A Socially Unacceptable Grief
There are two types of grief and loss when one loses a child. There’s the one society deems socially acceptable; it’s met with casseroles and kindness. The other is met with bewilderment or worse, dismissiveness.
“If fertility treatments don’t work and we are unable to have kids…”
Sarah recalled uttering this possibility aloud. It instantly made everyone within earshot visibly uncomfortable. Her words took all the air out of the fertility clinic waiting room.
“You’d think we were criminals for thinking it let alone saying it,” she added. Sarah was nearing the end of a difficult and expensive series of treatments and wanted to prepare herself for what might lie ahead. Rather than receiving any support or acknowledgment she was made to feel like a pariah.
Sarah looks back on that day — when the last of 24 embryos were transferred — as the first in what would be a difficult and lonely road coming to terms with the loss of her children and a lifetime of infertility-related angst and misunderstanding.
Disenfranchised Grief
She discovered, as I once did, that there isn’t a support system or social etiquette in place to help couples work through the grief and loss that accompanies failed fertility treatment. Rather than a soft landing complete with caring…
