Mon 2 Apr 2007
On Acceptance
Posted by Jane under Updates
[4] Comments
I got word last night that a cyber-friend has suffered a miscarriage. My heart is just breaking for her. The day we miscarried my first response was, “I’m disappointed, but hey, we live in a fallen world”. Talk about a pat reaction. That lasted about a day, I think I was in denial.
The “Five Stages of Grief” have become so much a part of our popular culture. I heard somewhere that the person who first described these stages actually called them the “Five Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News”. This makes more sense to me, especially since the final step is acceptance. It just doesn’t seem fair that the Holy Grail of grief would be, “Just accept it”.
Keeping more in the original spirit of the steps, I think maybe what you are supposed to accept is just the truth of the catastrophic news you’ve just received. Maybe even take in the fact that this is your new reality. The denial, anger, bargaining, depression are all necessary to saying, “Very well, I accept that I am not dreaming, this is really happening and I have no control over it”.
But does that mean that you’ve grieved it and accepted it? As in, “Now I see why this had to happen and I see that it is good”? Our God, who works things for good, might be able to tweak things a little and get you some sweet consolation prizes, but sometimes news is just pretty bad. And although I gained some compassion, some maturity and some wisdom from our miscarriage, I would gladly trade and go back to my old clueless self if it meant that that little life could have gone on.
I read a book about infertility that describes a final step that the author believes must happen for grieving people to go on with life, whatever that means. Transformation. That every grief must be transformed into some kind of lesson or gain in your life. That accepting reality just isn’t good enough, that you just can’t live like that.
So that’s what I’m working on today. I have accepted the best I can that this is our new reality. What the transformation will be, I’m not sure yet. Would I still take a healthy Ramona over anything that might be behind Door #2? Of course. But my choice is learn and grow through this or don’t. When everything seems so out of control and scary, it’s nice to have choices.
Jane.
Hey Jane
I was just reading yesterday’s and you have posted another. Shortly after Wren came home from hospital I was listening to NPR and heard a program about that “stages of grief” theory. Apparently it hadn’t been tested and a couple of researchers did a study to explore it further:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7502317
They found it is pretty much true but that people tend to come to acceptance earlier than they thought and that anger wasn’t such a common thread.
Instead, and this is the bit I really related to:
“Yearning, Maciejewski says, is a more dominant characteristic after a loss than sadness.”
I kept missing that other life in which Wren was home with me or that other life in which the baby I lost was having his or her first birthday (I shared a due-date week with my best friend for one of my losses – the hardest one).
Wren has kept me too busy to have the phantom birthday pangs as much this time around (April) but I do sometimes yearn for a world in which he never goes to hospital again until he has an appointment with a gerontologist.
I am glad you are having some sense of acceptance – you really got thrown into this in a dramatic and sudden way and I would not be surprised if you have some experience of shock to get through. I found out at 22 weeks which was a long long lifetime ago and my acceptance was about a month later when we had a second opinion confirm the diagnosis.
Still, I get what you mean about choices. I am really finding a lot of help from meeting others whose kids have CHDs (online and at our support group) and it makes this the new normal.
My experience with the stages of grief is that they are fluid and often happen in no particular order.
I agree with the idea that the hardest part about grief is “yearning.” With my miscarriage, the first stage was kind of a shock, where every morning I woke up and was hit with the reality again that I had not had a nightmare, that I had to go through another day of pain. But it was worse after the shock wore off, and I just constantly wished for the life I had planned to have this year. Every time planning comes up for this year, I can’t help thinking what things would have been like.
I can’t tell you how much it helps to read the entries and comments on this blog though. Like Shannon said, somehow reading that others have similar struggles helps things seem a little more “normal.” Thank you so much for your honesty. We continue to pray for your family.
Every time I read or hear about someone suffering a miscarriage I ache for them. I pray they experience healing and restoration of the hole that is left when the life inside you is no more.
I also remember with vivid clarity how painful it was to miscarry our first child. At the end of this month it will be 4 years since we lost our first child but in those moments it feels like yesterday.
I do agree that we have a choice. I grieved differently than other women who had experienced miscarriage and my “stages” looked to me to not fit the pattern. I will never understand why it had to happen but I do know it has made me look differently at my children. I do not look lightly on the miracle of life nor assume childless couples must not want children yet. It certainly changed how I empathize with those who experience infertility and loss. I hope it has made me more sensitive in what questions I ask and how I ask them of women and couples.
I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like for my twins if their older sibling was here. I still experience sadness for our loss. The wound is less raw, the cut less deep but the scar is still there. Healed and stronger than it was before but still there.