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Monday
Aug232010
Grief's Children
Monday, August 23, 2010
Over three years ago, I was diagnosed with and then had a hysterectomy due to cervical cancer. Despite my ongoing issues with gender, discomfort with my biology, and complete lack of desire to bear and rear children, the removal of my uterus was not received with joy and confetti.
I grieved.
The shape of that grief was hard to describe. It was less about the loss of the specific possibility of children than it was about the finality of the loss of that possibility. It was the loss of what autonomy I felt I had over the body I could barely control to begin with. It was about feeling betrayed.
This grief was something I could hardly bare to acknowledge, so I allowed it to pull me away from the people I knew who reminded me of my losses. I felt selfish and ashamed at my inability to separate my own pain from the joys of others, but there it was, an open wound flowering wider. I turned down invitations to go out with people who had children. I avoided their homes. I pulled away from biologically intact female friends.
Grief is a mercurial object, defining its own edges in the periphery where you couldn't trace them if you tried.
I ended up losing more than my uterus and a sense of security. I lost depth in friendships. I pushed newer friends away. I missed out on getting to know the family a dear friend was creating. I made some people feel like they mattered far less to me than they really did.
I realized recently that I continue to do this as a matter of course. The behaviours born from grief have become knee-jerk.
It may come off like little more than an ill-defined shadow these days, but my grief continues to breed losses like there aren't enough to go around, and I'm putting a stop to it.
What grief takes, we can put back, if a little differently, a little more thoughtfully, placed.
I grieved.
The shape of that grief was hard to describe. It was less about the loss of the specific possibility of children than it was about the finality of the loss of that possibility. It was the loss of what autonomy I felt I had over the body I could barely control to begin with. It was about feeling betrayed.
This grief was something I could hardly bare to acknowledge, so I allowed it to pull me away from the people I knew who reminded me of my losses. I felt selfish and ashamed at my inability to separate my own pain from the joys of others, but there it was, an open wound flowering wider. I turned down invitations to go out with people who had children. I avoided their homes. I pulled away from biologically intact female friends.
Grief is a mercurial object, defining its own edges in the periphery where you couldn't trace them if you tried.
I ended up losing more than my uterus and a sense of security. I lost depth in friendships. I pushed newer friends away. I missed out on getting to know the family a dear friend was creating. I made some people feel like they mattered far less to me than they really did.
I realized recently that I continue to do this as a matter of course. The behaviours born from grief have become knee-jerk.
It may come off like little more than an ill-defined shadow these days, but my grief continues to breed losses like there aren't enough to go around, and I'm putting a stop to it.
What grief takes, we can put back, if a little differently, a little more thoughtfully, placed.
Reader Comments (19)
I've been through a somewhat similar experience (acute infection instead of cancer, useless uterus instead of hysterectomy), putting a finality on it all. I never thought I needed to grieve so intensely.
This is so honest and so thoughtful. I hold your hand and grieve with you
Very very well said. You're so self aware and able to communicate it so well.
I am not friends with people who were pregnant when I could not and I continue to be filled with envy when I see pregnant ladies. It doesn't even make any sense whatsoever. It's exhausting and takes up too much space in my brain.
Wow... very poignant. Kudos to you for writing this post and even more so in realizing your losses and working to stoping it. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
xxxxxxxx
I have a tendency to hold people apart from myself for entirely different reasons and experiences than you. But the result, I imagine, is similar. I hope you are more successful than I have been to drop that wall. I would love to know you were fully triumphant.
Very touching post, thanks for sharing it. Grief is grief, no matter where it comes from or what it is about. We each need to work through our grief by ourselves.
My mom had to have a hysterectomy when she was 32. She's 50 now and continues to grieve.
Thank you for sharing this.
yesterday i wrote here that i was finding joy in healing old relationships....ones that i deliberately avoided and strained after i had my twins. my ppd gave me a different sort of grief, one that filters the way i see women who are about to have children, women who 'act' like everything is perfectly fine post-child (which it very well may be but in my mind most certainly cannot be). i was surprised at the level of anger i had residing under my skin for the last few years and am finding a new and sweeter relief from it after the distance i spent from my family for a few days. gone? not sure it it will ever be gone. but clearer ... oh, yes, it is so much nicer to be clearer.
i am glad you are finding a new type of clarity that will allow you new connection and reconnection. i feel like when we lose that which tethers us to all that we love, we are lost. i am glad you are finding the way back.
