Carol Frye
What does moving forward mean?
For a long time, I was asking myself that and I didn’t know an answer. I was feeling intense grief after a series of losses, but I didn’t know how to process my grief. My immediate family and religious group was also severely ignorant about how to process grief in a healthy way, but they were extremely gifted in the art of stuffing all negative emotions and expressing pat answers. My culture was and still is not adequately equipped to guide anyone through grief.
I remember feeling apprehensive, even scared, about the prospect of processing my grief. I erroneously thought that grief meant forgetting how much I was loved, or how much I loved. I also erroneously thought grief meant forsaking all the good in my past to embrace my future. Mostly, I worried that I wouldn’t like the version of myself that emerged from grief. So, I stuffed my grief deep inside myself, until I couldn’t anymore.
I remember when I knew stuffing my grief was not going to be the correct choice for me. I was having lots of days consumed by the darkness of my sorrow, and I didn’t want that to always be true.
So, six years ago I attended a Grief Share class. By then I had a collection of different sources of grief, different losses. This was the first time anyone taught me the healthy ways to cope with grief. I was surprised to learn so many coping techniques I never implemented before. There were no pat answers here, just an understanding that there is no right or wrong way to process grief, and what works for one may not work for another. If there was a common denominator in the class, we were encouraged to temporarily indulge whatever emotions we were feeling rather than dismissing them. We were taught to search for and implement whatever self-care techniques proved effective for us.
I felt this constant heaviness in my head and chest. That was the unshed tears I needed to release. Dozens of hours of ugly crying stormy tears, full blown grief that left me physically exhausted. Working through my raw emotions was exhausting, but necessary. There was a quiet that followed each of these times, and a reduction in the heaviness in my head and chest.
Culinary experiments became a therapy for me. I discovered that my creativity in a kitchen was delightful, a treat for the eyes and taste buds. Writing out my emotions and the ways grief impacted me was something else that helped me tremendously. Exercise, just being quiet, music, online grief support groups, frequent showers with fragrant soaps, and making decisions authentic to who I am and what I like were also crucial.
Infertility is a grief most people never understand, and prefer not to acknowledge, which is why they prefer to offer unhelpful advice or toxic hope or silence and a subject change. My infertility grief was always valid, and so is yours. We say it is okay not to be okay. We say nothing worthwhile is easy, and healing is a messy process. I could either be defined by my grief, or I could work through it in healthy ways so I could experience more than just sadness on a daily basis.
I wrote a poem about how I felt about emerging from the worst of my infertility grief.
Someone Else (2024)
At first I felt excluded from society at large, because I thought I was a parent, or would be at some charge.
But the years rolled steady onward and no child came to me, and through my grief I questioned who myself would be.
What was for other people was not who I would be, but I was someone different than who they turned out to be.
What I wanted was no different so this change I could accept, or go crazy from the yearning, what a strange concept.
Oh, I wanted to be like them, and I tried so hard for years, but that never changed my future or calmed all of my fears.
But one day a thought alighted, sang a sweet new melody: what if my uniqueness made me extraordinary?
What if I was given freedom and a life I dearly love while I was also denied children
by the God who reigns above?Blessings come in different ways, not all look the same. Ones in disguise come to the wise who still choose to play the game.
I didn't ask to have this life, but live it, I sure will! To find myself and what I like remains my purpose, still.
