Thriving Through And After Infertility And LossSample

Breaking the Silence

The silence that surrounds infertility, pregnancy and infant loss is a double-edged sword.

One side is sharpened by our society and culture; the side that keeps us silent due to mis-education, misunderstanding, blame and sympathy.

The other side is sharpened by our own grief and shame; the side that keeps us silent due to our broken hearts and our mistaken sense of being utterly alone in it.

It is unrealistic for those of us in the infertility and loss community to expect people to give us what we need in our suffering and healing when we refuse to speak our stories out loud. This does not mean you must write a book or publish the public blog or even put out the post on your social media walls before you are ready.

But you must speak.

Because if you stay silent, I can pretty much guarantee it will be difficult to find the support and love you will so need in this lifelong journey of loss and recovery.

You can also completely lose yourself to that silence.

This does require us to be brave and to break the taboo of our shamed silence; to make our loved ones and society uncomfortable, to make them acknowledge and talk about painful things, to see and to understand our losses. But more than that, this requires us to simply live our truths, to be the parents we know we are. Throughout scripture we read Jesus speaking His truth, words that made many uncomfortable and did not want to hear. And yet, He spoke them without shame and loudly.

I will swing this sword of silence until the taboos are shattered and we are all seen. I will swing it until we are all sharing our stories. Because this is the only way the conversations will change and the only way we will continue to heal.

It is only through our spoken stories that we are all seen and can rise ever upward.

Permission to speak our truth.

Permission to embrace our whole story.

Permission to practice our recovery.

Permission to own it all.