Grief isn’t a comparison game. Trauma isn’t a comparison game.
I process by writing. Something about getting the words from my head onto paper makes the feelings real and when they are real I can process them. If they just stay in my head I ruminate on them and run scenarios, words and thoughts through my head endlessly. So it’s time to process something that happened yesterday.
Today is Monday April 3rd, I had a very busy day on April 1st so I wasn’t on social media (facebook specifically) at all. Yesterday, April 2nd while I was scrolling I came across an April Fools pregnancy announcement. With everything we’ve gone through with infertility the thing that really has stood out to me is that people often don’t realize how their jokes about family and kids and pregnancy hurt the invisible community of infertility. I probably should have just scrolled on by but I decided it was an opportunity to show a different side. All of the comments were joking and laughing. I commented that it wasn’t funny it was accidentally hurtful. I provided some stats on infertility and miscarriage and asked that next year a different joke be made that didn’t hurt such a significant number of people. Now this woman who made the joke, let’s call her Kitty, is an African American rights advocate. She touts herself to the public as being a voice for the voiceless. She is a prominent citizen in Spokane and has been asked to give many speeches to different organizations about black rights. Recently she blasted a restaurant on social media for having a menu item that was insensitive to the black community and got them to change the item name.
Because of her work with minorities and those who have been discriminated against it was my assumption that she just was unaware of how hurtful a joke like that can be and that when kindly pointed out she would adjust her ways.
I left the comment. Made a post on my wall about how hurtful and insensitive pregnancy jokes are and went about my day. I went skiing with a friend at Lookout pass actually. Not great cell reception up there. BUT I did have enough to check the post in the middle of the day and to my shock found that I was receiving a LOT of hate for my comment. People said I was being a victim and needed to go seek therapy. Kitty said that she was a military vet and valued her freedom of speech and I needed to stop trying to shut her down. People accused me of being the ONE person who always took things to seriously and couldn’t take a joke. I commented back that I hoped I would always be the one who would stand up for a minority and show a different perspective from the cultural norm.
Long story short, there was lots of back and forth. I eventually asked the question if I should just scroll past a post that is offensive or should I try to educate the poster and hope they are open to feedback. In the end I was called a racist and told that my grief was unimportant compared to the grief of the African American. I was told that those who had been raped (Kitty) had a bigger trauma to process then someone who had choices about how to have a family (me apparently). I was told that IVF, surrogacy and adoption are all viable options but that you can’t change the color of your skin so my sadness and pain doesn’t matter in comparison to that. And then was promptly unfriended by Kitty.
Whew.
That’s a lot to process. I spent the rest of the day rolling around in my mind what had actually happened. Had I been saying racist things? Was I playing the victim card? Should I just have scrolled past and ignored the post knowing full well that it would be very hurtful to a large % of the community? What would I want someone to do if I had been the poster? Would I have been open to feedback? (in reality I probably would have felt a lot of shame to have brought pain to someone, I wouldn’t joke about it again though!)
It actually really shook my worldview for a minute. I have approached infertility and the rude and insensitive things people have said with the mindset that people just don’t know the pain of infertility and if they did they wouldn’t say those things.
They wouldn’t say:
That IVF can fix it all (shocker here, IVF doesn’t erase the years of infertility, it’s also not a magic cure . Neither is adoption).
"When are you going to give your parents a grandbaby?”
“You would make such lovely children, you owe it to the world to have one”
“Just pray about it, God has a plan”
“There’s always next month”
“You’re still young, you have time”
“Do you have kids?” “Oh, why not????”
My entire worldview about infertility is people aren’t intentionally being mean, they are just unaware. But that was rocked a bit when I made someone aware and was told that I was the one with the problem not them. It made me question whether people are actually kind and good. It made me wonder why I had even tried to bring awareness to this issue. Why try?
But then I started thinking about other things. Mature and enlightened people don’t compare their pain to others to decide whose is worth being upset about. Mature people don’t tell you what you’re allowed to feel and what you’re not. It’s the small person who says their trauma is more important and thus worth grieving.
Grief isn’t a comparison game. Trauma isn’t a comparison game.
Saying that you were able to get over your rape and so I should be able to get over my infertility isn’t the same thing. We don’t have to ‘get over something’. We are allowed to be sad about that thing forever. We are allowed to be advocates for the people currently going through that situation no matter what it is. All traumas are different but they have the potential to either bind us together or tear us apart. We can fixate on who gets the trophy for worst trauma, or we can see that each other is in pain and that your pain feels to you the way that my pain feels to me. There are no winners here. It sucks all around.
Saying that your ancestors were slaves and mine weren’t doesn’t help anything. It makes me feel like you are once again trying to show me that I’m not allowed to have pain because I don’t have generational pain. I can recognize and value and grieve your pain and also mine. In fact, I do have generational pain, it just looks different then yours looks. This mindset of ‘you don’t get a say because you haven’t been through what I’ve been through’ doesn’t bring humanity closer together. It creates a hierarchy of who is valuable enough to have a say and who isn’t. That doesn’t accomplish what we are ALL after.
I believe we all want to be seen as valuable and important for who we ARE. Not what we have or haven’t accomplished, not how much money we have or who our parents were/are. Not because of the color of our skin, the religion we preach or the people we’re attracted to. We want to be seen, valued and loved for who we ARE.
The idea that if you get to speak about your issue, then it leaves less time and attention for me to speak to mine, is a poverty mindset and should be banished.
One of the other things that irked me is that Kitty went and posted on her wall that If you don’t like what she has to say in a post it’s not about YOU it’s about HER and to just scroll past.
If someone said something outrageous in an uneducated way do you think we should just scroll past it? A good example of this for me is the confederate flag. To me it was just a flag. I don’t fly it, but I see people who do and it didn’t bother me until someone pointed out how much pain that symbol causes to the African American community. I didn’t know. When it was pointed out to me I immediately got it. I understood the importance of not supporting a symbol of death and trauma. I grew my thinking that day. I think that people fly the confederate flag still because of THEIR values. In other words, their flair/post isn’t about YOU it’s about THEM and their beliefs.
I don’t think we should scroll past it. I think we should feel safe to speak out about the issues that are important to us. And if someone offers to educate you about an issue that’s important to them, don’t make it about whose issue is more important.
