The Good that Came of Mother's Day

Though Mother's Day was a tough, PMS-y day for me, I did want to come back around and mention something quite lovely that happened on Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning feeling completely down in the dumps. I thought I was prepared for Mother's Day and that it wouldn't affect me too much. And honestly, I'm not sure if the Mother's Day thing was really the reason behind my crappy emotions, or if that just became my excuse for them.

I'm not one of those people that wants to completely cut myself off from others when I'm miserable. That might actually be a decent option compared to what my inclinations are. Instead, I want to pull others down with me. I want the world to know that I'm miserable and to feel desperately sorry for me--and guilty about their lack of misery. On a day like Mother's Day, I want to rain a little on the happiness of all the mothers around me.

Isn't that horrible? I know it's natural and human and normal and all, but I still don't think it's right, and so I'm working on channeling that self-pity into better places--like more compassion and sensitivity for others feeling miserable.

But back to Sunday. I woke up feeling awful and wanted the world to know it. But I also really care what others think about me, so I wasn't about to do anything really overtly horrible and mean. Instead, I posted this simple status update to Facebook:

Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Father's Day: Holidays during which those who have unintentionally rub salt in the wounds of those who have not.

I was a little unsure about whether I should post it or not. As much as I wanted to ruin others' happiness, I didn't want them to think I was trying to ruin their happiness. But I thought that update was fairly innocuous, and would perhaps just alert the people who really care about me that I wasn't doing so great.

I got home from church later and saw that I had a Facebook message from my mother-in-law. Actually, it was from my father-in-law's account, which made me really nervous at first because I didn't really want any sappy messages from him. But my MIL likes to write from his account sometimes (I can't figure out why--she has her own), so it was from her. And here is what it said:

You have been on my mind much yesterday and again this morning. Thank you for making my Mother's Day special with the surprise of flowers. They are beautiful. Your way with words is beautiful as well. Your facebook post flows almost poetically while sharing such an ache. Your compassion for and sensitivity to others is a good reminder for us all. May God hold you close to Himself today and give you great blessings.

I started crying as soon as I read it. I found out later that she had been crying as she posted it. Pete told his parents last summer that we were having some issues trying to get pregnant, but we haven't really talked to them about it since. I think, like so many others, they think that we might not want them to bring it up. Or they just feel awkward about it. Their family has never been that great at having conversations about deeper-level issues. (As a side note, why do so many people think we don't want them to ask how we're doing in the infertility department? When I'm feeling down, I desperately want to talk about it, but the last thing I need is the pressure to have to bring it up myself.) So this was the first time my MIL had directly communicated with me about it, and the first time she expressed that she was really hurting for me. 


I can't even explain how much that meant to me. Pete's younger sister got pregnant "accidentally" (of course!) within a year of her wedding, so the in-laws have one granddaughter already. I don't know why, but somehow that fact together with their lack of communication about our infertility had actually left me feeling slightly hurt, though I knew there wasn't any reason to be and completely understood where they were. Pete talked to his mom later that afternoon and just let her know that we do appreciate being asked about how things are going. It's therapeutic to talk about it, and to know people care and are praying for us.


He also encouraged her to call me sometime next week, when he'll be gone (Sunday through Friday). She probably will. And I have to say that I'm actually a little nervous about it. I dislike talking on the phone, and I've never talked to her about issues I'm really, deeply struggling with. So I anticipate some awkwardness, and I hate awkwardness. I also anticipate that I might cry, thus compounding the awkwardness--especially on the phone. But if she does call, I know she'll be stepping out of her way to show love to me, so I suppose I can be a little vulnerable and at least talk back.

The Scaredy-Cat's Meow

What if my biggest infertility fear is not that I will never be a mother but that I will never be seen as a mother? By others?

What if the fears that keep me up at night in this gut-wrenching process are ultimately fears of what others will think in the coming months and years as we still haven't had children? Fears that as all our friends become parents, they will think themselves superior to us? In the same way that those who are...well, less innocent look upon the virgins in the world. As those without the privilege of a certain special knowledge. To be pitied.

I am afraid that I will always be a pregnancy virgin. Unwillingly excluded from that special knowledge.

