On being brave

I am not a fearful person in the traditional sense. I don't freak out over bugs and spiders. I will gladly go on a roller coaster or would happily skydive (if only I felt strongly enough about it to part with the money). And I don't get anxiety over traveling by myself, even in a foreign country. 

I am by no means a reckless person, but neither am I skittish one.

Research is king. And Brene is a boss.

I can be, however, an emotionally fearful person. I have a hefty fear of being vulnerable and I will work hard to try to avoid it. And when I can't avoid it, I struggle with a deep sense of shame.

But Life, she is clever, and she has a way of forcing you into vulnerable situations. While infertility has not been the Only Thing that has forced me into vulnerability (relationships do this to me all the time), it has certainly been The Biggest Thing and The Hardest Thing and The Longest Thing.

[that's what she said]

To be clear, no one has "shamed" me for not being able to get and stay pregnant. Not my husband, not my family, not my friends. The shame I feel is entirely self-inflicted.

I grew up with a mother who loved nothing more than being a mother. It was and is her most important role in life (though it could be argued that it has now been replaced, as it tends to happen, by being a grandmother). My mother verbalized her pride and gratitude around motherhood often. She was and is the Mother of All Mothers and I could not be more thankful for that and for her. But my weird little brain turned her pride and gratitude into self-judgement. If being a mother is the most important role in the world and I am unable to become a mother, then I have failed. My other accomplishments in life are empty and meaningless unless I am carrying, birthing, and raising a child. My mom would never have said such a thing or believed any of what I just wrote to be true. But deep in my brain, buried under rational thought, this is what I believe.

And then there is the shame of being self-involved. By its very nature, infertility throws you into a very self-absorbed place. Your attention goes inward to every sign and signal your body is or isn't giving you. And when your infertility includes endometriosis and a march towards premature ovarian failure, those signs and signals can be both physically uncomfortable and a total mind fuck. Near constant aching ovaries? Physically uncomfortable. Waking up multiple times a night drenched in sweat at the same time you are trying to "think positively" about your next IVF cycle?  Mind fuck.

And in addition to obsessing over signs and signals, there is the constant juggling of doctors appointments, the guilt of spending so much money on something you can't be sure will ever work, navigating questions about when you will start a family from well-meaning but clueless bosses, the list goes on and on.

For nearly five years I have been intensely self-absorbed. Logically, I know that I have done my best and that so much of the self-absorption is simply the nature of the cards I've been dealt. But that doesn't stop me from going into a full-on shame spiral whenever I am reminded how my body's inability to work as it should has dominated the first few years of my marriage. Or how it has, on many occasions, stolen my ability to be light-hearted and playful and instead left me a bit dark and disconnected. Even when I have purposefully set aside all family building conversations and endeavors for months at a time, in an effort to give my husband a much needed break from the ever-present weight of infertility, I have never been able to completely unhook from it. I drag it around with me wherever I go. There is no taking a vacation from your body.

I want to be a good mom. And a big part of being a good mom, I think, is working through this shame I have around my inability to produce a genetic offspring. I owe this to my future children. They deserve to come into this world unhindered by my emotional baggage. They need to be mothered by someone who is both brave enough to take them on roller coasters and brave enough to face her own vulnerability and emotional discomfort. And they certainly need to be raised by a mother who can handle the hard conversations about his/her/their existence without unwittingly passing on shame.

Dear children of my heart,
I cannot promise I will be perfect or have it all together, but I can and will promise that I will do everything in my power to keep you from unfairly inheriting my shame.