There must be something wrong with me.

Am I dead inside?

Is there something wrong with me?

These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I sat on one of the chairs facing the pool, drying off after a swim. I’d recently started swimming again as a way to get a little more exercise after becoming inactive due to several chronic health conditions.

I’d procrastinated about going swimming for months. And I’d put together a long list of perfectly reasonable excuses not to — including but not limited to the fact that I’m not a very good swimmer, and my best time to go to the pool is the same as kids’ swimming classes. Groan.

After doing a few laps (when I say laps, I mean I can get from one end of the pool to the other without drowning; but they’re not quite the languid, rhythmic strokes of a proper swimmer), I usually go to the warm hydrotherapy pool to float around. This is always comforting and relaxing.

On this particular day as I sat drying my feet, I realized I’d been the only other person in the pool, along with three mums — each with a young child in tow.

I didn’t feel anything. Not a flicker of gut-wrenching sadness or regret. No fiery jealousy. No pulsing anger or resentment. No deep heartache. I didn’t feel sorry for myself or find myself clenching my jaw and gritting my teeth.

In fact, I’d smiled at one of the ladies as she glided past me piggybacking her long-haired son. I remember thinking “How lovely to spend some time with your son at the pool, what nice memories they’re creating together”.

And later as I was getting out of the water, one of the other mums was sitting near the shallow end with her son. He was seeing how far he could keep walking down the ramp before the water came up to his mouth. He was skinny and slight like her, and had a sweet, determined look on his face. I smiled at her and said, “He’s very cute”, possibly a little too softly, in the manner that you either speak too softly or too loudly when you’re wearing earplugs. Because he really was.

But then I couldn’t help thinking there must be something wrong with me for not being triggered by this. For not even realizing the situation until I got out of the pool. Had I really mastered the art of blocking all my painful feelings?

I went home and told my husband about it. I asked if he thought there was something wrong with me. He said, “No, you’ve probably just moved on from all that stuff now”. Pragmatic and direct as always.

“Hm, maybe”, I replied, got in the shower and forgot about it.

A few days later as I was getting ready to go to the pool again, I recalled the moment. It dawned on me (yes, a little late), that I’d actually made a significant breakthrough in my recovery from involuntary childlessness. And I hadn’t acknowledged it.

If I’d been triggered by the pool moment, as I’d had by many, many similar events in the past, I would have harrumphed my way out of the pool, cried on the way home, bawled in the shower where no-one could hear me, been grumpy at my husband, and comfort-eaten my way through a bag of crisps or a block of chocolate, whichever was nearest to hand. I would have ruminated and fumed over it and felt terrible for days.

Yet, here I’d had a major realisation which almost went by unacknowledged. It made me wonder why, as women, we minimise our achievements and magnify our vulnerabilities?

Hadn’t I already cried enough over my childlessness and empty, aching arms? Hadn’t I wailed enough, and howled enough over the injustice of it? Hadn’t my heart broken enough, my rage burned enough?

Yes damnit, it had been enough. I was going to chalk this up as a win.

If grief is a form of love, then healing from grief is like healing from heartbreak. Sometimes it’s a slow simmer, sometimes it hits you on the head and you don’t even realise it, or a combination of both. It can come when you least expect it, when you’re not really looking for it.

I share this experience with you, not to boast or gloat, but to give hope to those riding the waves of grief. It’s taken seven years to get to this point, and I’m the first to admit I’ve still got a way to go. It’s not a race or a competition though. It takes as long (or as short) as it takes. It takes real work. But if we don’t acknowledge the breakthroughs we make along the way, no matter how big or small, we’ll never see how far we’ve come.

There was definitely a time when I thought I’d never get over the grief of childlessness. It seemed impossible to me. Now I know that’s not true.

There’s no longer a constant pain in my heart. It’s more like the dull ache of an arthritic hip in the winter, with occasional flare-ups, sometimes with good reason, sometimes for no reason at all. And the cracks where my heart split open, from the times my heart fell through my body and hit the floor, are slowly being mended, visibly, in the Japanese style of kintsugi. This is the process whereby broken ceramics are repaired using gold, silver or platinum, by highlighting the cracks, and explicitly not hiding them. The cracks aren’t seen as imperfections or flaws, as something to hide and make invisible. Just as evidence of coming in contact with the knocks and rough edges of life.

Simoni Pilavakis