Group therapy and struggling with compassion

     That night, I had been invited to go to the group grief session at my church. The man leading the group (who's name shall be left out to protect the innocent) had told me the previous Sunday that the group was for people "in my situation" that had a loss and that it would be beneficial for me to go. Sounds like fun.

      **Let me just preface this by saying again that this blog is my true feelings, so I have included some posts that may be a smidge derogatory (such as the Jealousy page) and this is going to be one of those posts. I want to be real with everyone who comes across this page, so I haven't left anything out to spare anyone's feelings. I want all the stillbirth moms who read this to know that their feelings are real, and also that they are okay (to a point).

       I walk into the church and head back to where the classrooms are. First off, there are no signs pointing you to where you need to go, and secondly, they decided to put the grief class right next to the parenting class. Should have been my first sign, right there. So I go in and sit down, and there are two older people in the class and one younger lady who might be just a few years older than me. I sat down and introduced myself around to the group. As the leader waited a few more minutes for everyone to get there, we tried to engage in small talk to keep the room from being completely silent, but it was one of those awkward conversations where nobody really knows what to say because ultimately we would all rather be somewhere else (nobody wants to go to grief counseling).
      As we got started with the class, the leader told his story about how he lost his dad and how hard that loss was for him. Then, he starts talking about what it means to be a dad. He talks about being in the room when his son was born, and the guy literally holds his hands out in front of him like he was cradling a newborn and acts like he is turning to show his dad the newborn. Seriously? I was, of course, bawling my eyes out at this moment because first off, I didn't want to be reminded about how you're suppose to show your parents their new grandchild, and second off I was so angry with this person for not figuring out that what he was saying was incredibly insensitive to me. When I told Alex this story later, he asked me if the leader knew I was there and if he knew our story. Yes to both. I was sitting directly across from the guy no more than 8 feet away from him. He knew our story. He had invited us to the class. And this was just unbelievable.
     We continued around the room and I quickly realized that this was not a class for people who were in situations with infant loss or stillbirth or even loss of a child. This was a general grief class. Two of the people there were in their mid 60s or 70s and had lost their spouses. It was really, really difficult for me to feel compassionate towards these people. I'm not saying that their losses aren't significant, one lady had been married to her husband longer than I've been alive. What I'm saying is that it is just different when you hold your child that is no longer breathing, one that did not take a single breath on this earth. Its different when you have all these hopes and dreams for your child laid out in your head, and in an instant all those dreams are gone. Older people have lived so much of their life, and most of them have already lived out their dreams. I know that I probably shouldn't feel like this, but I do. I just have a hard time not yelling out, "You had so many good years with him, why are you sad? Rejoice that you had so much time!"

      I know that you are probably wondering why I didn't get up and walk out. I am a people-pleaser by nature. I tend to do what I think other people want me to do, and that's why I stayed. I worried about what the leader would think if I got up and left in the middle of a session. I didn't like the guilt I would feel (put on me by nobody else but me) by not attending the "Church" grief session, because its obvious that would be the correct spiritual thing to do. I did the "right" thing and sat through the whole session, but it would bother me the entire week until I went back again the following Tuesday.