Friend,
Who can you talk to when you’re struggling to get pregnant?
Start with your spouse, your mom, your grandma, your pastor, or your counselor. Tell someone that you trust. Don’t hold back the details of how you feel for fear of shame or vulnerability.
Someone needs to know your heart. You are worth knowing.
So, how do you find a safe person to talk to?
Look for these traits:
1. Belief.
Your safe person should believe in the result you’re praying for. We’ve all done it- told someone the contents of our heart only to have them dish out advice that cuts us deeper. Words have power. Pick someone who will speak the words over you that are healing. Do your best to surround yourself with people who love you and care enough to believe with you, and sometimes for you, on those particularly tough days.
2. Tight Lips.
Your safe person should not be a gossip. Nothing is worse than someone repeating your heartache to someone else, as if it’s juicy and worth spreading. Listen, if someone wants to share your story, they should know you well enough to:
A) Know whether it’s private or not
B) Respect you enough to ask if they can share it
(For the record, you can share my story! 🙂 )
3. Healthy.
Your safe person should be healthy. I don’t mean physical health, I mean emotionally healthy. When we share our deepest pain with people, we should find someone who can respond with truth- which comes from a well of clean water. It’s not possible to get clean water from a dirty well. In the same way, when we go to someone who struggles with anger, bitterness, disappointment, etc., and ask them to give us hope during a dark time- we probably won’t get the healing words we need. Healthy people make healthy people. People simply cannot replicate what they have not experienced.
4. Same Season.
It’s not a deal breaker- but if you find someone who is all these things and also has walked through infertility, there’s your sign. Reach out to them. All too often the beautiful women struggling to conceive never voice their pain out of shame. This results in isolation and feeling like no one else is walking through it. That’s not true. There are wonderful, amazing, talented, kind, and healthy women out there who either have walked through infertility or are currently in that season.
Don’t shy away from them, and close yourself off from the healing moment of experiencing what C.S Lewis called friendship, “Friendship is born at the moment when one [wo]man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself [was struggling to get pregnant] . . .”
Whoever you speak to, I hope you find comfort in being known- and that they share the truth with you- which is that you are loved and worthy of being a mama.
Hope these tips are helpful!
Love,