Ever since I can remember, one of my biggest fears in life has been that I will be excluded. Excluded from the athletes because I am not athletic. Excluded from the popular crowd because I am not outgoing or witty enough. Excluded from the married group because I am still single. And now excluded from parenthood because my eggs don't know how to come out of their follicles in less than a month.

And so I've always been good at fitting in. At observing enough details of the group around me to seem like I belong. I honed my skills at fitting in when I was eleven years old and my family moved from a small town in the Philippines, where I was homeschooled and belonged to a safe, inclusive community of homeschooled expat kids, to a suburb of Philadelphia, where I began attending a large public school. I didn't know how to dress. I hadn't seen any of the movies that my fellow sixth-grade classmates had seen. I had no clue what music and bands were popular. I feared I was the ultimate girl-who-should-be-excluded.

But because I wanted to make friends and fit in so badly, I learned how to pretend. It's a survival skill for kids who live cross-culturally. I would nod my head and say, "Yeah, I've heard of that movie." Laugh along with the jokes that involved quoting a line from last night's episode of Friends. I was always aware, always attuned to the details of conversations around me, always putting puzzle pieces together to try to figure out the culture of American preteens. I learned to pretend I had the insider knowledge. And never, ever, to be the clueless one to whom other kids would pose the incredulous question, "How could you possibly never have seen an episode of ER?"

I nearly had a panic attack in seventh grade when my English teacher asked us to write down our favorite band. Was I supposed to have a favorite band? I wrote down the name of the only band I could think of at the time. Smashing Pumpkins or something like that. I had no clue what songs they sang, but I knew they were on the radio sometimes. And at least semi-cool. And I knew I did not want to be that girl who admitted that really, her favorite musician was Rachmaninoff.

Without realizing it, I had begun to live to be liked and included. I thought everyone lived that way. It was an anxiety-ridden way of living, but really, what else mattered if no one liked you? If the only kids who let you hang out with them were the kids who had been snubbed from every other coterie? If you were always labeled as the cluelessly nerdy, formerly homeschooled missionary kid?

Around my sophomore year of high school, I distinctly remember having a conversation with my mother that left my little fear-based world shaking on its foundations. She told me in no uncertain terms that it actually was not okay to live to please other people. That the approval of others was too small and restrictive of a purpose, and that it would leave me empty, even if I became the most popular person on earth. At some point, I needed to be willing to live the way God wanted me to live without worrying about what others would think, or whether they would include me in their groups. Exclusion--or perceived exclusion--was not the worst tragedy that could befall me.

I cried when she explained all this to me. I couldn't conceive of a world in which acceptance and inclusion weren't the end goal. I couldn't conceive of myself as someone who didn't live for others' approval.

I like to think I have grown since then. I like to think that I am more secure in who God made me to be. That I am better at loving and including people without caring as much if they really love or include me back.

But I find myself here, struggling with one of the biggest IFs of my life. Infertility. Feeling like the twelve-year-old girl who wasn't cool enough to sit in the back of the school bus. Excluded against my will. Clueless about what it would feel like to be pregnant, give birth, be a mother. These are not things I can simply pretend to understand, the way I pretended to know that JTT was Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

I'm unable to turn off the constant question in my head: what if I never get pregnant? The pain of living childlessly sounds unbearable to me right now. I long for a baby, a child, to be a mother. But as I delve more deeply into what I really fear, I realize that beneath the fear of childlessness is a deeper, darker fear that I will be forever excluded from the pregnant club.

And what if that's really my greatest infertility fear? Exclusion? Does that mean I long to belong to the pregnant club more than I long for children? That I long for others to admire and respect me more than I long to be a parent?

I believe that fear is a choice. That even though I can't turn off the scaredy-cat voice in my head, I can choose whether to dwell in the fear or to move forward in courage. I believe this in my head. I really do.

But so far, I have felt powerless to tell that voice to shut up. I vacillate between fear and courage not based on my decisions but based on the latest bloodwork, cycle, news, pregnancy announcement, physical symptom. What if I could believe in my heart that fear is a choice?

And what if I could really live for something greater than my fear of exclusion?

For more information on infertility, please visit Resolve. If you're curious about National Infertility Awareness Week, travel here. And, finally, to learn more about my inspiration for this post, visit Stirrup Queens.