Eventhough I choose to not have children and had a tubal ligation in my 30's there are moments when I too wonder "what if"....and greive for what might have been....regrets and grief are a part of life and being aware of how these change our lives, not matter how difficult that awareness may be, gives us a life worth living. Your writing is as always, poignant personal and moving....thank you.
I've felt this way too but for different, less valid reasons (my partner--who I love intensely-- does not want children and I am now 42).
I find myself weeping when I hear that friends are pregnant. And it's not out of joy for them: it is jealousy.
I feel angry at my younger cavalier self who thought that this would not feel like a sacrifice and who did not acknowledge what this would feel like. Many many people have said, "Well you can get IVF or adopt". . . but I would not want to raise a child without my partner. I would want him to be part of the rearing as I have seen the damage of parents that ignore their children.
Sometimes I wish I had had the pleading angry arguments earlier, but I am not an arguer. And I knew from the beginning, 10 years ago, that he unequivocally did not want children. At the time I felt the same, but I have changed and he has not. I have asked myself I should end our relationship to have the opportunity for this other type of relationship, and in weighing things I have made a choice to stay with him.
Weirdly what makes me ache most, are the teenagers of friends who had kids young. The good relationships (of course not the bad) that are close, trusting and beautiful between my friends and their near-adult children. I wish I had had that experience.
I will be seeing a very dear friend who has been through innumerable rounds of IVF for her children. She is pregnant with her second. I find myself having to separate myself from my own seemingly unending longing when I see her.
I do know that my situation is very different than yours ... but I share your ache.
xo
Thank you for sharing. I recently had a hysterectomy due to uterine cancer. I never wanted children, but I too am struggling with cancer finalizing this decision instead of me. It's something my friends just don't understand ("But you said you never wanted children - what's the problem?")
Such beautiful honesty.
Ah, Schmutzie. I'm also trying to find a way through my own grief-induced habits and weirdnesses and work-arounds. They die hard.
Take good care of yourself.
Your feelings and subsequent reactions are so normal, but ultimately, not in your best interest. But I get it lady, I do.
For me, for a long time, I avoided People With Money. The Financially Well Endowed? Financially Intact and Growing?
Because of my own grief of Having None. Having a Little. And then Having None again. Trying so hard for More and Getting None. Being convinced I never could have what they have, financially.
Now it matters less to me and I have friendships with People With Money again, and it feels good, most of the time. When it doesn't, I try to cope with grief the usual ways--gratitude, exercise, volunteering, pleasure in inexpensive rich things like Five Star Friday and Grace in Small Things. I tell myself, I AM RICH. I CAN HAVE RICHNESS. It's just not kept in a bank and accessible through an ATM.
So what is it that losing your uterus took? The possibility of bearing bio kids. But do you want a bigger family? Your own? In theory, you could have all that, but of course it would be through alternative means. Or perhaps, you just want more family, as in friends. Or a better relationship with your bio family? Lord knows I owe a visit to my Grandma and I sure could call my aunts more often and have a bit more of a relationship with them.
The body betrayal thing is another layer of complexity, for sure. It sucks. But it sure does make you interesting and I hope, nicer to people who aren't biologically perfect. Maybe you are kinder?
My fear is that grief has made me into a different person. And I'm not sure how this new person navigates anymore, or what she needs, or who she is. I can't separate a normal response from depression from the new self. Can't figure out what's normal and what's knee-jerk. I wish I knew. Sometimes, I'm alright with not knowing. Sometimes I'm not.
There's so much packed into this that has me thinking. It's necessary and beautiful.
Grief is mercurial indeed.
I have found something similar after getting a vasectomy a couple of years ago. Not the same thing, of course-I chose mine. But I understand what you feel, in a certain refracted way.
Now, I have a child. My wife and I decided some time ago that he was to be the only one, for a variety of reasons. So I went in and got the surgery.
The thing I didn't expect was the depression that came afterwards. Now, I didn't want more kids-I'm absolutely fine with one. I don't want to father children with anyone else-despite a disturbing lack of comely lasses offering their services, I would not be unfaithful even if they were.
But for reasons I do not understand, I grieve the lack of potency. There isn't anything physically different, but I KNOW that I am no longer procreative, and that depresses me.
Strangest goddamn thing.
You were not selfish. Is was self-preservation.
Grief is a tricky beast. I have also felt betrayed by my body and it took me a while to forgive it.
I recently had the same operation for the exact same reason so reading this definitely hit home. I'm 42 and have been fairly sure I didn't want to have kids. But now that the choice was taken out of my hands w/ the hysterectomy, I seem to be dealing with emotions and feelings I wasn't expecting. Thank you so much for putting into words the exact things I cannot seem to express for myself.