When you are so good at projecting that even the Virgin Mary herself is somehow not off-limits: a Nativity story
By: Caroline Horste
Tags: Pregnancy Loss, Christmas, Advent, Infertility, Grief

I called her on the way back from church, which is a bit of a jerk move — most people hate talking on the phone, and I know this, but I was beset with guilt and I could not wait for a lengthy text conversation that wouldn’t even begin until I was home. “Dude, I’m sorry I said you should just ask people for what you need when we were talking this week like that would just solve all your problems. It’s actually so hard.”

“Well, you were kinda right, though,” she said, because she is gracious and a gem, and also because I was kinda right, I just wasn’t completely right. “I guess the hard thing is just knowing what to ask for.”

And isn’t that just the nail on the head — I have no idea what to ask for when what I actually want is the right to wear a sign my entire life that just says “please handle with care, I have some weird unresolved shit that sometimes flares up out of nowhere and now we can apparently add the entire fricking season of Advent to this list, I don’t know, I know it’s weird and a lot but like I said please just be gentle with me, and also I’m working on it”.

Which is not practical, not least because 1) everyone could benefit from such a sign, and 2) I actually sometimes am not working on it, like when I listen to an entire Gospel reading and starve the resulting feelings of any attention at all until hours later. (Two readings, today, actually, because I often play the liturgy music for this church and today was such a day — that’s right, I heard this reading twice and at no point thought that these feelings were worth examining until I got home.)

So, in absence of a blanket-absolution handle-with-care sign, I suppose what I actually want is what anyone wants who’s experienced grief that makes them feel like an unhinged person breaking entirely new ground in the human experience: I want someone to say, no, I’ve been there. I think it’s normal.

I mentioned I have twice lost my shit listening to Christmas carols this week. Once was in the middle of shopping, which was clearly a bit of a valley. So it’s not entirely accurate to say I haven’t known that there’s anything going on — just that I’ve been able to move through it, which has given me the luxury of slamming the lid on these feelings and scribbling FOR UNPACKING SOME OTHER DAY onto the top. “Some other day” seems elusive. I’ve tried to write about this probably four times in the last week and it’s been really hard.

When I’m having a hard time writing my way through a feeling I often initially make that difficulty about me. And maybe I am the only person in the world who feels this way (“listening to Gospels about the birth of Jesus makes me feel shitty and bitter and totally unable to not let my I’m Supposed To Be A Mother narrative drive my entire brain”), but experience has shown me that every time I think that, it isn’t actually so. And this has been the weirdest lousiest feeling, and it’s been following me around like a raincloud since I woke up the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. So if you’re following along at home and reading any pieces of this and thinking wow I also thought this was a weird unique way in which I was totally ruining the holidays and also that I was completely alone, I wanted to name and put out into the universe the following:

Turns out that wanting to be a parent and not being one can be really specifically hard for people of Christian faith during Advent. Turns out this might be one of the (many, many) things people mean when they say that for some people the holidays are not completely joyful. I think we’re doing great. You don’t need that from me but it’s true. Someone should be congratulating us for leaving the house in December. (*2020 note: stay home!) I don’t know your life and I don’t believe in falsely lighting up hope, but whatever scary things might be true about your fears, I can at least tell you that you aren’t alone. We’re in it together. It sucks and it’s often lonely but we aren’t alone. Part of what makes pregnancy loss so hard is that it affects us in weird ways at weird times and we can’t predict when we’ll be angry or sad or lonely or tired. There’s so much pressure to show up joy-first during Christmastime (and I imagine during the most festive holidays for other faiths, though I can’t speak to that directly) that showing up mostly just kinda bummed that you’re not a parent feels like an enormous middle finger to everyone in your life and also yourself and a little bit to God. And if you’re like me, that’s not how you mean it — which seems not to matter when parsing out how it feels. “Leave me alone!! But also please never leave me.” You know. Classic grief shit. Another part of what makes complicated grief in general so hard is precisely that it is complicated. I haven’t felt able (willing?) to share this with anyone so far because, for all of the ways that everything I’ve said so far is true, it’s also true that Advent and Christmastime are awesome, and I love this season, a lot, and if the people in my life who love me but are sometimes not certain how to show up for me start approaching me during Christmastime with kid gloves because “oh my God I know this time just reminds you of all the things in your life that make you pissed off and we don’t have to talk about it but we also totally could, you know you can talk to me about all your most depressing shit whenever you want, right” before asking me to pass the ornaments while we’re decorating Christmas trees I will fling myself into the sun. Also, though, thank you so much for saying that, truly and sincerely. I know I can talk to you about all my most depressing shit whenever. And I appreciate that, really deeply. And I love you. But Christmas isn’t always linked to that for me. And if I bring this up now, in this way, I worry that it will be, for you, when you think about me and Christmas.

And that’s the heart of it: it doesn’t feel fair (or realistic) for me to expect the other people in my life to follow these twists and turns and nuances. I can barely keep up myself (clearly). I don’t know what the answer is. I wrote earlier this week about being someone who really doesn’t like when things don’t make sense; I usually write to figure it out.

I have no answers here — this sucks in a way that I haven’t figured out yet — but it does feel worth saying out loud. Today I was shaming the life out of myself for my knee-jerk reactions to Advent Gospels. One of the loveliest things anyone has ever said about anything I’ve written was that reading my words made her feel “the opposite of lonely”. That’s all I’m trying to do, here: if you are having a hard December because hearing about the birth of Christ with a history of pregnancy loss is a bad experience, I hear you, I see you, and I think whatever we’re feeling is fair and valid and normal. I wish it was different. I want the tidings of comfort and joy, too. I want them for both of us — all of us. The best I can do for you is #3 above: for whatever else you might be, you’re not alone. Maybe that’s a road to comfort and joy, and maybe it isn’t (it’s okay if it’s not), but it’s at least true and unshakable and you can hang your hat on it: it’s so hard, but it’s not just you. You are the opposite of alone. I hope, with my entire heart, that some part of this season makes you feel the opposite of lonely, too.