Non-believer/Non-religious check-in

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

Happy Thursday!

This check-in group is intended for those of us who would like to connect with like-minded TTCALers for the purpose of providing non-religious support, which we may have difficulty finding elsewhere. We grieve differently than those with more mainstream religious views, and may also feel uncomfortable sharing our grieving process with others for this reason. There is a lack of communities and support structures available to non-religious individuals; I hope we can build one here.

***Please note, this group is NOT intended to offend anyone of religious faith.***

In order to try to eliminate any potential drama, and to avoid offending other posters, I've begun a list of some ground rules. Please let me know of anything you think should be added or changed.

Ground rules:

~ Please keep these threads respectful, to each other and to the women with differing views who may read the posts. Our goal is support.
~ Though the topic of religion will inevitably be a frequent point of discussion, please refrain from anything that would likely be interpreted as bashing other religions. This is not the place for that. Yes, share your thoughts and experiences, but keep it tasteful.
~ Of course all posters are welcome here, but let's avoid theological debates on this thread. There are plenty of places on the web for theological debates. There aren't plenty of places for support for non-religious TTCALers.
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Members
If you would like to be added to the check-in, post here and I will add you to the list of members.

annarussell05 - agnostic
BootsOrHearts - spiritual but not religious
centralperk - spiritual but not religious
ct103 - agnostic/spiritual
eroplane - atheist
GraceinCA - agnostic atheist
jalara48 -
LSzwaya - agnostic/spiritual
mdharrison - spiritual but not religious
MissMheMhe - agnostic
mlal78 - agnostic
ncchnat - agnostic
nola78 - spiritual but not religious
pkaren - agnostic
RedPhoenix625 - atheist
RequiresExalted - agnostic
shellyco - atheist
SwittyMcGee - atheist
Veganlady - agnostic
weaselwam - spiritual but not religious
wickedsugar - spiritual but not religious
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QOTW: (but feel free to share anything else you need support with, or that you need to get off your chest!)

How do your beliefs regarding religion/spirituality affect your grief positively? Negatively?

weaslewam · August 2012

ncchnat:
I'm kind of in a weird place with my beliefs because while I'm not sure I believe there is a God, the idea of my son being in heaven with all the other angel babies is a comforting one for me. It's made it a little easier for me because I hate the idea of him alone or that he's just completely gone like he never existed.
On the negative side, I get so angry when people tell me that this is all part of God's plan. That really just pushes me further away from the idea that a God exists because why would a "merciful and all-loving God" cause people this much pain? It just doesn't make sense to me. That confusion and anger makes this all hurt more.

I couldn't agree more! This is how I feel exactly!!!

SwittyMcGee · August 2012

I don't believe in the idea of a soul, and that's been hard this week. I find myself wanting to talk to "my baby", to tell it that I love it and that I wish I had longer with it--but I don't think my baby exists anymore. In fact, with such an early loss as mine was, I don't think my baby ever existed in any conscious sense. It was barely more than an idea--just a nebulous potential. I'm beating myself up over wanting it to still exist somewhere but not believing that it does.

I wonder if that sounds terrible to other people.

pkaren · August 2012

SwittyMcGee:

I don't believe in the idea of a soul, and that's been hard this week. I find myself wanting to talk to "my baby", to tell it that I love it and that I wish I had longer with it--but I don't think my baby exists anymore. In fact, with such an early loss as mine was, I don't think my baby ever existed in any conscious sense. It was barely more than an idea--just a nebulous potential. I'm beating myself up over wanting it to still exist somewhere but not believing that it does.

I wonder if that sounds terrible to other people.

((HUGS)) For me, it was more of the idea that was lost and mourning my expectaions of what my future was "supposed" to look like.

I don't feel like I lost a baby. I had a blighted ovum, which means the embryo probably never developed. But I did mourn something that I wanted really badly and was so close to having. I'm sad that it happened, but I'm able to look forward now and hope for a new pregnancy. I don't feel like someday I will meet this baby in heaven if heaven does exist. It's gone...It was a bunch of abnormal cells....I hate that saying that sounds so cold. But for 12 weeks, I did think there was a little life growing inside of me that was going to grow to be my son/daughter. That's what makes me sad.

ct103 · August 2012

The scientific/physiological aspect of my m/c comforts me. I truly believe that there was something very seriously wrong with my embroyo, especially since I lost it at 7 weeks which is a very "make it or break it" time for the fetal heartbeat. My DH and I believe that either the fetal heartbeat never started, or it was very weak and stopped after only a few days. The part that comforts me is that my body recognized it and miscarried naturally. Yes, it was traumatic and heartbreaking and horrible. But to this day I'm still proud of my body for recognizing the problem and taking care of things naturally. I truly believe it was what was best for me and my future baby.

