Gratitude

I really struggle with the word gratitude. Whenever it is said to me, or I read it somewhere, I can’t help but hear an unsaid end of the sentence. Practise gratitude…because you shouldn’t focus on the death of your child. Because it’s not that bad, you still have loads of good in your life. Because it could be worse?

I have always been an unwavering realist. I don’t overly focus on the negative, and I don’t overly focus on the positive. I’m usually able to see both in fairly equal measure, and I get equally irritated at blind optimism and complete pessimism. I’ve never had a day in M’s life when I haven’t been grateful that she is here. That doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the realities and challenges of parenting. And vice versa.

So I guess my personality partly sets me up for my response to gratitude in the context of my baby dying. Perhaps another part of the problem is that the concept of gratitude is launched on people far too early on in their grief. If today had been the first time someone had gently mentioned gratitude, maybe I wouldn’t have built up such a reaction to it. But mention gratitude to someone mere weeks or just a few months into their loss and you risk a backlash. The first time someone told me to be grateful that I had M was less than a week after Kaitlyn died. What to them probably sounded helpful and kind, hit me like a freight train and made me want to scream. How would you feel if your mother died and I responded by telling you to be grateful that you still had your father? We just wouldn’t say that sort of thing outside the world of baby loss. People need time to simply live for a little while in the devastation of what has happened to them before they are encouraged to start smelling the roses.

For too many people in the UK now, financial situations have become more and more difficult, the political situation feels somewhere between horrendous and downright dangerous and levels of anxiety and depression are through the roof. In this context we have latched onto positive psychology as some sort of bizarre panacea. Somehow life will be less hard if you meditate for ten minutes a day, eat your greens and keep a gratitude journal. That’s not to say that these aren’t all helpful things (although the gratitude journal thing isn’t for me). They really are helpful practices and I use some of them myself, in the context that is right for me. The issue I have is that they are presented as a fix, or worse a distraction – you can’t change the (sometimes completely unacceptable) situation, so instead you need to fix yourself. Politicians must love it – get everyone focussed on their gratitude, so they don’t focus on the increase in food banks, the state of education and health systems. The fact that in 2019 their baby can still die through inappropriate management of early labour.

Anything aimed at making me feel grateful to be alive feels horrendous and actually does me harm at the moment. My thoughts swirl in an uncontrollable vortex at the idea – in the earliest days I wasn’t grateful to be alive when Kaitlyn was dead, I wanted to be dead too, and then I would feel guilty that I was basically saying I wanted to be away from M, which I didn’t, and that all made me feel like I wasn’t being grateful enough for her either. It is often a deeply unhelpful place to end up and my mental health does much better when I’m not forced to think about whether I’m grateful to breathe in the air and feel the sunshine when Kaitlyn can’t. Another terrible one said to bereaved parents – the idea that you should be grateful because you can get pregnant and grow a child to full term. Believe me, none of that is any use if you can’t bring that child home. The point of pregnancy is not pregnancy, it’s to bring home your little baby and watch them grow up as part of your family.

There are things in this world I am indescribably thankful for. My husband. My daughter. My experience of being able to grow and parent my daughter for three years in my old normal, without the many shadows of loss hanging over us. My wonderful friends and family. Taking small steps in my recovery. Working for a kind and supportive boss and team. Being able to live in a lovely village. My thankfulness for these things is there every day but I feel it at times of my own choosing. It exists alongside my pain, on a parallel track – it is in no way a fix for my pain. I am thankful for Kaitlyn, too. I am glad she came into my life, to have been with her every day for 9 months. I am thankful to have been able to spend time with her, and that we no longer live in a time when dead babies are whisked away before the mother can see them. I am thankful for my unbreakable bond with her, a bond that endures even beyond death. This thankfulness sits alongside the pain of her loss, on its parallel track. Nothing will ever address, change or make bearable the pain of her loss. Sometimes I focus on the track of loss, pain and darkness. Sometimes I focus on the track of thankfulness. And that’s ok. It is possible to do both, to hold both, without that meaning that you’re not grateful enough, not positive enough, not “happy” enough.