On Sara Bareilles, Good Grief, and Seasons

 It seems I'm in a season. My writing hasn't been too public lately because life has just gotten harder, and who wants to hear about that?

But I listened to an interview with Sara Bareilles on the making of her album Good Grief. And I feel like there are some things we should talk about more.

Good Grief was inspired by Sara losing two of her best friends (something I hope I don't have to tackle just yet), but she also talks about her infertility journey in Ladies in a Line. And I think if you've battled infertility, that grief never leaves you. 

Over the years I've talked with women who were able to conceive naturally, but had miscarriages. I've talked to women who could easily get pregnant, but who couldn't stay pregnant no matter what they tried. I've talked to women who held tiny babies destined to breathe on this Earth only moments in time. I've talked to women who were never able to conceive at all. There's a pain women carry every day of their lives, a pain that never really leaves the back of your mind, when you've battled infertility or lost a child. 

What we don't talk about widely is the betrayal you can feel - especially if you have a body that treats you cruelly every 28 days of the year - that all that pain, all that suffering, all that hope, can mean nothing. 

I had faith. I prayed. I had people praying for me. But there were cycles where I spent thousands of dollars and ended up with empty arms. One cycle ended in a voicemail telling me the pregnancy test was negative. I was furious with the carelessness of that nurse who left my hopes on the floor in a voicemail. 

I remember the day I truly broke. My poor husband had no idea what to do with me, the absolute sobbing, screaming mess of me asking God why he made me a woman if He couldn't let me do what a woman was supposed to do, what women were made to do. In that moment, the fact that I was well educated, had a great career, and on the outside looked successful meant nothing. I was a failure in the most basic sense of the word. My body was betraying me. 

My story has a happy ending. I have a joy of a child. Somehow all the intervention and science worked that one time. And it was relatively soon after the moment I broke. But I have 11 embryos that went into the ether. And for years my baby begged me for siblings, something that broke my heart because he doesn't really know how hard I tried to make that happen. 

So when a woman wants to tell me the story of her infertility journey, I stop and listen. Because there's something important about being heard. There's something important in carrying grief together. Because for some, that's the only happy ending to be had.