One lesson God has been teaching Mary Ann is managing both joy and grief. Because when she looks back on her life she realizes her most joyous moments also contained sadness.
At the time she didn’t know how to deal with the duality of her emotions. It seemed wrong to acknowledge the sorrow. Yet it was there because she wasn’t entirely joyful. But neither was she entirely sad. It was a muddled combination of both. Where her happiness wasn’t as high as it could be and her sorrow wasn’t as low. She struggled with how to express this dichotomy of emotions.
The happy song
To illustrate her struggle, she shares the story about her happy song. When she was going through infertility, she used to listen to one particular CD. Most of the tracks on the album were sad, making it the perfect outlet to express her emotions at the time.
However, there was one song that had the word ‘happy’ in the title. Not exactly the kind of song to listen to while battling infertility. So Mary Ann promised herself she would play that song the day she found out she was pregnant.
She’s pregnant
If everything had gone according to plan, that would’ve been a perfect time to play the song. Unfortunately, on that day she was admitted to the hospital for ascites (read more about that here).
Listening to the song at that time didn’t seem right because Mary Ann wasn’t just feeling happy. She was also sad. The pregnancy wasn’t going as expected.
How could she listen to a song about happiness when she wasn’t entirely happy?
So she hold off until the next opportune moment.
Hearing the baby’s heartbeat
The next milestone in the IVF journey is hearing the baby’s heartbeat. This means the pregnancy is viable. But the only reason Mary Ann heard the baby’s heartbeat was because she was in the hospital dealing with a pulmonary embolism.
Once again, this wasn’t a good time to play the song. Because although she was glad she heard her baby’s heartbeat, it was also disheartening to experience another complication. She’d already gone through so much to get pregnant. To be hit with complication after complication during the pregnancy didn’t seem fair.
She was definitely not in the right frame of mind to listen to a happy song.
Joy and sorrow can coexist
But it wasn’t until she was bringing her son home from the hospital that she realized joy and grief can coexist. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Yes, she was happy she was pregnant. It was the moment she had been dreaming about for many years. But she was also experiencing grief for everything she had to go through, this dampened her joyfulness. She’s learned there’s nothing wrong with that, joy and sorrow can coexist.
Emotions are natural
It’s important to know, emotions are a natural reaction to stimuli even negative emotions like sadness. If we are feeling sad, it’s because we are grieved. Take time to work through and process it.
But also be aware, sometimes we can even feel two different emotions at the same time. As stated in this article found in Psychology Today. And it’s best to embrace them both because that’s the way we’re feeling at the moment.
The key is to process whatever emotion we’re feeling, even if that means we need to wait to listen to a happy song.
In the next post, Mary Ann will share the one piece of advice she would give other moms.