Growing a Thinner Skin

Hannah struggles with her fertility; she wants a child and hasn't been able to bear one. It's painful for her to be around other people's babies, and we all know it because she doesn't shy back from expressing it.
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"He shoved a stroller in my face," she said angrily, "what did he expect?"

That’s what Hannah said, when we caught up with her. Jennifer and I had stopped to chat with a friend we’d run into on the street. Hannah had taken off as soon as she’d seen the baby in a stroller he was pushing ahead of him, and she was still angry when we caught up with her:

Hannah struggles with her fertility; she wants a child and hasn't been able to bear one. It's painful for her to be around other people's babies, and we all know it because she doesn't shy back from expressing it.

I've been sensitized to the issue of infertility since long before my friends started having (or trying to have) babies. I've read the magazines warning us not to count on our fertility, not to think we can have it all, not to wait too long to reproduce. I've read the mournful and angry testimonials by women who have regrets, the criticism of the fertility industry, and the sometimes brutal criticism of the 'selfishness' of women who spend money on technology to get pregnant. I knew, even before hearing it from Hannah herself, that things like pregnancy announcements, showers, and baby talk can be painful for women in her position.

True, sometimes things get said and sometimes people take their babies out in strollers, but Hannah's friends do make an effort not to mention pregnancies and childbirths around her so as not to increase her pain. But is that too much to ask?

Jennifer seemed to think so. Not because she wanted to talk about her babies - she had none and no imminent plans to have any. But she was angry, very angry, that Hannah would express negative reactions to everyday aspects of her friends’ lives in a way that would inhibit her friends 'normal' conversations.

"I never asked anyone not to talk about their mothers in front of me," she said.

Jennifer's mother died two years ago, when Jennifer was thirty-five. My mother died when I was twenty. Like Jennifer, I never asked anyone, not even my closest friends, not even when we were alone together, to avoid talking about their mothers in front of me. I knew they weren't talking about mothers with the intent of hurting me; they were just talking about their lives. It never even occurred to me that I could ask them not to, let alone that I could expect them to be conscious that conversation that was ordinary to them could be painful to me.

And conversation could be excruciating. In the immediate aftermath of my mother’s death, I was so numb I barely realized what people were talking about or that it could have anything to do with me. But later, listening to my friends bubble along about talks with their moms, trips, shopping, adventures -- it scraped along the empty aching lost part of me like fingernails on a chalkboard. Hearing women twice my age complain about their mothers was even worse; how could they fail for an instant to appreciate the miracle that their mothers had survived that long? But people talk and people complain - that's what people do. I wanted to be normal, and included, so I kept quiet.

It might not be manly, ladylike, or gracious, but it does seem human to feel pain in the face of another person's joy - or even in the face of another person's lack of pain. But when is it all right to ask someone else to censor him or herself in order to protect you? When is it all right to get up and walk away from what seems to others to be a perfectly normal interaction? Or even just to express pain and discomfort? How was it possible that Hannah felt entitled to her friends' sensitivity, while Jennifer and I felt completely inhibited from even expressing discomfort?

Infertility has been recognized as a significant form of suffering

I think there is more to the story than personality differences. Without necessarily implying that there is sufficient sensitivity and support for women dealing with infertility, I suspect there is a still a societal validation for that struggle that does not exist for some other forms of grief, and especially grief for a parent.

Going back to the Bible, infertility has been recognized as a significant form of suffering. Like modern magazines, the Bible is full of stories about women, like the matriarch Sarah, longing for children they cannot seem to conceive. The idea that women are ”meant“ to have children and be mothers is very strong, and it results in infertility being perceived as something horrific and unnatural - against the very order of the world. Thus there is a cultural affirmation to infertile women that they have experienced something deeply wrong, and they have a right to be sad, and angry, about their situation.

On the other hand, what could be more natural than the death of a parent? The old are meant to die before the young, and parents hope that their children will outlive them. The general expectation is that, throughout the course of our lives, most of us will lose parents and there is nothing extraordinary about it.

When a person actually loses a parent, however, she will most likely learn that it doesn't feel natural at all. The opposite: from the time we are born and until our parent dies, we have never experienced the world without them - what could feel more unnatural than a world without our parent in it? But that feeling is not culturally approved. Combine that disapproval with the modern Western general discomfort surrounding death and grief, and it is not surprising that the experience of losing a parent becomes practically unspeakable. I couldn't express it to my friends who hadn't experienced it, and I couldn't expect them to have the knowledge and empathy to be sensitive to me.

I was among the first of my friends to lose a parent. By the time I finally emerged enough from my numbness to realize just exactly how undone my world was, my mother's death seemed like it already ought to be a footnote in my life. Something sad that happened, yes, but not something that ought to affect my every waking moment. I didn't feel any right to be pained, angry, or prickly that my friends' worlds went on like before.

Worse than that, I was more afraid of making my friends uncomfortable than of feeling uncomfortable myself: the world can become a much less homey place without a mother, and I needed my friends more than ever, and certainly more than they seemed to need me. I was so careful not to impose the burden of my grief onto friends. I remembered how unthinking I had been about 'that one kid in high school whose mom died in tenth grade,' and no matter how close my friends were, if their mothers were living, I couldn’t trust them with my pain. I suspect it's a whole different world for people who lose their parents after most of their friends have - when there's a whole community to welcome them into the dead parent's club.

In time I did start to be more sensitive to my own needs; if something makes me feel sad, I am more likely to say so than to act as if I'm fine even while I'm emotionally disconnecting from myself. My friend Jennifer isn't there yet. But I'm still wary about crossing some invisible line. My response to Hannah's behavior was less angry but not much less judgmental than Jennifer's. I did feel like there was something extreme about running away from strollers - we really can't live wrapped up in cotton balls!

I was wrong to judge her. Who am I to say how sensitive is too sensitive? Maybe Hannah's sensitivity right now will help her grow stronger faster and better. I can't say my approach was any better – it’s been eight years and I’m just starting to be able to acknowledge and express my pain. Maybe temporarily protecting herself from 'normal' parts of life that, for now, hurt like the nails on the chalkboard, will in the long run help Hannah find her peace. And she'll need that peace: as I grow older, I'll have a larger and larger community of friends with dead parents; as she grows older, more and more of her friends will turn into parents and grandparents.

Our culture's approach to infertility can be enormously problematic. The imperative of motherhood hurts all women, and I have no doubt that it contributes to feelings of inadequacy or even freakishness that infertile women experience. But it is not wrong about women being entitled to be angry and sensitive about their infertility. If there is a silver lining to this cultural situation, it is that people like me and Jennifer can see someone like Hannah being outwardly and vocally angry and sensitive, and can learn from her. I learn that even when she does something that seems a little ridiculous, nothing terrible happens. I learn that I, and her other friends, can handle being sensitive even to a pain we don't have personal experience with. I learn that being angry and sensitive can sometimes actually help. Hopefully, we can all learn to take care of ourselves, and each other, a little better.

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