I like everything fitting very nicely into perfect little boxes. Everything has a place, and belongs in its place.
This is both a literal and figurative analogy in my life, which I first discussed in a post last week – Accepting a Messy Life. Literally, every physical item has a place in my house. Figuratively, everything has a place in my brain and logic always dictates my decisions.
From a physical perspective, I am not saying my house is perfectly clean and organized, but I would venture the guess, that my house is more organized then 90% of other homes with the exception of 2 spaces – my husband’s home office and the garage. I am not responsible for either of these spaces, and for the most part I accept that it is not my place to clean and organize his office (although, when he asks for help, I’m right in there with my label maker and a smile, kind of like a giddy kid in a candy store). However, the spaces I am responsible for are incredibly organized. You can even walk into my basement and see an extremely organized storage room and my bookshelf (oh, how I love my books and bookshelf), it may appear unorganized at first glance. But that is intentional, and if you look closely, you will realize that each little cubby, contains like genres stacked behind the first row, sometimes 3 rows deep. The leaning books, have been arranged to lean to add variation to an otherwise overwhelming shelf. The few non-book cubbies have been arranged to appear chaotic, but rather each one has been strategically placed to reduce the overwhelming repetition of books. My bookshelf is controlled chaos.
I love to create order out of chaos.
I completely acknowledge that I’m neurotic when it comes to organization. And I share how organized my house is, because it’s the best analogy I can think of to share how organized my mind is. Things and thoughts often twirl around up there in my brain, but, at the end of the day my thought processes and decisions are governed by the logic I assign to each unique situation. Rarely, if ever, do I make a decision based on anything other than fact and logic, which of course means I greatly struggle in highly emotional situations because in these circumstances I cannot assign logic in a typical way. Decisions become much harder for me.
So, when I was challenged to accept a messy life due to our failed pregnancies, I realized that for me, this is probably more about accepting a messy mental life beyond just accepting our babies and our miscarriages as creating messiness in our lives. This is bigger. This is about my entire outlook on life and my attempts to live a perfect life. (Maybe, just maybe, this whole RPL experience will force me to learn a bit more about myself and grow in ways I never anticipated or expected).
Part of living messy means that I need to:
Accept that I cannot control everything.
Accept that not everything can fit nicely into one of my little boxes and/or categories.
Accept that things will not always go to plan, no matter how much I try to force the execution of said plan.
Accept that not every single day will be perfect.
Accept that there will be bumps in the road and I don’t always have to smile through them, I just have to get through them.
Again, acceptance is not always easy. But, part of living messy is accepting just that. Knowing that I may feel at peace with everything one day, but I may not the next. And understanding that this uncertainty is okay, and may even eventually become a blessing if I let it.
Clearly, I don’t want a messy life, in fact I have done everything in my power since the age of 14 to ensure that I am living an organized and logical life – I do things to appear perfect to the outside world, even if I am struggling through it. Heck, I cannot even have a mental breakdown without trying to control it and make it appear perfect to the world. So, why should I accept this messy approach to my life now?
I’m told, I should accept messy because life is messy. Life doesn’t always go to plan, not everything fits into perfect order, not everything has a box, and not every box can slide nicely onto a shelf.
But, I want it to and I have a tendency to make everything fit into nice boxes with pretty little labels (or rather, in my case, I fit everything into Tupperware containers because what if our basement ever floods?)
I of all people should understand that life doesn’t always go as planned – my mom and sister died much too young, we’ve lost 5 babies through miscarriages. But, I know for me, accepting messy is not going to come easily.
So, as I actively work to accept our undefined future, I am also working to accept that I cannot assign logic to the situation.
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This is a follow up post to one that I posted last week. Click here to see the original: Accepting a Messy Life
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I’ve noticed a lot of us seem to be afraid of sharing our miscarriage, recurrent pregnancy loss and/or infertility journey with others. Some of us have told a few people, some have told no-one, some have told the world such as Justine at www.everupward.org.
Since this post is going to focus on my opinions of sharing, I think it’s important to explain where we are in telling people about our recurrent pregnancy loss.
Our journey to sharing was slow. Our first 2 miscarriages were silent, shared only amongst my husband and I. Our decision not to share was not based in shame, but rather based in a desire to surprise our families with happy news about a healthy pregnancy. We knew that statistically 2 consecutive miscarriages are considered normal (although rare), so we didn’t think too much about it. This meant we went through one emergency D&C without any family support. My husband stayed with me at the hospital and balanced no sleep, running home to let the dog out, and a wife who had very low blood pressure and heart rate after the surgery which required a longer than normal stay in the hospital. We did it alone by choice.
