Tag Archive for: after stillbirth

יציאה משתיקה לחרות

Departing From Silence To Freedom

departing from silence to freedomYears before I had my stillbirth with Ayelet, I went through sexual trauma.

This trauma took over my life primarily through fear. Thanks to successful therapy sessions (which were at times also scary. And challenging. And exhausting. Sometimes it felt like it took me hundreds of years to go through it), I conquered fear and chose to be in the light

I mentioned fear as the decision-maker in my life at the time. Another constant companion was silence.
Silence was involved with each trauma I went through. It was also present in other trauma stories I heard from friends and read about in books.

How is it that silence is the one thing that most traumas have in common? Thinking about it rationally, it doesn’t make sense. After all, we didn’t do anything wrong; others did us wrong. It’s almost like a given: something happened, and we’re not going to talk about it. When I talk about being silent, I don’t mean just the actual act that caused the trauma but being quiet altogether, about how we feel, and about what’s going on in our head. Just not talking and being silent.

This is the case with many women after stillbirth too. No one’s talking about it, including us. Many women can suffer from post-traumatic as a result of stillbirth.
Guess what. Nobody’s talking about that either.

Silence

I read a bit about silence, trying to figure out why it is so present in our lives, and here’s what I found out:

As I stated before, silence can be found in various traumas: Holocaust survivors and 2nd generation, PTSD, child abuse (sexual or physical violence), and also, stillbirth.
I recently started reading the work of Dr. Yochai Ataria, which is fascinating, even though I don’t always understand or agree with him. Dr. Ataria mainly talks about PTSD, and this is what he has to say about silence: “trauma is an impossible situation. It is something between a nightmare and a delusion. A state in which all sets of rules, beliefs, hopes, and expectations collapsed. There are no explanations but complete horror. The post-traumatic person is, therefore, representing a condition in which all words are truly gone. Words are a system of symbols that are completely detached from the experience. Trauma leaves words out and causes them to be foreign. This is why, in a PTSD state, it is not possible to use the every-day language to describe the world behind the curtain. Words don’t describe or explain. They obstruct. Any kind of testimony is damaging the authenticity of the original experience. Speaking up turns the impossible to “just another story.”
Dr. Ataria further explains that reality is a world of words. Silence is the primal protest of people who went through trauma. Trauma is a different world. Through silence, they express they have reached the lowest point, and they refuse to cooperate with reality, with the world.

As a woman who has been talking about her traumas for several years now, it is understandable to see my problem with Dr. Ataria’s explanation of silence.
Of course, I can understand his meaning. I felt like this with my traumas before I started to deal with each one of them.
How can we even begin to describe stillbirth? Every word belittles all I went through during those two days, from the moment I was told my baby girl Ayelet died inside my womb and all the daggers in the heart like experiences I was served by reality. Each of these experiences prompted me to seclude myself more and more. 

However, it is a known fact that words have power. In the wrong hands, this power is abused. But in the right, delicate, sensitive hands, words can empower and us.
My therapist and I shared many words. Many times they were trying, painful, awkward words.
Who wants to sit and feel shame from head to toe? Not me.
Who wants to feel guilt floating around, threatening to paralyze one’s heart? Not me.

Nonetheless, these words were spoken. Yes, they released shame and guilt in all their glory (and other emotions), but these words also helped bring these emotions back to their normal proportions.
It’s been nine and a half years after the stillbirth, and I can sometimes feel guilt over my girl Ayelet’s death. But I now know it’s not true. Thanks to those words I spoke at my therapist’s office, I know the answer to that creeping thought. This is the empowerment I needed to feel I can lift my head and keep it up above the difficult swirling emotions I felt after my stillbirth.

Freud & Lacan

Dafna Ben-Zaken speaks talks about the Holocaust trauma, which was never talked about in her family but was felt throughout her childhood.
The silence was loud and very present.
A combination of Freud’s findings and Lacan’s approach explains silence: “It is a tear which was arbitrarily made and has no logic or meaning. It is a tear that leaves the subject without the defense of language. The injury will always show up suddenly and violently, leaving us shocked and distressed, and we try to collect residuals of words in which we try to understand what happened.”

Freud established an element of repression in dealing with trauma. Lacan added: when facing certain traumatic moments, we are verbally unable to express what we went through.
These can explain the experience of women after stillbirth. Many women are not interested in facing the stillbirth they went through because it is too hard even to try and talk about it, and all it’s affects on their body and soul. Their only wish is to move on, towards the next baby, in a desperate desire to give birth to a live baby.
I can understand that. Of course, I too wished for a live baby with all my heart. But a live baby can not erase the loss I went through. The live baby can not replace the baby I lost.

Repressing can not delete something that already happened. Repressing pushes the trauma away from us, but the trauma stays embedded in us in so many ways. The longer we remain silent and not talk about it, the trauma will penetrate deeper and deeper.
The goal is to integrate trauma into our lives, so it won’t be a force which runs our lives.

Departing from silence to freedom

It’s challenging to describe in words what we went through. That is why it’s easier to remain silent and not talk about it.
In the long run, this silence took a hefty toll from my life. I realized that although I didn’t want to talk about my experiences at all, I didn’t have a choice anymore. I had to talk about all of them.
I found that my ability to put my most inner secrets and fears into words is one terrifying experience, but at the same time, it marked the beginning of my healing journey.
I found that through telling my stillbirth story and talking about everything I went through, I can validate someone else’s stillbirth story, validate all her feelings and her sense of loss.
I found I can live my life as I see fit, and not be blinded by fear and missing out on so much.

This continues to be almost a daily mission for me, conquering the restraint of fear. It was present in my life for so many years, but I am overcoming fear again and again, and this, to me, is the true meaning of freedom: the power to act, speak, or think as one wants without restraint.
All this starts with words that come from the heart, the womb, the soul.

