The Same Pain

I went to my very first support group meeting this week. I was really uncertain about going to one. I wasn’t sure how it would make me feel or if it would be any more helpful than a glass of wine and a good book, (or Christmas movie as has been the case this month). Never the less I attended Common Threads, (a group sponsored by the agency we’re adopting through, Bethany Christian Services), and I was very pleasantly surprised at what I found there. It was the same pain. It sounds dramatic for what it really is but it’s the best way I can think of to describe it. Here we were a group of people all experiencing different journeys of grief and disappointment, but arriving at the same place, the same point of pain.
It was like being instantly understood and accepted because each of us in one way or another had a common denominator, we all wanted and didn’t have children. Most were there due to fertility issues, none had buried a child like we had, and certainly not 3, but in all honesty who has? I thought I would feel like a freak, or that I wouldn’t (or they wouldn’t) be able to relate. But that wasn’t the case at all. It was quite the contrary actually. Here were couples, who were waiting, just like us; who were experiencing feels of loss, disappointment, fear, and isolation. For the first time I was in a whole room of people struggling with the same emotions, wrestling with the same frustration, and sharing with the same raw honesty I have found so beneficial. I felt so comforted, so safe…so understood. It didn’t matter that I joined this group under far different circumstances than most of them, because the reason we were there was the same one. We needed people in our lives that knew what “this life” felt like.
I have found you can have all the most wonderful friends and family, and plenty of encouragement around, and still feel so lonely. Like everyone else got an invitation to the party, and yours got lost in the mail. I am finding that as much as I love and appreciate everyone who has been so wonderful and encouraging to us, I needed to know at the end of the day I wasn’t the only who felt this way.
There’s something so healing and encouraging in finding common ground, in discovering companionship with others who know, the same pain.

Wait, wait, wait

All I have to say is Good Grief! I just can’t get away from it. It seems like pretty much everyone I know (and don’t know) just welcomed a baby or is pregnant with one. It’s in my face everywhere I go, I can’t seem to get away from it. I try to grin and bear it, I try to mange my emotions, but it’s so incredibly frustrating to see people all around me get what just doesn’t seem to come to fruition for me…a baby. Why I ask, what am I missing, what is wrong with me that can’t seem to become a parent. Why all this grief, why all this pain, this hurt, this waiting. When will it be my turn to be the mom, or am I forever to be Aunt Andrea, 2nd mommy to everyone else’s children? I ask God all the time, when will my baby get here? I pray constantly that He’ll end my torment and give me a child, that a birthparent will pick me, or miraculously make me pregnant and heal me so I can carry a child to term. Sometimes I’m emboldened and I pray for both.
And yet still here I am…facing the holidays with an empty nursery, as the baby shower invites keeping rolling in, and the blasted Take-Them a Meal notifications keep coming for yet another new mom, and/or growing family. I don’t want to be mean, I don’t want to say no; I still want to engage with my friends and community around me, but really, what’s a girl to do? Trying to be positive and keeping up hope is incredibly draining when the life you wish you had swirls around you constantly in the happy faces of family in friends, but it’s perpetually just out of your reach.
I keep thinking God will soon bring me out of this, but the fear sets in that this will somehow always be the way it is…that somehow I’m supposed to just be grateful for what I do have and stop focusing on what I want and don’t have. But I don’t think that’s what He’s asking of me. Truthfully I’m getting the feeling He’s just asking me to wait. My time will come and our parental hopes and dreams will be fulfilled, but I’ve just got to hang on till then. Easier said than done of course, and all the “new baby merriment” certainly isn’t helping matters. Never the less I persevere, because after all what’s the alternative? Being bitter, grumpy and mentally throttling all the happy new and/or expanding families? That’s not really my style. Nope, instead I guess for now I’m just going to have to suck it up…and wait. That, and maybe indulge in a little extra wine and chocolate. :)