On the spiritual side of things, it took me about four months of grieving to really feel at peace with where my "baby" had "gone". I'm not a huge fan of the heaven/hell analogy of life after death, unless those two concepts are described in a very abstract and metaphorical way. I'm a little more partial to re-incarnation, although I'm more of a believer in the energy of a living thing being passed on to another organism, rather than the soul. The reason I call my miscarried baby "Bunny" is in my blog, but to wrap it up quickly, I just needed to call her something. Once she had a name and I started using female pronouns (DH and I just had and intuitive feeling that she was a girl, but there's no proof to it), I healed TREMENDOUSLY. I don't believe that she was a "baby", but she was a living organism who was growing inside me, and after she was gone I felt an emptiness that was like a bottomless pit. But now that she has a name and a story and a siggy picture, I'm doing a lot better . It's all very symbolic and my name for her and the use of femal pronouns is not to be taken literally.

I don't believe that life begins at conception, but something shifts. I don't know what point I truly believe that a baby becomes a baby, because I've never made it that far yet. I suppose when it happens, I'll just know. But my Bunny was definitely going to be a baby. I picture her to be a sprouted seed. You wouldn't call a sprouted seed a plant or a tree, you would call it something like "seedling".

Wow, I love this new check-in. Talking about this stuff is amazing.

ct103 · August 2012

nola78:

Here's something that I've been struggling with this week. I have a family member who is going through a rough time with a very sick child. This family member (and the rest of my family) is very religious. Yesterday, he put a post on FB that talked about a time when his wife was pregnant with their child, and how - at one point - they were convinced that she was in PTL. He even went to far as to say that he had lost his son. But, then God stepped in to save their son. Now, I actually did lose my son to PTL when he was ~21 weeks. This was 3 months ago. It was very hard for me to read my family member's post for numerous reasons and I ended up in tears. I know that this post wasn't directed at me, but (1) I really take offense to claims of "loss" when loss did not actually occur and (2) the notion that my child was somehow allowed to die because I'm not religious troubled me.

So that's where I'm at today. Usually my beliefs don't affect my grief, but I've really struggled lately.

Wow, I just shuddered a little. I too believe that there's no way God would/could allow some children to be lost while others make it. I also take offense to claims of "loss" when loss did not occur, especially because he believes his God saved his son.

I'm really sorry you had to read that.

ct103 · August 2012

I don't talk to my mom very much about my loss (not since right after it happened), nor do I talk to her about my difficulty with TTC. Although she's agnostic, she's very much an "everything happens for a reason" kind of lady. I think I'm scared to talk to her about it because she'll say something really cliche and then I might bite her head off!

I do plan to start talking to her about it, especially because I have some family history questions to ask her prior to my RE consult. If she does say something cliche, maybe it's my responsibility to correct her. It will help if I think of it as I'm doing it for all of us loss mommas!

SwittyMcGee · August 2012

nola78:
Here's something that I've been struggling with this week. I have a family member who is going through a rough time with a very sick child. This family member (and the rest of my family) is very religious. Yesterday, he put a post on FB that talked about a time when his wife was pregnant with their child, and how - at one point - they were convinced that she was in PTL. He even went to far as to say that he had lost his son. But, then God stepped in to save their son. Now, I actually did lose my son to PTL when he was ~21 weeks. This was 3 months ago. It was very hard for me to read my family member's post for numerous reasons and I ended up in tears. I know that this post wasn't directed at me, but (1) I really take offense to claims of "loss" when loss did not actually occur and (2) the notion that my child was somehow allowed to die because I'm not religious troubled me.

So that's where I'm at today. Usually my beliefs don't affect my grief, but I've really struggled lately.

Oh no, I'm so sorry. I don't understand why people don't get how potentially hurtful that type of comment is to people that have actually gone through a loss. I know rationally that I shouldn't be bothered (since I am an atheist I don't believe that God decided *not* to save my potential child) but it's terrible to think that other people may think that I somehow deserved the loss because of my beliefs.

