrate surviving a long, hard, and disappointing quest that did not deliver what we wanted.
• Celebrate our resilience, and our ability to adapt to new situations and make the best of them.
• Celebrate our hope for something new.
• Celebrate the progress we have made since the time we first knew that we would be living a No Kidding life.
• Celebrate that we kept taking all those tiny, small and often painful steps towards healing.
• Celebrate the relationships we have that have come through this.
• Celebrate the relationship we have with ourselves!
• Celebrate the wisdom we have developed, and the people we have become.
• Celebrate your new life.
• Celebrate the unexpected joys.
• Celebrate the networks you have built or are building amongst women who are not mothers.
• Celebrate all those other women who are blogging and writing and working to help us all know we are not alone, and to try to change the world to make it easier to navigate.
• Celebrate!

I also celebrate all my much-loved readers who motivate, encourage and support me here on No Kidding in NZ, who write me little notes, who challenge me to think about other perspectives, and keep me going.

And today, I’m also celebrating the 20th post and end of my 2020 Blogging Project, where I’ve laid out a path to healing, looking at the key areas that helped me move from that day when I first knew, definitively, that I would never have children, never be a mother, never make my husband a father. It has made me think about the process, about what helped, about what was hard. Thanks for reading along with me!

And next week, No Kidding in NZ will resume normal transmission. See you back here. I hope that's cause to celebrate too.