stages of grief

When I was in University I took a course called "Death and Dying". It was an elective within my department and turned out to be an excellent course. We mostly studied the Kubler-Ross model and the Five Stages of Grief.

Fast forward 17 odd years and I have become quite familiar and comfortable with the stages of grief. Infertility was a grief experience, adoption was a grief experience, and I am currently knee deep within the stages once again.

The five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. According to Kubler-Ross the stages aren't linear and not everyone experiences all the stages. I'm pretty sure that the first stage is bang on, as during all my major grief experiences denial has often been part of the beginning while moving through to acceptance, or as I prefer to call it...healing.

After discovering that I was pregnant, I lived in denial for quite some time. Denial is powerful and it definitely serves a purpose. My head and heart weren't ready to even acknowledge what those two lines on the pregnancy test meant. Since I have walked this road before -- the grief road, not the pregnancy road -- I knew that denial was okay and I was okay to sit in this stage. I also knew that it's fairly easy to stay in the denial stage for a great deal of time which isn't always healthly. Since I had limited time to process this new information (ie. 8 months!) I was aware that I couldn't stay in denial for long. So I gave myself a time limit. 

At 12 weeks gestation I had an ultrasound scheduled as part of the routine checking for fetal abnormalities. I knew the date two months ahead of time so that was the date I gave myself to start looking outside the box I was hiding in. During those months I could barely utter the words "pregnant" and "baby" to myself or close friends. D and I didn't speak about the pregnancy -- we were (and still are) on the same page and didn't need to voice anything during that time. And heaven forbid should someone mention where the new baby room would be or anything else that meant I needed to acknowledge my future.

What kept pushing me out of denial during those months was the fact that I was super nauseous 24/7 and generally felt terrible. Plus, I had a trip to Africa planned that was to start while still in my first trimester and couldn't take the anti-malaria pills, so I needed to make some hard decisions. 

It was a difficult time. One filled with many tears and sleepless nights. Plus a ton of reading novels to distract my mind! One of the best things a counselor told me after my dad died was to "feel what you feel when you feel it." I have taken that advice to heart numerous times and absolutely will not let anyone tell me how to feel or feel guilt for not feeling how others think I should. I have sat in the sadness, the anger, and the questioning at other times and will continue to do so.

Both D and I have moved out of denial. We're working at processing our grief. Grief of what we had hoped and planned for our future. 

I don't doubt that we will continue to march through the stages to healing and acceptance. But in the meantime we will feel what we feel when we feel it.