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

I can relate to pretty much everything you guys are saying. While it would be nice to think of my babies in a magical world of puffy clouds and rainbows where I could see them again, I'm almost happy to sacrifice that image of comfort if it means that a god could let things like this happen. Still, I so desperately want something or someone to blame right now.

I sort of think of my babies as "babies", but not in the sense I think many others do. I don't think they had any consciousness or souls or anything like that. It's the loss of their futures that I mourn more so than the loss of their souls, if that makes sense. Also, even though I know that all of babies only made it to a mere ball of cells, I felt like I was losing a 2-year pregnancy after all we had been through with our IF.

I choose to refer to them as babies because of the dreams I had for their futures, not because they physically or spiritually were. More metaphorical, I guess? But not less important, less painful, or less loved.

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

ncchnat:
nola78:
Here's something that I've been struggling with this week. I have a family member who is going through a rough time with a very sick child. This family member (and the rest of my family) is very religious. Yesterday, he put a post on FB that talked about a time when his wife was pregnant with their child, and how - at one point - they were convinced that she was in PTL. He even went to far as to say that he had lost his son. But, then God stepped in to save their son. Now, I actually did lose my son to PTL when he was ~21 weeks. This was 3 months ago. It was very hard for me to read my family member's post for numerous reasons and I ended up in tears. I know that this post wasn't directed at me, but (1) I really take offense to claims of "loss" when loss did not actually occur and (2) the notion that my child was somehow allowed to die because I'm not religious troubled me.

So that's where I'm at today. Usually my beliefs don't affect my grief, but I've really struggled lately.
***Baby mentioned***

I'm so sorry, honey. I'm right there with you. The claims of loss when there is no loss send me over the edge. My niece was delivered via emergency c-section because of my SIL's pre-e and the baby going into distress. After my loss, my SIL told me that she understood how I felt because she was so scared she was going to lose the baby, but she prayed so hard during the c-section that God saved her baby. I'm sure she was scared; anyone in that situation would be, but she does not understand even a little bit the hell that is losing a baby. It also felt like she was saying that if I was religious, God would have saved my son.
Thankfully, we have the kind of relationship where I could blow up at her and she apologized and we've been fine, but I hate that she probably really does feel that way, even if she won't ever say it again.

Right after the news of my non-doubling beta with my first pregnancy, I had gone into work to take care of some things before taking a couple days off. When I told a coworker about it, she told me that when she was pregnant with her third child, they were told he had Down's syndrome. She went to her church group and they laid hands on her and prayed, and he was born without Down's and was in good health. She said she had faith that if I prayed, god would save my baby. I tried to explain to her that it was virtually impossible with the test they had done...it was over. She said her doctors were 100% sure her child had Down's, but that god had given her a miracle. She was honestly surprised when I came to back work without news of my own miracle.

She didn't say it straight out, but how else am I supposed to interpret that than I had somehow failed by pissing off God?

GraceInCA · August 2012

I'd love to join. I'd consider myself agnostic, leaning toward atheism.

How do your beliefs regarding religion/spirituality affect your grief positively?

I think it gives me a sense of control to know that it was something, not some magic-fairy-karma-sky-daddy situation that was predestined and out of my control. It was medical, scientific. The fact that was chromosomal, and not uncommon, was almost a sense of relief. Also, I tend to be a very grounded, secular, critical thinker. I wanted to know exactly what the stage of development was. It helped to know that this was not some well-developed being, who had higher brain function yet. It was, sadly, a being without a proper set of DNA necessary for development, and couldn't grow beyond a few weeks of gestation. I couldn't pray it into existence, or pray it back, or pray it healthy, and I can't pray the next one into being. In fact, I find the very notion of prayer to be silly, and can't understand why it's done. If prayer worked, there are some very devout people who would be living different lives today. If you pray, but God or gods or the universe is going to do what they do anyway, then there is no point to the prayer, other than to frustrate yourself to beg for something which may or may not happen. Being liberated from that is a good feeling. I know that I have control over my life to an extent, and those things I can't control I have to learn to just let go.

Negatively?

It's difficult to have to either show fake appreciation for other people's religious attitudes about the process, or say something. As an agnostic or atheist, I can't even begin to count the number of times in my life I've had to just bite my tongue when I've heard, "Well it was God's will," when something bad happens, or "There is a bigger plan for him/her," about a deceased loved one. It makes me less inclined to share information about my loss (or anything, really) with family members and friends who are deeply religious.

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

GraceInCA:
I'd love to join. I'd consider myself agnostic, leaning toward atheism.

