Grief infographics

After I passed the due-date from my brief pregnancy in 2018, I created some graphics to illustrate the layers of grief I’d experienced in trying to grow my family. Trying grief, infertility grief, adoption grief, pregnancy shock and excitement, miscarriage grief, and due-date grief, represented in different colors, one dot per day.

The captions below each version are the text that accompanied these graphics on Instagram.

It’s been 1757 days since we opened ourselves up to the possibility of having kids. Many of those days were spent wanting to get pregnant. For just as many, we’ve been waiting to adopt. There have been two short chapters of hopeful anticipation, and one long pause for grief. Looking back over that chunk of time, all the chapters and hopes and disappointments sort of blur together. It feels like a cloud I carry with me. It’s a general feeling—a mood. Wanting children but not having them, for 1757 days, eventually feels like a part of my identity, like an accent or quirk. I feel like everyone sees it on me, like I can’t shake it or cover it up. Sometimes I’m mad about it, occasionally I feel hopeful, but most days I just try to float in the flow of life and know that I’m right where I’m supposed to be, whether I feel pain or numb or lightness or dark. I’m no closer than I was before, necessarily, just 1757 days further down the road.

For 730 days, we thought we’d get pregnant like anyone else. I was almost 30, felt really solid and stable, we had a little house. But for two years, nothing happened. After seeing some doctors, we got an infertility diagnosis, citing multiple issues. “It will be nearly impossible for you to conceive on your own.” For 489 days, we grieved, processed, and opened up to the possibility of adoption. We raised money (thank you), went to trainings, met other adoptive parents, read books, grieved the trauma adoption comes from and inflicts despite its outcomes, and waited. For 47 days, we were one of two families being considered to adopt a little boy and girl, ages 7 and 6. I imagined reading books, movie nights, vacations at the coast. It felt so good and so obvious. It still does, in a way. For 234 days, we grieved not being chosen. We reset. We inquired about other children. We traveled. We worked. We waited. For 27 days, I lived in the mysterious awareness of pregnancy. We watched the heartbeat on the screen. Wept. Told some people and asked for support. We didn’t believe it could be true, but we slowly started to have hope. We put the sonogram on the fridge. For 213 days, I watched time pass from my miscarriage to my due date. I mourned, hard. It was dark and low. I put it all on the shelf. I talked it out. We fought. We cried. We found joy in pain. We sold our house in order to grasp the reigns of something that felt positive, and we embraced change. For 17 days, I’ve moved past my due date into a new chapter of waiting.

When I focus on my grief, the 27 days when I knew I was pregnant, and the 47 days expecting to adopt hurt the most. The possibilities in those 74 days were so real and so close, and those losses feel the most personal and deep and cosmically, spiritually not-right. Those losses have made hoping in other things, both frivolous and critical, seem foolish, since I have hoped for and lost what I’ve felt so ready and excited for, what I’ve known was right and have wanted so deeply. Those lost hopes are the most confusing. The 213 days from my miscarriage to my due date felt uniquely acute, as I watched other women swell with life and have beautiful babies. For the first time in the long journey, I was jealous during those 213 days. It was hard to grieve and move on during a time when things could have been really different. I’m glad those 213 days are behind me. I’m ready to let them go. The 740 total days of waiting to adopt, and the 730 initial days of hoping to get pregnant, after such a long journey, recede into the backdrop of the sharper pains. In a way, they color the whole experience. 1757 days and counting. We may adopt soon, and it may never happen—I’m okay with either. I have found hope in small things and life all around me. I’ve been deeply changed by these 1757 days.