What Is Family?
“When are you going to start a family?”
I really wanted to be a mom. It was a difficult road that included lots of needles, calendar reminders for shots (not the fun kind), doctor visits, probes, and years of questioning my life and everything else. Fertility treatments that centered my life around the question of if or when I would become pregnant, and the forced kind of planning that puts everything on hold. Can’t plan a trip because I’ll need to go in for treatment without any advance notice. Don’t feel like I can take time off work because I’ll need the days if I do get pregnant and want to take maternity leave. My mental health was at a real low point.
Mother’s Day was especially awful for me in 2016 and 2017, two years sandwiched between a miscarriage and a successful IVF cycle that actually produced my first child. Everything was a trigger for me during that time. Baby showers were daggers. Announcements about “oops babies” were particularly awful. Targeted ads for birth control in my social media were cruel jokes. And suggestions, made either in media or by people in my life, that what I had at home did not already consist of a family, infuriated me.
What is family? Having small humans living in your home doesn’t automatically make you a family. There’s no specific number of people to constitute a family. It’s the love, the care that you have for each other. The desire for those you love to have the best life they can lead, and to actively help them lead it. That’s what makes you family.
The idea that my family hadn’t “started” because I had yet to birth a child made me want to lash out.
I know this week, sandwiched between Infertility Awareness Week and Mother’s Day, can be a particularly difficult week, even for those who have had success after failure. But especially for anyone who has yet to see the fruition of feeling like a pincushion, I want you to know that I see you. I remember clearly.
To quote the wonderful book, Families, Families, Families: “If you love each other, then you are a family.”
If you’re having a hard time this week, or if the anxiety of past Mother’s Days is still fresh in your mind, I can only say that I know how you feel, and I’m here with a hug and a listening ear. If you need a safe place to type out your feelings, DM me on IG.