*Photo: street art in Tel Aviv, saying “ok we’ll talk, we said. And we were silent”

נדנדת הרגשות לאחר לידה שקטה

The Rollercoaster of Emotions After Stillbirth

rollercoaster of emotionsStillbirth is a loss.
We go through a real loss, even if society doesn’t always acknowledge our loss, as society never saw our baby.
But we felt our babies grow and move inside us, totally present in our lives.

Loss is known to everyone. I don’t know one person who hasn’t gone through a significant loss in hers or his life. When I saw “significant loss,” I mean significant to that specific person.
The kind of loss that creates intense feelings of mourning, sadness, a forced goodbye from a loved one. A profound difficulty performing daily activities, and much confusion.

The kind of loss that sends us through the rollercoaster of emotions of mourning. All the feelings I mentioned above are present at the same time, when we feel the need to laugh, smile, go out and have a drink to feel free from this emotional weight in our hearts. Oh, we know the weight won’t go away, it will wait for us, no doubt. But just for a few moments, we try to free ourselves from it.

Stillbirth is death.
Death of a baby. End of hopes, expectations, of a whole life.
It’s loss forced upon us.
Once we start addressing stillbirth as such, we will be able to understand all that we go through after stillbirth.
Once society addresses stillbirth as such, society will understand:
The need to mourn, the need to cry. We will realize that we are not “dwelling on this,” we are saying goodbye again and again. Each time will be a little different because we will be a little different.

We will understand the need for commemoration comes because we don’t want to forget what was erased from everyone’s memories.
We want to give meaning to this difficult and sad experience that we went through.

We will know this rollercoaster of emotions after a stillbirth is the rollercoaster of emotions one feels after losing someone significant to us.

But I think the most crucial part is for *us* to understand all this.
I think that in the end, it doesn’t matter if society understands us or not. I guess we’d rather have the seal of approval from people around us. I’m sure it’s easier than giving it to ourselves.
But we should be able to give it to ourselves, the permission to “dwell with it,” to mourn, to feel the loss, to “always talk about it, again and again,” because it is a part of the grieving process we need to go through before we enter the next phase.

Once we allow ourselves to feel everything, the need for assurances from people around us won’t be needed anymore.
The first weeks are difficult. As the Buddha said, thus it is.

Slowly the process we go through changes. Sometimes we’re up, and sometimes we’re down.
It’s all part of the healing journey.

after stillbirth

Thus It Is Mother- After Stillbirth

after stillbirthProf. Jacob Raz is a well-known author, speaker, and teacher of Buddhism. He wrote a book (in Hebrew), in which I found this, which brought me to tears.
The original text talks about a father who seeks comfort with Buddha, but I changed it a little, to mother. I hope Prof. Jacob Raz will forgive me.

When I read it after my changes, I feel Prof. Raz successfully captured what I went through after my stillbirth.
And what I feel many women go through after stillbirth.
Mainly, I love the deep understanding in which mourning and grief have a direct connection to love. Sorrow, difficulty, crying, this endless weight we go around with; thus it is.

 

 

 

At one time, some mother’s boy had died.
The bereaved mother, grieving and tormented
Came to the Buddha
And said,
My boy has died
And now that he is dead, I do not care to work or eat.
Again and again I roam the streets and moan,
Where are you, my boy? Where are you, my boy?
Please help me, teacher.

And the Buddha said to the mother,
Thus it is, mother, thus it is, mother
What is dear to you, mother, brings hurt and misery, suffering, grief, and despair,
Which comes from what is dear.

The mother, indignant and annoyed at the words of the Buddha, rose from her seat and went away.
What is dear to one brings joy and satisfaction, she thought, not hurt and misery!
How could the great master speak these words?

*
What did the Buddha say? He said this,
That which you are feeling now, mother,
Are hurt and misery, suffering, grief, and despair.
That is what you are now – grief and despair.
Right now
Thus it is, mother.

He did not say, may you know no more grief,
He did not speak words of consolation,
He did not say your son will return, did not say he will not return,
Did not say let time heal, go and meet friends,
Find meaning in your work,

He did not offer painkillers,
He did not say sit down to meditate,
Breathe in breathe out
Go to support groups, weekend workshops,
Sweat lodges or miracle-working gurus
He did not offer therapy
Nor reading in Buddhist classics

He did not say
Your son will become a god, or
He is in paradise now.
He did not say,
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord
He did not say all that
He did not offer God’s grace

He did not even talk about impermanence

He said
Thus it is, mother

You wish to feel no pain
To be free of grieving
But you cannot because this is what is now
Nowhere to go
And the more you wish to get rid of the pain
The more you suffer
Not only from the pain upon your son’s death
But also from the pain of the wish to be free from pain
And from the inevitable failure

Because there is no way for you not to be what you are now
A mourning mother, full of pain

Dear mother,
This is the nature of things
What is dear to you brings worry and pain
This is it
Anxiety is within the dear –
Like the color red in a pomegranate.
You want the joy of love but not its sorrow
But can you have right without left, high without low,
Youth without old age
Meeting without separation?

Your loved one equals anxiety about his life and mourning about his death
There is no other way

But the Buddha might have also said,
Be your hurt and misery
And you are free.

Know them thoroughly,
And be free.
Go through them
Like getting wet in the rain, like watching your footprint.
Like eating your bread and breathing the air
Know them
And you are free

And then, you will see, dear mother –
Mourning is liberation
And so are joy, and fear, dance and dream, and old age
All lived
Full measure

These and all the rest
Such as they are
Members of creation
Oh, these very sentient beings

The matter from which all is made
Free to come, free to go

Thus said the Buddha unto me