I got together with someone that I hadn't seen for a long while over breakfast recently. Dancing around the elephant in the room, I had to ask her something.
"I noticed that you stopped talking with me after a few months after surgery- that was two years ago- and now you asked me to add you again on Facebook last summer. What changed your mind?"
Yup, that's me, straightforward. To the point.
She looked down and then said she didn't want to explain.
I said, "okay." I was ready to drop it, and was munching on a piece of my omelet.
She bursted out, "I can't handle your grief, you had been so sad so long time, you won't get better- I decided to give you six months before I gave up on you. That's why I defriended you."
Six... months? You can't handle it?
Really, where is the directions that grief has to be limited to six months? Where is it in instructions that my grief don't have to be about me, but about you?
That comes to an article that I had read two months ago, and I feel the article is a must for everyone involved, not the nonmoms only, but their families and furthermore, their friends. Here is the link- How not to say the wrong thing
This would have lessened pain for everyone. Less pain. Less anger. Less resentment.
As it is, I know who to talk with, you dear friends and fellow IFers/CNBC bloggers. It's pretty much safer to talk in this circle, if you think about it.
Some people can't handle it for different reasons. That's for sure. I think if I kept on talking about my infertility with my close friends, they would "run out" of things to say to me (and they're not callous people at all), whereas for people like you and me, we just naturally know what to say - or not to say. So I'm also grateful I have my IF blogger friends and now I have GW ladies as my tribe.
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