Celebrations vs Grief - a place for both

I've been thinking a lot about celebrations recently. It's part of the New Zealand culture that celebrations shouldn't be (too) over the top, and that we should pay tribute to, or at least be thoughtful of, the unlucky amongst us, whether it is a sporting event, career achievement, or anything else we might be celebrating. Fair play and humility are important to us.

Perhaps that's why I feel I am less willing to keep silent when it is perfectly legitimate to talk about my losses, or my situation. I've written about this before, four years ago, in Practising Self-Compassion. I don't think that we need to keep silent, for fear of upsetting other people or diminishing their happiness. Because our feelings are just as important as those of other people.

I'm writing this after reading Loribeth's post about wondering how to acknowledge the anniversary of losing Katie this year, because on the exact same date her nephew and wife are having an OB-GYN appointment for their pregnancy. She's a nice person - she doesn't want to upset them. Society tells us that we are supposed to put other people's happiness before our own grief. We feel it is unfair to ask others to ever-so-slightly subdue their own feelings about their good news, when their celebrations - sometimes gloating - can cut us to the core, or kick us when we are down. When actually, the fact that someone might think twice about celebrating, or how they celebrate, in front of us is not a bad thing. They can whoop and cheer behind closed doors, with other family and friends. They will have plenty of people celebrating with them. Their joy will not be diminished. But if it is, with an awareness of how bad it might make others feel, is that a bad thing? I personally don't think so. I think it can be a teaching moment, and contributes to a better, more thoughtful, world.

I think - as I said in the comments to Loribeth's post, and as I've said here before too - that this is one of the reasons why pregnancy loss and infertility are so misunderstood. We don't talk about it because we put other people's feelings before our own. That's what Loribeth is doing, because she is a lovely, thoughtful person, and because she adores her nephew. But her loss was huge, and deserves recognition. At the very least, she deserves to show herself self-compassion, and allow herself and her husband to honour Katie and their loss in the way that feels right for them.

The thing is, I often think that we worry that our news or situations or sometimes our very presence will bring people down. Whereas I think the reality is that, unless someone has been through what we have been through, they don't recognise the pain of individual days, or events, and they are easily able to dismiss our situations because "it won't happen to them."

The reality, I believe, is that if she posts about Katie, and her nephew and their wife see it, two things may happen:
a) they will feel compassion for Loribeth and her DH, I'm sure, and
b) they may feel increased anxiety about their pregnancy, for an hour or two.

If they get good news, as we all hope they will, they'll either
a) forget any small sliver of anxiety, and/or
b) feel even more grateful that they have a healthy pregnancy.

The one thing I'm confident of is that they will be surrounded by the good wishes and shared joy of family and friends, including Loribeth and her husband.

If the couple get bad news at their appointment:

a) they will worry, feel anxious or grieve regardless of what was said or not said earlier, and
b) they will have been reminded that they have an uncle and aunt who understand, and who will be there to support them.

Victory and defeat, joy and grief, celebration and commiseration don't have to be mutually exclusive. The bad things don't need to be hidden. The good things in life can be even more precious when the bad things are openly known, are talked about, and are mourned.

Of course, it's easy for me to say. I don't have this particular dilemma. But I'll admit that I'm tired of us always being the ones who have to tiptoe around others, who have to swallow the slights, the casual thoughtless remarks, who have to make allowances when we are hurt. I'm tired of squashing my feelings in the interests of "being polite," when it is not reciprocated.  I don't think an occasional, polite, diplomatic mention of my own circumstances is inappropriate. In fact, I will defend it strongly.

I hope that whatever any of us would decide to do in similar circumstances, we are reassured by the knowledge that this loving No Kidding community of women and men will give support and understanding, and that we will our needs - the needs of the minority - will always, in this space, come first. As I said above, there are plenty ready to be cheerleaders for the majority, and to celebrate the unbridled joy (we sincerely hope) of those lucky enough never to feel this particular loss.

Those questions again

A No Kidding friend recently was telling me about her weekend away at an elderly friend’s 80^th birthday party, when she was frequently asked (by many of those attending, who no doubt were also older), “do you have a family?”

Whilst I had a mother who would always use this phrase to ask whether someone had children, she said she’d never heard that before, but she still managed to give the perfect response, responding, “Yes, I have a family, a very close family, but if you mean, ‘do I have children,’ then the answer is no.”

This made me think about Mel’s recent post about asking questions, when she thought immediately about our No Kidding community’s reaction* to being asked if we have children. In writing a response to her, I realised I had a lot to say on this topic!

I'll start by saying that asking questions is important. For a start, it shows that we're not selfishly focused on ourselves, and it shows respect to the other people we are with. It's how we build relationships, and how we got to know our significant others and our best friends, after all. Isn't it?

It’s also a really useful tool for those of us who might be a little shy when meeting new people. I learned the value of asking questions when I was a diplomat attending a lot of business social functions, and found that asking questions ensured that conversation flowed when I was meeting complete strangers. It’s easy to slip out of the habit though, so a reminder to ask questions is always useful.

