Journal Category: fertility counselling

Finding Space for Grief

grief

Amid the year’s successes, it’s startling how much loss can happen quickly. As the end of the year approaches, we reflect on this grief. Honouring our losses whilst living is not taught to us. Often, we face death, miscarriages, health crises, and life changes without guidance or a map.

The Weight of Who we Rely On

Who we rely on matters. No one likes to sit in grief too long or even at all. Few will encourage a broader exploration of grieving if it has not been their experience to do so. Most are deeply uncomfortable with grief and may be entirely absent during this time. You will remember WHO WAS THERE FOR YOU even as they stumble and trip over what to say or do.

Navigating Expectations Around Grief

How we are encouraged to process our grief also matters. We are often in a new realm of reality with our grief, as the usual rules do not apply. Yet there can be a perceived sense of what is expected of us by those around us. This expectation can only be applied through the lens of others if it be right or wrong and what you need may be something entirely different.

Relying on friends and family is our usual go to for support. Your loved ones however will not necessarily know what you need. Finding what you need is not easy. It may take several different approaches and depending on the loss it can be lifelong. When the loss is a commonly shared experience it can be easier than what is called a disenfranchised grief.

Disenfranchised grief is where the loss experience is silenced or remains unacknowledged. Examples would be suicide, abortion, infertility or miscarriage, a same sex partner not being embraced, or being childfree not by choice. When facing a health crisis is glossed over with terms such as stay strong, or you can beat this. Offers like these are well meaning of course but do not get close to an invitation to talk about what you may be suffering.

Counselling – A Pathway Through Grief

In my counselling practice, what someone needs will often be the first place I explore with those facing grief. A counsellor can sit outside your experience of emotional overwhelm to help create a pathway of clarity step by step. They can give you permission to do it as you feel so inclined devoid of the judgement & doubts around perceived correctness.

The Power of Ritual and Non-Verbal Healing

An area of great passion for me are non-verbal creations of meaning making and ritual. Other cultures often have beautifully realised ways of dealing with grief that I embrace and include in these rituals. This year I decided to put together such an experience for an in-person workshop offering a movement process to explore grief starting with the Surf Coast area of Victoria.

I combined my expertise in movement processing by inviting Josephine Lange to bring her healing sound bath and meditation practice into the session. We will be offering this again in 2025. We would love to have you join us.

When Individual Support Feels Right

If being a part of a group is not your thing then booking to speak with a counsellor can really help put a plan in place, so these vulnerabilities are held close and acknowledged by the person it matters most to. YOU.

Tread Lightly this Holiday Season

As you enter the holiday period with catch ups amongst friends and family do treat yourself with kindness, particularly if you have faced losses and disappointments this year. I will be available to see you should you need as I will only be unavailable on the public holidays.

Tread lightly as you go.

My warmest regards

Suzanne

Written by Suzanne Hurley, Perinatal & Fertility Counsellor at Fertile Ground Health Group.

Make a counselling booking with Suzanne

The Unseen Sorrow

Unseen Sorrow reproductive cancer

After a health crisis of my own last year, with breast cancer, I am starting the year of 2024 with a renewed sense of the unexpected and infusing my work with clients with a deeper experience and awareness of the unseen sorrow. The parallels of my work in reproductive loss and grief and my own health crisis have unearthed a new area of professional interest, issues to do with reproductive cancers.

At 58, it may be assumed that our reproductive organs are no longer fit for purpose. I have been fortunate to have two gorgeous daughters, now in early adulthood. Perhaps because of this, I so grieved the loss of the breasts that fed my babies. The interventions that required to rid me of the cancer and give me the best chance to not have it spread and/or return completely collided with my trauma from the childbirth interventions I had endured. It was the thing that I talk to my clients about – that past reproductive grief binds to new reproductive loss and feels so big it might consume you, quite literally.

Confronting the Unforeseen: Journeys Through Reproductive Loss & Cancer

Working with reproductive loss and the grief it carries forth, has expanded in my mind because of this experience. I have already supported those going through hysterectomy grief and certainly an array of fertility-related losses, but I now know many other encounters with health issues related to our bodies can hold profound meaning that hark back to reproduction.

Ovarian and uterine cancers, I imagine, will hold that same meaning making of loss. When we must have a part of our bodies removed, and quite rightly as some say ‘amputated’, it is a part of us that connects who we are and the things that have happened to us that make up our story.

Reproductive Loss: Beyond the Visible, Into the Unseen

Similarly, I can recall supporting those with medical histories such as abdominal surgery unrelated to reproduction that cast doubt about their capacity for fertility. So, our sense of fertility is not solely about our reproductive organs but also about the parts of us aligned in some way to reproduction that make up our whole being. Situations like hysterectomy for medical reasons, Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI), premature menopause (under 40yo) or early menopause (40-45yo) can truly stop us in our tracks, particularly if our desire for children or more children has not yet come into fruition.

Coping with Reproductive Grief Amidst Cancer

There is much that is wrong about how we are cared for by the medical profession. How very alone I felt post-surgery on the ward where my every medical need was attended to, but my feelings and sense of identity were ignored so entirely. When the plastic surgeon suggested dressing my own wounds at a time when I could not even look at them, let alone touch them. How do they become so detached from the human experience? A question unlikely to be addressed in my lifetime, it seems, with such a focus on data collection, risk aversion, and the general medicalisation of clinical matters overriding human needs.

Cancer, of course, has much greater visibility than reproductive loss. Even reproductive cancers are much easier to talk about with friends and family than having a miscarriage or how going through IVF might be. Although extremely grateful that my health concern was very treatable, I was stuck in the reality of how incredible the visibility of a cancer diagnosis laid out a path of support and understanding that allowed everyone to know what was expected. The comparison with the invisibility of how reproductive loss is treated is quite stark and yet both are living with the same uncertainty, anxiety, numbing experience that this new reality may not provide you with the life you thought you would have.

Building Your Support Team: A Vital Step in Facing Unforeseen Challenges

As my medical team worked on my physical survival, my survival of the unexpected lay with my chosen adjunct health care team of acupuncturists, a naturopath, my long-term osteopath, specialist oncology physiotherapists and trauma counsellor. That which comforted and provided me with the care that I needed did not seep from within the medical model but from the kindness and compassion of non-hospital-based allied health practitioners. When I am supporting those with infertility, pregnancy loss, abortion support, perinatal mental health issues and parenting themes I nearly always work on building their team. Putting this into place before a health crisis serves us to have those then treating us to know us, so needed when life turns a corner and you are somewhere you do not recognise, without walls to lean into or markers to remind you of that which is familiar.

Can there be room to thrive rather than just to survive these terrible situations? What is it that you might need to help you through it? Is this the time to build your team? Going it alone is risky with life’s complexity and its competing demands. We are primed to be thrown off the scent of meeting our own needs. Experiences in childhood, or from an abusive relationship, or in a toxic place of work, we start to function as though our needs do not matter. Until, that is, a crisis occurs that brings forth this invisible sorrow and we are alone with the unexpected.

I am always here to support you and am grateful for the insights this experience has left with me, which will infuse into my consultations and allow me to continue meeting where you need me me, in the depths of your own experience.

Written by Suzanne Hurley, Perinatal & Fertility Counsellor at Fertile Ground Health Group.

Make a counselling booking with Suzanne