A lot of times people don’t realize that when dealing with infertility you are also dealing with the grief of a loss. You have to grieve for that which is absent. For many of us we have longed to be parents for as long as we can remember and to now be told we can have it, the pain can be almost unbearable.
This part of the article talks about Brenda and how she dealt with the pain she felt from infertility as well as how she found healing.
(Again this whole article can be found at http://lds.org/ensign/2011/04/faith-and-infertility?lang=eng)
Dealing with Grief (Section 2 of Faith and Infertility by Melissa Merrill)
Brenda’s grief at the diagnosis was so overwhelming that she began questioning her mission in life, she says.
“I felt lost for a long time. I felt I had no purpose. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it, to get married and have a family? I still knew I was a daughter of God, but I hated that I couldn’t be a co-creator with Him. I felt broken, like I wasn’t a real woman.”
Brenda tried “swimming through” her grief for several months and even years. At one point, it became so severe that she felt prompted to seek professional counseling.
“I realized the grief was inhibiting my progression,” she says. She asked Heavenly Father to guide her in a search for the right counselor and began meeting with one who was able to offer the help Brenda needed.
“As I went to my appointments and continued to do my homework [usually assigned reading], my heart was being prepared for healing,” Brenda recalls. “Many of my fears and pains started to subside, and a new person was emerging.”
Brenda notes that while some well-meaning people tried to assist by suggesting what might be wrong with her or what she could try, that didn’t help. “I just needed people to buoy me up as I struggled and to acknowledge that what I was going through was difficult.”
Angie Belnap and her husband, Dave, learned after four years of marriage that they most likely wouldn’t be able to conceive. Angie recalls going through all of the stages of grief but finding herself returning over and over to the anger stage.
“I remember wondering how something that was so important in life could be denied me,” she says. “My feelings of hurt and what seemed to me to be spiritual abandonment manifested themselves through anger. I was very angry. Angry at myself. Angry at my husband. Angry at God.”
But Angie started working through her grief by focusing on aspects of her life she could control rather than on those she couldn’t. Angie, who worked as a third-grade teacher, looked for ways she could improve her skills at work. She also read a lot—“there was always a book on my nightstand,” she recalls—and pursued other self-improvement projects. “I couldn’t change the infertility, but I could progress in other areas of my life,” she says.
She also found it helpful to keep a journal. “I didn’t always feel that I could talk to people about what I was going through, but I could get my feelings ‘out there’ by writing them down. That helped a lot.”
This part of the article talks about Brenda and how she dealt with the pain she felt from infertility as well as how she found healing.
(Again this whole article can be found at http://lds.org/ensign/2011/04/faith-and-infertility?lang=eng)
Dealing with Grief (Section 2 of Faith and Infertility by Melissa Merrill)
Brenda’s grief at the diagnosis was so overwhelming that she began questioning her mission in life, she says.
“I felt lost for a long time. I felt I had no purpose. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it, to get married and have a family? I still knew I was a daughter of God, but I hated that I couldn’t be a co-creator with Him. I felt broken, like I wasn’t a real woman.”
Brenda tried “swimming through” her grief for several months and even years. At one point, it became so severe that she felt prompted to seek professional counseling.
“I realized the grief was inhibiting my progression,” she says. She asked Heavenly Father to guide her in a search for the right counselor and began meeting with one who was able to offer the help Brenda needed.
“As I went to my appointments and continued to do my homework [usually assigned reading], my heart was being prepared for healing,” Brenda recalls. “Many of my fears and pains started to subside, and a new person was emerging.”
Brenda notes that while some well-meaning people tried to assist by suggesting what might be wrong with her or what she could try, that didn’t help. “I just needed people to buoy me up as I struggled and to acknowledge that what I was going through was difficult.”
Angie Belnap and her husband, Dave, learned after four years of marriage that they most likely wouldn’t be able to conceive. Angie recalls going through all of the stages of grief but finding herself returning over and over to the anger stage.
“I remember wondering how something that was so important in life could be denied me,” she says. “My feelings of hurt and what seemed to me to be spiritual abandonment manifested themselves through anger. I was very angry. Angry at myself. Angry at my husband. Angry at God.”
But Angie started working through her grief by focusing on aspects of her life she could control rather than on those she couldn’t. Angie, who worked as a third-grade teacher, looked for ways she could improve her skills at work. She also read a lot—“there was always a book on my nightstand,” she recalls—and pursued other self-improvement projects. “I couldn’t change the infertility, but I could progress in other areas of my life,” she says.
She also found it helpful to keep a journal. “I didn’t always feel that I could talk to people about what I was going through, but I could get my feelings ‘out there’ by writing them down. That helped a lot.”
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