However, I think the questions we ask tell people a lot about us too. In fact, I think there are essentially two types of questions, split between selfish and unselfish motives:

• The question focused on what we want to talk about.
• The question that is genuinely intended to learn more about the person we are talking to.

The first, more selfish question is about things we are interested in, things we like talking about. For example, do you have kids? Do you travel?  What do you do for work? One of the commenters on Mel’s post noted that now she has children she understands that people like to talk about their children, and she forgives that question. Yet she doesn’t like being asked what she does for a living. To me, that’s a bit hypocritical. If you forgive the one question, just because it now suits your circumstances, you have to accept the second.

The purpose of this question is to find things we share with the other person. Yes, that is completely understandable. Finding commonalities is a way to feel comfortable, and focusing on them can build connections. But asking questions only to find commonalities is perhaps short-sighted, restricting ourselves to what we know, and what we are comfortable with. It is lazy. It is looking for one answer, the one that you can relate to. And so it can also be isolating to the person on the other end of the question.

That’s the issue that people going through infertility have, and even more, those of us who have no children. When you get the same question over and over and over again, it is understandable that we feel annoyed at being asked this question. The person asking it is almost invariably hoping for one response. (Though Infertile Phoenix recently noted the exception that proves the rule here.) So we know that our response is never going to get approval. We are continually asked the same question by people who we know will be disappointed by our answer.

The second question is much more generous, and can take us places we never expected to go. We don’t need to find things that we have in common with someone to have an interesting conversation. Finding that they have different interests or backgrounds or do something completely outside our own experience can open new worlds to us, teach us new things, encourage us to think about life in a different way, and learn to be more open and understanding of people who are different from us. We don’t have to be the same to share a wonder of the world, to enjoy others’ company, or to respect others’ differences.

Finally, I think that how people respond to the answer to our answers to their questions is just as important too. Do they or we respond openly, with interest or kindness, when the answer isn’t as expected? Do we read the body language and accept that this is not something the person might want to talk about, or do we probe on regardless, offering uninvited advice and suggestions, or further even more invasive questions? If someone reacts to me with an open mind and genuine wish to engage me in a dialogue as equals, then personally I have found any inadvertently probing questions are much more easily tolerated.

That is another reason that the No Kidding amongst us resent the “do you have children?” question. As I mentioned above, we know that our answer will disappoint most people who ask it, as they clearly want to be able to talk about having children. Worse than that though, we often find ourselves being judged when we respond “no.” Sometimes there can be a hostile reaction. Sometimes we are ignored, dismissed as not worthy of further conversation. This has certainly happened to me more than once, and I imagine to all my No Kidding readers.

So I think that anyone asking questions needs to think before they ask, whatever they ask, and temper the questions by tone of voice and language used. I ask people now "what keeps you busy?" rather than the assumptions, "what do you do for a living?" or "do you have children?" In their response, people who have children will pretty soon tell you, and those who are working and very busy will tell you that too, but those who are travelling or volunteering or writing or making art or caring for elderly relatives or working with Jane Goodall in Africa or  also get a chance to respond without having to challenge stereotypes or feel that they're being judged.  In return, I get the gift of new insight into worlds I could never enter.

* See comments below. I've misrepresented Mel's post, as she didn't single out our group. I did!

Some of "those" comments reinterpreted

Infertile Phoenix inspired this post by noting all the incidents and comments she heard mothers and pregnant women say this week, making me recognise how much they would have hurt me in my first years of recovery and healing, and how now I am able to look at them more objectively, thanks to the passing of time, and the ability not to feel them so personally.

When women talk about putting others lives before their own when they have children, I think of their lives, and know that they don't just mean that their children go first, but also that they put work before their own needs, and perhaps their parents or other relatives, or neighbours, and probably their husband's/partner's needs before their own too. This makes me incredibly sad for them, and I wonder if they feel anger or have regrets about what they are missing, or how their lives turned out, and this is the reason they turn to the stereotypes* of selflessness and sacrifice of motherhood to make themselves feel better.

The women who joke that if we had to look after their children or other people's children it would put us off having children, or make us feel better about not being able to have our own as make me wonder if that's a cry for understanding. Do they say that because they (understandably) want and need some acknowledgement that children aren't always little angels, or (like my mother) that they like their own children but don't want to look after anyone else's, or that maybe they don't always (or at all) enjoy being a mother?

And of course, we've talked many times here and on other No Kidding blogs about the parents who can only talk about their children, and again, these days I am more likely to feel sorry for them that they don't have wider interests and intellectual activities, and that they don't have the social abilities to pick up on that, and I am always so thankful for my friends who are parents but talk about books and politics and travel and society and the weather and plays and music and films, etc etc.


The women commiserating about their kids growing up make me roll my eyes a little, because I know people like this, people who have based their lives around their children and who get their sense of identity from their children, rather than being individuals themselves, and so look to the empty nest future with a feeling of "what now?" I can relate to this, as I think can many of us when we are faced with the finality of a future without children, and I hope that they too will learn that there's a whole world out there to discover and create (though I know many struggle to make that adjustment), in the way that my fellow No Kidding men and women have done with such courage, hope, and full hearts.


* yes, I know there is a reason for these, I'm not blind.