Taking up the challenge
I am so pleased that Anne Marie has taken up my call for writing prompts and her challenge ties in nicely with yesterday’s Why Words Matter theme.
Here is Anne Marie’s writing prompt
What are those phrases, those words, those things you’ve heard spoken (or written) that have caused you to become irritated? Annoyed? Angered to the “I’ll seriously hurt you” point? Gotten cranky over? Were they said to you? About you?
Check out Anne Marie’s response here.
So, I am going to join in with Anne Marie, not with one but with several “helpful” things said to me in my fertility challenges over the past 4 years.
“It’s God’s Will” (doesn’t help me)
“You could always adopt” (complicated by age and history of cancer)
“Just relax and it will happen” (you try relaxing under this kind of stress)
“You are so lucky to have all this free time to do what you want and go where you want without kids hanging out of you” (but we want kids hanging out of us)
People don’t mean to be hurtful when they say these things to couples struggling with infertility, but nevertheless their words wound more than they realize. I am putting this out there as a plea for sensitivity when speaking to your childless friends. If you find yourself at a loss what to say or an impulse to offer advice, don’t. Just say a heartfelt “I’m sorry” and that will suffice..believe me.
i love the idea of these writing prompts – really brings everyone together. thanks for sharing your own experience – i won’t say anything more to you than I am sorry you have had to go through such a hard time over the past few years
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Hi susan, I too love the sense of shared experience and solidarity we get from this exercise and hope we can continue with the writing prompts over the coming year.
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As someone who is also on the trying to conceive roller coaster, I can add a few more phrases to your list! God must have another plan for your life is one of them…usually delivered with someone for whom God’s plan has been numerous children. I don’t know how they can presume to know the mind of God and I’m afraid that is what I have been known to tell them on occassion
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Yes Alison, I have heard this one too and it is frustrating!
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I know people who are well meaning suggest adoption, and while that is of course a very worthy suggestion, do they have any idea that it is not as easy as waking up one day and saying I can’t have the biological child I long for with the husband I love, but hey ho I can always adopt – it doesn’t work like that
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Fending off well meaning advice when you are infertile is very like fending off advice when you have cancer – I speak from experience here…the old my friend had cancer/couldn’t conceive until she took this supplement, changed her diet, went to see this healer, prayed, welll…you can imagine the rest….is often thrown at both the infertile woman and the woman diagnosed with breast cancer..believe me, I’ve had both and heard all of this useless advice
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Yes, Lara, it is true that people don’t seem to realize that neither cancer or fertility is as straightforward as a one size fits all condition. It is far more complicated than that.
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Lara, I have had breast cancer but haven’t had personal experience of infertility – your comment has opened my eyes how the two are similar and will make me more careful in the future of unwittingly saying something which might hurt anyone going through fertility challenges.
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“You need to take a vacation – betcha you will come back pregnant after that” (If that were the case, i’d have a brood of kids by now)
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Me too Angela!
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Have you tried standing on your head after sex? That might work!
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Now, why didn’t I think of that. Duh! It’s that easy huh?
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Like you Marie, I have had to endure the pain of multiple miscarriages and one of the most insensitive things said to me each time I have lost another precious baby…”Well at least you know you can get pregnant”
Thanks for that..but I am still childless and have had to go through the indescriable pain of losing my longed for babies!
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Sometimes i wonder which is harder Caroline – never being able to conceive in the first place or the pain of conceiving, getting your hopes up and then seeing your dreams crash around you a few weeks or months later.
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Here’s one of my favorites – usually said to my husband more…”think of all the fun you are having trying!”
Oh yes, it’s great fun to be under incredible pressure each month, to be prodded and poked, injected and drugged and then suffer the disappointment month after month when all our fun trying has got us nowhere – heaps of fun!
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As was said about cancer, it sure is a whole heap of no fun
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“Here, take one of my kids -s/he’s driving me crazy” Well, ok then..if you insist, I will…
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“It could be worse” well actually it is the worst for me…years of trying to conceive, tests, procedures, drugs…6 pregnancies lost…yeah it’s pretty much the worst it can be for me right now..
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I have a well meaning friend who often calls me up to say..I had dream last night you were pregant – I know she means well…but jeez what do I do with that comment?
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I don’t think these comments are meant to wound, thought they do, it is just that unless you have gone through the gut wrenching, heartbreaking ups and downs of infertility, you really don’t know how much it hurts.
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Thank you for opening up this discussion and letting those of us who have heard a variation on these comments so many times, know that we aren’t alone in our frustration
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This struck a nerve with me because of my sister. Some people are, as someone said in the Facebook discussion I mentioned, “missing a sensitivity button.” She was kind with her description. I could come up with a few stronger opinions! I’m glad you shared my challenge with your readers. Truth is, the idea was sparked by your post yesterday…..
xoxox
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Am so glad you set us this challenge Anne Marie and look forward to more in the future too – i think it’s a great way for us to spark off each other and discover a sense of solidarity x
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I have been TTC for just over 3 years now and these comments are sadly very familiar to me too. I am glad I am not on my own in despairing of these well meaning suggestions.
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Is there anything anyone can say to an infertile that helps or comforts I don’t think there is. When, as desperately as you try and pray about it, but you cannot control the one thing you want with all of your heart – to create a precious life with the man you love, then, no there is no word that will comfort.
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I want to thank you for writing this post and for the opportunity to read these comments. I have a dear friend who is struggling with terrible depression after her fourth miscarriage. My heart aches for her and while, I have not been crass enough to say anything like has been mentioned here, i am at a loss to know what to say to her at all. Reading this post and the comments, I realize there is nothing I can say – all I can do is show her my love and compassion.
