When my father died 7 years ago it felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. His death was so sudden, we weren’t expecting it, he was way too young, and I wasn’t finished learning from him yet. The wound was deep and penetrating. It came swiftly and required my full and immediate attention. My world completely stopped.
Infertility has resulted in a different kind of grief experience. It has been a slower process…more of a surface wound. The kind of wound that starts small and then over time it slowly gets larger. But it remains open. You’re able to live with the wound for quite some time, fully functioning. And then with every doctor’s appointment, new piece of information, medical test, statistic, and friend that becomes pregnant the wound slowly opens and requires more attention. It requires making decisions that will impact your life forever. It requires ethical and moral thinking about issues that most people will never consider.
After making the decision to pursue adoption there was a sort of superficial healing to the wound. You can envision a future with children. You gain back a bit of control in the process because many things are required of you to get everything in order. But then with each week, day, hour of waiting the wound opens again and this time further. Now the wound requires full attention again but the world doesn’t stop. Instead you have to find ways to carry on and create a sort of normalcy when you hardly feel normal. It’s a sort of survival mode. You try to forget the wound exists but yet you see it everyday. The picture of a future family becomes quite cloudy and you begin to wonder if life will ever change.
This is my open wound.
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