Posts from — December 2010

Someone wrote me a few weeks ago about how difficult it was for her to attend church and hear the baby blessings.  I answered back that those baby blessings are salt, and you can’t change the nature of salt just because you need to rub it against your wounded body (er, why in this analogy do we need to rub salt on our bodies?).  It will burn every time it touches raw skin.

Essentially, she has two choices: she can attend church and hear the baby blessings and know that it is going to hurt and allow it to burn anyway.  Or she can stay away from church, shut herself off from pregnant or parenting friends, and freeze out those human relationships.  Of course, reality is that we weigh out whether we want the burn or the cold on a case-by-case basis.  We attend that event and not that one.  We go to that woman’s shower, but not that woman’s shower.

There’s a Robert Frost poem that I think speaks volumes about making that decision about doing the thing that is emotionally painful, one that perhaps is speaking about something else entirely, but I think applies quite nicely to infertility and loss.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Personally, most of the time, I would rather subject myself to the emotional pain — the burn — of being in that uncomfortable place of coveting.  I would rather attend the shower, attend the bris, hold the baby, and then slip away by myself to cry and take care of my emotional needs — at least for the relationships where it’s important (friends, for instance, vs. coworkers that I know I’ll never see again if they changed jobs).  It definitely sucks, but I’d rather be burned by desire than experience the other side.

Because I think for me that ice becomes self-hate — anger turned inward because I feel anger outwardly towards the universe (or sometimes it’s directed at people who poke me where it hurts).  And it’s freezing to cut yourself off from human contact, to avoid and miss out on those moments.  The destruction of relationships.

Lest you think Robert Frost had no clue, he buried four children, including Elinor Bettina who died three days after birth.

Would you rather take the burning ache of desire or the frozen heart that comes from hate?