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Home  Articles & Poetry Counselling One path to healing
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Saturday, 19 July 2003 |
Infertility had been a long, lonely journey for me. I hadn¹t felt able to talk to many people about it and the world seemed full of people with children, who couldn¹t possibly understand my pain. From being someone totally in control of my life, I had been reduced to a victim who railed at the cruelty of the world and slid deeper and deeper into my shell. My anger and sorrow at the situation had even driven a deep wedge between me and my husband.
As my 40th birthday approached, the feelings of hopelessness and loss reached a head and I realised that although my life hadn¹t turned out as I had expected, I couldn¹t spend the rest of it in this state of utter despair. So I trawled the net and through all the sites talking about treatments and alternative therapies and discovered there were other people out there who had been through it, some who had even emerged from it.
On one website, I noticed that Meredith Wheeler was facilitating a weekend workshop entitled Letting Go¹ that culminated in a Memorial Service. Normally, I would rather run through the office naked than sit in a room full of strangers pouring out my heart, but I decided things couldn¹t get any worse. So on a Friday night last April, I found myself sitting in a circle of women, all of whom looked as apprehensive as I felt. By the end of that evening, I¹d already slayed two dragons I¹d cried in public and shared My story¹ with a complete stranger. Only neither she, nor the other women were strangers. We¹d all been on similar journeys, taking different paths, reaching the same destination. Finally here was a group of people who understood. People who had their own pain, but who emanated such warmth that I felt able to open up to them.
The weekend progressed with various exercises writing a letter to our lost children, using art to express our anger and letting go of the things that were stopping us from moving on with our lives. In between, there were opportunities to talk of ordinary things--but somehow without any of the small talk that normally marks the beginning of relationships.
I¹d volunteered to read a poem at the Memorial Service, so on the Sunday morning I was feeling apprehensive. That Sunday morning the workshop group created candle-guards from coloured paper, stickers and crayons with the qualities each of us felt our fertility journey was calling forth from us: patience, wisdom, courage, to name just a few. A feeling of calm and purpose filled the room.
The room where the service was to be held felt serene too, with the sun streaming through the large windows. I knew from the rehearsal that I wouldn¹t be able to read the whole poem without crying, as it so perfectly described my feelings. But as the room filled with people, I knew that it didn¹t matter any more. The very act of sharing our sorrow began the healing process.
Bill Wither¹s Lean on Me played and we joined hands. Suddenly I wasn¹t alone. There were lots of other people out there, all of whom had suffered--but all were courageous and somehow better people for their experiences. We lit candles with the names of those we¹d lost, but instead of my child, I put my husband¹s name and wrote a note of forgiveness to him--something I hadn¹t been able to consider before.
The final act of the weekend was to carry the stone cobbles on which we had written words describing the burdens we wished to let go of--pain, grief, resentment-- and hurl them into the nearby canal in Little Venice. What release!
We all need to say goodbye to people we have lost and for me the whole experience was about saying goodbye to the life that I thought I¹d have--and to begin the new life that I now have. This is no miracle cure, but it feels good to know that I¹m not the only person in the world in this situation and to share those thoughts and experiences with people who don¹t judge and who completely understand without explanation.
Today, I sat in a meeting at work with a group of people a man, whose wife is 8 months pregnant, a woman who gave birth 6 months ago, another a year ago and a recent grandfather. A year ago their conversation would have been unbearable. Today, I was almost interested!
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