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I don’t have a comment about insensitive things said to me..though i have had my fair share, I don’t hold it against people – they really don’t understand – how could they when all some of them have to do is decide they are going to have a baby and hey presto nine months later out it pops – easy as buying a car. It makes me feel as if there is somehting very wrong with me – I feel such a failure that I can’t do what others seem to do so easily.
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I hope that even if people don’t actually understand infertility through personal experience, they can at least be more sensitive with their words, if they read this post and heartfelt comments.
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Thank you for this post and the comments from everyone – I’m glad to know there are people on same tough road as me – it gives me a sense of comfort.
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It’s important that we have places we can go to where we know we aren’t alone Valerie in our struggles through life, whatever these struggles may be.
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Are you sure you are doing it right? Said as a joke and usually to my DH..but yes, we are sure…and no, it’s more complicated than standing on your head, eating oysters, yada, yada…
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Due to my illness we had to make the choice not to have children just as we were getting married. To have them would’ve caused more illness and suffering than we could bear.
We’ve come to accept it but there have been very hurtful remarks said to me over the years. Examples include ‘oh sure you hate children’,(where that lunatic co-worker got that from was beyond me). Others include ‘you’re better off without them’ or ‘if they can’t make you laugh, they can’t make you cry’. Plus you get the blocking out of conversations because you don’t have kids. As what would I know. Besides the irritation, it’s the hurt that goes along with not being part of the gang.
The comments, some said over 20 years ago you know today they hurt and irritate me still as much as the day the people felt the need to say them.
Your advice above Marie is great.
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Thank you for sharing your experience with us Marian and the points you make are so painfully true about feeling like an outsider looking in – as society is very much geared towards families with children.
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Hi Marie, it did me good yesterday. I hadn’t realised it was still getting to me so much. You have the knack of always getting to the core of every issue you write about.
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I write what I need to hear myself Marian 😉
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I agree with you Marian – it really does hurt to feel like you are such an outsider in a world which values families with children so much.
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Tks Ashley:) Nice to know there are more of us!
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This is simply great! Love the writing prompt, and those phrases for someone going through infertility are cruel and thoughtless.
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I just read your response to this prompt on your blog Beth – wonderful!
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Your words sadly ring true. I’ve endured many insensitive comments when undergoing cancer treatment. People don’t know what to say, so they say whatever comes to their mind. My hat’s off to AnneMarie on starting another great writing challenge. Liz has a different writing challenge (on iambic pentameter) at http://www.paw-paw-salad.com, if anyone is up to it. xx
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I just read your fine list of insensitive comments Jan – my, you have quite a collection there 😉
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Hi Marie, when I clicked the link to your blog from AnnMarie’s today, I expected to find a cancer post and I had something to add, but then I saw it was more about fertility and I had something to add about that, too! Go figure. Anyway, after I adopted my first child, people would say, “Watch, now you’ll get pregnant!” It was so annoying. First off, it diminished the value placed on my child, as if he were less important because he wasn’t “mine” or 2nd rate somehow and because, there was no chance I’d get pregnant and hearing those words only made me sad. I understand people want to be positive, but they just don’t get it sometimes. Maybe they should shut up about that which they know nothing about.
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Thank you for sharing your personal experience Stacey and letting me know I am not alone in this pain and frustration. I find it so much harder to write about this than breast cancer, so I do appreciate when someone understands and validates my experience. I also think that is very crass of folks to tell someone to adopt and then you will get pregnant – especially as there is only anecdotal evidence to back this theory up. In fact, much like cancer, infertility is a complicated condition with multiple causes and outcomes.
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After 8 years of what turned out to be unnecessary and incorrect fertility treatment, I gave up trying to fall pregnant in 1995 – at the age of 34. I am now 51, and was diagnosed with Stage 2b breast cancer in May last year. My doctors have told me that I have had a particularly rough ride with the cancer treatment, but I have to say that, without a doubt, this last year has NOT been the worst time of my life. I can joke about my breast cancer – I will never, ever, be able to joke about the desperation of trying to fall pregnant for so long and the terrible impact that it had on the rest of my life. I still find it very difficult to talk about it and I cry as I write this now.
Even up until I started looking like a chemo-junkie, I had people still asking me why I didn’t adopt. Or telling me I’d “better hurry up before it’s too late” (I was menopausal at 49 – the last time this was said to me). It is often implied that I obviously don’t like children. Two years before my breast cancer diagnosis I had a very large malignant ovarian tumour removed. This was almost definitely as a result of fertility drugs which I was not warned about at the time. It seems to make some people satisfied that I “gave myself’ ovarian cancer. They are still trying to suggest what I have done to give myself breast cancer.
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Cait, thank you for sharing such a pesonal story with us. I really understand the heartbreak you write of x
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Pingback: Writing Prompt on Hurtful Words : Mourning Has Broken
As we sat in my daughter’s living room after her husband had been killed in a car accident that morning, a neighbor related the story of how, several weeks earlier, someone’s cat had been hit by a car. She added, “Gosh, I hope nothing as bad as that ever happens in the neighborhood again.”
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Words fail me on that idiotic comment Lois!
I am also so very sorry to hear such a tragedy befell your family – I can’t even begin to imagine the devastation that must have caused to you all.
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Unbelievably insensitve and crass..shame on that lady
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How rude this lady. I can think of other words, but I won’t express them. It makes me unbearably sad when I read or hear stories of insensitivity such as this one. I’m so sorry this tragedy happened to your family, Lois. Words fail me. xx
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Wow, Stacey, these antiadoption attitudes really are everywhere. You put it so very well. And Lois, that is definitely a heartbreakingly cruel comment.
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Just catching up with this conversation this morning and seems it has garnered a great response from your readers Marie – loved reading the comments.
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