That changed for us when we found out our third little baby was going to die. We told a few very select people. We knew based on the statistics that everything about our family future was changing and that our chances of having children were drastically reduced with a third miscarriage. We determined who we told based on who we felt would be supportive and also who wasn’t pregnant as we didn’t want to scare them with more fears. We needed support and love so we opened the door to some people although we asked them to keep this news to themselves. We still were not ready to share with the world. We were afraid of being overrun by people’s version of supportive comments (see a post on that here and here), which we knew would hurt and upset us. We feared a bunch of sympathy cards that we just didn’t want to read. We feared getting attention for a negative reason, when all we wanted was attention for a celebration of our first baby’s birth.
We still went through the miscarriage on our own, my husband and I were the only ones a sitting in the emergency room, and going to the surgery, but it was nice to know people cared. We still sucked at asking for help when we really needed it – for example, we really needed someone to go get us groceries, but just didn’t know how to ask for help. We are two fiercely independent people and asking for help was just too much for us.
Both our companies knew about the 3rd pregnancy, and therefore knew about the miscarriage. They also know about the 4th pregnancy and loss as well. And since I’ve left work, everyone in my profession knows about our recurrent pregnancy loss, as I’ve been very honest about why I’m taking time away from working. (I felt it was better to share this part of my life then to have people think I was having some sort of mental health breakdown for no reason).
So, today, after 5 miscarriages, we still have people who do not know. We have very important people who do not know because we believe they won’t provide the support we need and/or they live far away and we’ve decided they just don’t need to know. But, we are starting to tell more people and we know we will end up telling the remaining people sooner rather than later. The news is starting to spread and even though we still don’t want attention for a negative reason, I have no doubt that it will happen.
So, while I’ve noticed the fear in the community about sharing our stories with our friends and family, I want to say that we too live with this fear. I too have an anonymous blog which allows me to share my feelings with the world, but not with those we love the most. And, even though, I am still doing it to an extent, I think it’s an absolute travesty that we, as in the infertility community, feel the need to keep this hidden.
There is a social stigma attached to miscarriage and infertility largely based in a complete lack of understanding. And it makes no sense, that we as a community allow this and forces ourselves to live a double life – the public vs. the private. It forces us to constantly walk a balance beam, trying to deal with social acceptance on one side and our own deep emotions and feelings on the other. I’m starting to liken it to those in the gay and lesbian community who have not come out. Given that I do not know that experience, I am not sure that its’ the best analogy, but it seems to make sense in my mind.
I for one, feel that by voicing our story, we can start to educate and remove that stigma. And, we can also help others going through their own infertility.
So, I am doing this. I am sharing. My husband and I started taking baby steps by telling a few people after our third miscarriage. And now we are telling more and more people about our story. Our steps are getting bigger as we are getting the courage to share, to enlighten and to educate.
We are no-longer hiding our truth. We are no longer keeping everything quite.
In fact, I’ve take a very big step this week. I told 2 people who are very important to me about this blog – my Aunt and Uncle. I took a big risk by giving them the website address and therefore the ability to read my inner most thoughts. And, I also told them about my goal to publish a memoir or at least start publishing pieces of my work. I’m petrified of failure, so sharing this was a significant step because now if it doesn’t happen, others will know about my failure. And, of course, there are a lot of other fears about sharing my blog with them. What if they hate it? What if they tell my dad (who for the time being I’m not telling about my blog, but expect to eventually when I feel the time is right)? What if they think I’m completely crazy once they read it (and they are certified to make a professional judgement given their educational and professional backgrounds). For me, it is one thing to face criticism from people I don’t know, it’s an entirely different thing to face it from my family and from real life people whose opinions matter deeply to me.
So, after a slight panic attack over my fears, I’m pushing them aside. I cannot think that way, because really, what if they love it? What if they know the right person to help me get into the publishing industry? What if we have two more people in our corner, supporting us in our struggle to grow our family? There are a million and one positive possibilities, and I need to focus on them as I work to share my story and hopefully inspire others enduring recurrent pregnancy loss and miscarriages.
So, in an effort to break the silence and reduce the stigma of miscarriage and infertility, I am going to keep sharing our story. I am going to keep risking my fears and telling people.
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My Perfect Breakdown 