I saw where you visited my blog today.
I saw where you searched on the terms “infertile women no children christmas“, and my heart broke for you.
I know where your heart is right now – the Christmas holidays are coming up, and you’re wondering how on earth you’re going to live through them without breaking into a million jagged pieces. How will you face your extended family and your cousin with the new baby? So you started searching the internet for advice, for help, for the reassurance to know you’re not alone.
You’re not alone. I’ve been there. Every woman who has ever struggled with infertility has been there.
We’re all here together, but the shame and pain of infertility even keep us from reaching out to those who might actually understand how we can be afraid of Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or family reunions, and maybe even tomorrow.
If you visit here again, please leave me a comment or send me an email. I wanted to reach out to you, to see if I could help in some way, but you went away leaving only that faint trace of your visit.
In empathy,
Trish
Hi, I was not the original anonymous visitor but I’d just like to thank you for your words anyway as they might as well have described me… We don’t have thanksgiving here but we do have Christmas…just my infertile self and husband and a band of nieces and newphews. Not that I won’t find some joy and meaning in the day for, despite the continual reference to Christamas being about family, I think that it’s also about hope. The kind you gave in your message here. Thanks.
I sure have thought about this letter a great deal today. I found you through PW’s site.
I’m not a infertile woman but cards have never dealt me a situation to raise a baby in the loving environment that I would want for a child. That is until the last few years and I fear I’m getting to old.
Maybe, just maybe, god wants women such as you and me to be the mothers and keepers of those who are in need and don’t have a mother. I keep the land and four legged friends and it honestly fills my need of being needed. I pray that every woman may find what it takes to fill the void.
Blessings,
ang.
Dear Trish;
I am your anonymous visitor. This is my story. When I was first married I wasn’t readly for children; so when I got pregnant, I decided to give the baby up for adoption. It wasn’t an easy decision, I agonized over my decision and even wanted to change my mind on the way to the lawyers office, but by that time, the circumstances had so overwhelmed me and my new husband, that he said we needed to go with the adoption decision. There was already a heart broken family who had waited thirteen years for a child. The baby went to them. I never forgave myself for that decision; but the baby has had a good life and that is what matters for him. As for me, I thought I would have no problem getting pregnant again when I was ready. Well, about ten years later I was ready, but apparently my body wasn’t. We went off the pill when I was 37. Nothing happened until I was 43. I was so happy, and so hopeful. This time, I thought, I was so ready. I had lullabies saved up, and names picked out. My youngest sister, who was the only family member I told, even bought me baby clothes. Well, when I was 2 months pregnant, I miscarried. I think I somehow knew that was my last chance. I am now 47 and coming to the realization that no child will ever call me mommy. It has been especially hard after the miscarriage; you see, until I miscarried, I always had hope that pregnancy and children would happen. After the miscarriage, I quit college, but friends told me to keep taking classes, so I tried junior college. But I was in mourning for my lost child and for the child I had given away so many years ago. You see, I know what I have lost. There is no “childfree” bull here. Parents have no idea what a gift God has made them. I know, and am still grieving. The older I get, the harder it has been. First, Christmas was hard, then I realized I had no one to make an easter basket for or to make a halloween costume for. There is no way around this hurt. And I don’t know what to do anymore. I just hope I’m not being punished for giving away my first baby. I hope God isn’t that cruel.
My family just doesn’t get it. and they are pretty oblivious to my pain. I’m sure they feel I’ve gotten what I deserved. Thank you for your message. I hope you understand.
Trish -
Your message is not to me, I understand, but since it’s here, I’d like to reply.
I have not faced the struggles you face, but I DO NOT FOR ONE SECOND believe that God is punishing you for giving your first baby away. I can’t explain why, other than I believe He is a much more compassionate and loving God than that.
That of course doesn’t explain why you have been left without a baby in your arms. It is hard to get past the “why?” of such heartache. Acceptance is elusive with pain like this.
I am sorry your family doesn’t get it. I hope you will be kind to yourself this holiday season and avoid the things that make the wound hurt even more. As for those who don’t understand? Maybe they never will; and for that I am sorry. Those are the people who lack empathy.
I will be praying for peace for you.
Hi HW,
Thank you for responding to Sylvia in such a supportive way! I also wrote her a long message of support, and I hope that she gets many other responses of empathy and understanding.
Trish
Hi Farminglassie,
I think in my personal case you are on to something there. I decided in the past year that God gave me the deep desire to love and nurture, but not the ability to give birth, so my own way of finding peace and a sense of purpose is to use my love and maternal instincts to help others. Since I work in a large, urban campus, I have opportunities everyday to reassure and support young people who may not have come from stable or nuturing homes, and I find a great deal of fulfillment in being here for them. As it happens, I find I have about 20 young adults every day that depend on my guidance and support, and each year during graduation, I have 7 or 8 “children” that I’m so very proud of.
And of course, I have my four-legged children, too, who, although will never graduate from school, still let me cuddle and coo over them. ;- )
Trish
Hi, just found you through PW’s website and this post really touched my heart.
[...] Dear Anonymous Visitor [...]
Thanks etrish- I’ve never been to your site before. I found it through a link at sheila variations, but you helped me today too.
Sylvia — I am so so sorry for your loss, your pain. Although I am a childless-not-by-choice woman as well, I can’t imagine the choice you had to make all those years ago. And as a Christian, I absolutely believe that God understood your heart and your circumstances back then. He knows, better than anyone, what turmoil you were in. He gets you, you know?
I do understand, though, on some level, the feeling of being punished. Over the past decade of struggling with infertility and then coming to grips with the fact that it’s not going to happen for me, I have sometimes daily struggled with that notion. At some point along the way, I remember reading something about being a “necessary other” — someone who, through special circumstances not of their own choosing, God calls to walk a different path, a higher path, if you will, because it is the road less travelled. Only 15% of couples deal with infertility. So the majority is able to have kids. That makes us, that 15%, part of that “necessary other” category. As I have started to see this as a mystery that will be revealed to me in heaven or as a high or holy path, it has been a kind of comfort for me. I’m not trying to shove this idea on you or to presume where you stand on issues of faith, I just wanted to share something that has brought me some small solace. It doesn’t necessarily make the holidays easier when I’m surrounded by oblivious family and the hustle and bustle of other people’s kids, but it can soothe me in those private painful moments, you know? Those moments in the middle of the night where you feel so terribly alone. It’s a path not everyone is placed on. Maybe …. just maybe …. it IS some sort of mystery, some kind of divine trust that he places in those of us walking it. It doesn’t make us better than those on a traditional path; it just makes us different. That difference can be so painful at times, that not fitting in, but maybe God sees something in us — the potential for a different kind of strength, a different kind of wisdom — that not everyone possesses.
I hope with all my heart that God will give you some peace this Christmas season. There are people out here who empathize with that hole in your heart. Take care, Sylvia.