Not Doing Anything...NOT an Option

Telling someone about infertility for the first time is humbling. I know it shouldn't be, but it is. Particularly with moms, because you have to tell them that something they can do, you can't. Not like the splits, or french braiding, or tying expert knots. Something more basic, but also more fundamental, that makes you think you're not a whole woman if you can't do it.

I was recently reminded of this humility when I saw a friend who I haven't shared this journey with. For the third year in a row, her well-meaning husband asked us if we were going on a camping trip that only parents are invited on.

The first year I found out about this trip, I bawled my eyes out. It was a group of friends of which DH and I thought we were truly a fundamental part. I was so hurt that we would not be included by people we loved because we didn't have kids, especially because some of them knew we desperately wanted them (not this friend, but others). In my typically self-absorbed way, I wondered why we were any less loved or treasured as a result of our inability to procreate--something already painful enough for us. More likely, as this friend did, they just figured we weren't interested in kiddie chaos, that we might just want to RELAX while camping. But in my infertility-centered universe, that's not what it felt like. It felt like rejection, abandonment.

I would like to say that when her husband asked this year, I didn't care. But I did. It still hurt, even though I knew they didn't mean it in a hurtful way, even though it's so clearly not about me. Maybe that's the problem. The problem is that it's not about me. So still, I cried. I cried again, and I told myself, "You have to tell her." You have to tell her so you can stop feeling the loss not only of the parent you thought you would be, but the community you thought you would have.

It was hard. It was humbling. Admitting, "I want what you have, and I can't have it, and I feel excluded, and that makes me feel worse." I was afraid to say it, afraid she'd call me crazy, or worse, ignore me entirely. It's happened--probably to every infertile person I know--that someone you care about treats you like you never told them, like you don't even exist. It deepens the humiliation, when you already feel like you're kowtowing, nose in the dirt, unseen and forgotten. I dreaded her response, for this reason. Nothing is worse than something, anything.

And yet, it was so simple. Doh, or the equivalent, at least. Sorry, I didn't know. And suddenly, all the dread and rejection melted away, and I just felt glad I'd told her. All that stress of hearing something that would hurt left in an instant, when I'd carried it in the back of my mind for three years (yes, pitiful). You didn't know to protect me, because I never told you. But now that you know, you will.

Another friend once told me that she lost a friendship from childhood because the friend did nothing to acknowledge her father's sudden illness and death. Her friend told her, "I just didn't know what to do." And my friend thought to herself, "Doing nothing is not an option." How true. We only need to hear that our pain matters.

So a friend can tell me not to worry, can tell me to just relax, can tell me it could be worse, and I'll get over the fact that she said the wrong thing. I can see that she cares enough to try and relate to me. But if a friend didn't call when she knew I had a miscarriage, or didn't tell me she was pregnant, or ignored my pain--isn't it okay, even healthy, for me to let go? Inaction, inertia, are not victimless crimes. Inaction--at least to me--is not an option.