How do your beliefs regarding religion/spirituality affect your grief positively?

I think it gives me a sense of control to know that it was something, not some magic-fairy-karma-sky-daddy situation that was predestined and out of my control. It was medical, scientific. The fact that was chromosomal, and not uncommon, was almost a sense of relief. Also, I tend to be a very grounded, secular, critical thinker. I wanted to know exactly what the stage of development was. It helped to know that this was not some well-developed being, who had higher brain function yet. It was, sadly, a being without a proper set of DNA necessary for development, and couldn't grow beyond a few weeks of gestation. I couldn't pray it into existence, or pray it back, or pray it healthy, and I can't pray the next one into being. In fact, I find the very notion of prayer to be silly, and can't understand why it's done. If prayer worked, there are some very devout people who would be living different lives today. If you pray, but God or gods or the universe is going to do what they do anyway, then there is no point to the prayer, other than to frustrate yourself to beg for something which may or may not happen. Being liberated from that is a good feeling. I know that I have control over my life to an extent, and those things I can't control I have to learn to just let go.

Negatively?

It's difficult to have to either show fake appreciation for other people's religious attitudes about the process, or say something. As an agnostic or atheist, I can't even begin to count the number of times in my life I've had to just bite my tongue when I've heard, "Well it was God's will," when something bad happens, or "There is a bigger plan for him/her," about a deceased loved one. It makes me less inclined to share information about my loss (or anything, really) with family members and friends who are deeply religious.

Welcome! I'm with you all the way. I'm not a big tongue-biter in general, but I do feel the need to do so in my work environment because, well, you just never know. It KILLS me. That lady who told me I should pray for my first pregnancy? I wanted to look her square in the eyes and say, "I've been praying for amputees to grow their limbs back, but it hasn't happened yet." You'd think that would be a pretty easy thing to do if prayer worked.

Welcome to the group!

RequiresExalted · August 2012

Hi ladies! I'm on to IUI #2. Follie u/s on Sunday, and we go from there! If it's like last cycle, though, they won't be ready yet for another two days or so. My assumption is that the IUI will be sometime around Wednesday.

QOTW: I always feel a little awkward when people say they'll pray for me. I know they mean well, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm never quite sure how to respond. And I actually think I insulted my SIL by making a joke about it. Oops! >.<

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

RequiresExalted:
Hi ladies! I'm on to IUI #2. Follie u/s on Sunday, and we go from there! If it's like last cycle, though, they won't be ready yet for another two days or so. My assumption is that the IUI will be sometime around Wednesday.
QOTW: I always feel a little awkward when people say they'll pray for me. I know they mean well, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm never quite sure how to respond. And I actually think I insulted my SIL by making a joke about it. Oops! >.<

Good luck!!!
IKWYM about not knowing how to respond. I usually just say "Thank you" or "I appreciate that you're thinking about me." (purposely avoiding using the word prayer myself). A few people who know we are atheists and still continue to insist on praying for us and letting us know how frequently, I am completely honest with, and I say "Well, it's not working so far. Maybe pray a little harder?" And chuckle. Then they feel awkward and don't know what to say. Bazinga.

RedPhoenix625 · August 2012

mlal78:
Hi ladies!
I guess I would classify myself as agnostic. I was baptized catholic but have never gone to church except for weddings and funerals. I am open to all religions, but do not believe in the idea of gods.

QOTW: This is a good one for me this week. My grandmother passed away and her funeral was on Tuesday. I have an 8 yo and a 3 yo so trying to explain to them what had happened was a little trying without going to the stock answer of she went to heaven as we do not believe that heaven exists.
We still grieved my grandmother, but with the understanding that she had died, and that she was in a special box that they would bury her in the ground in.
I am happy that we were able to give a pretty succinct answer to what was going on, but sad that heaven seems to be an easy answer to give even if you do not really believe in it.

I'm so sorry about your grandmother, mlal!

It sounds like you handled it just fine with your children. They really aren't at an age where they truly understand the concept of death in any terms. So a succinct answer that addresses their questions without overwhelming them with information they don't need, or fairytales (heaven, IMO) is probably the best route.

There is a FB group I belong to called "Grief Beyond Belief". If you're not comfortable joining a group that would "out" you on FB as a nonbeliever, it's worth a visit to their page just to skim through some of the things they post. They post a lot of good stuff about dealing with grief as a non-believer.

Thinking about you as you mourn your grandmother. (((HUGS)))

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