It’s been a tough few weeks. After being on leave for 8 months, I decided that it was time to go back to work. I had mentally prepared myself for it to be awkward, difficult and emotionally draining. However, I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy it’s been to integrate myself back into the work environment. The reason for this is that my little work family have made it easy for me. By being kind, understanding and extremely patient towards me and my feelings.
Since losing Shayen, I have been very much in control over who I have seen and when I have seen them. Yes there have been the children’s birthday parties which we started to attend just 2 weeks after Shayen passed. But these have been tolerable as being surrounded by lots of children makes adults not want to engage in awkward conversation. Much to my relief!
Now I’m going to sound really harsh here but people are hard work. Unlike me, Kevin went back to work the very next day following our loss. Just for a few hours in those first few weeks. Kevin runs his own business and I think it helped him just to be able to go back to normality. It cleared his head and gave him space from all of the noise that was going on at home. It was hard for him to interact with his staff and even his clients at the beginning. People didn’t know what to say or how to act. It was like this heavy cloud was always around and he found that he needed to “break the ice” with people as he saw or spoke to them. To make them feel less awkward.
Wait a minute… make THEM feel less awkward? We had just LOST A BABY… why were we feeling like we had to make other people feel better??
The truth is this is human nature.
In times of personal tragedy, people just don’t know what to say or how to act. The main reason for this is because they don’t want to make the person going through the tragedy upset or hurt. I always feel that people are walking on eggshells around me on that first meeting. Of course there are those people who I class as “my people” who hug me and allow me to talk freely about Shayen and my loss (I love “my people” from the bottom of my heart as they make my life happy). Some try and just pretend that nothing has happened and conversation is awkward but bearable. Some just completely avoid me so that they don’t have to engage in any conversation with me. I completely understand both of these actions. It’s not being done out of malice. It’s just that people don’t know how to approach me in a way I would be happy with. What they don’t realise is how these actions make a mother like me feel. At a time when I am already feeling anxious and extremely vulnerable, attitudes like this make me feel like something is wrong with me. All I want is for people to acknowledge the fact that I had a baby boy named Shayen. That I carried him for 9 months and gave birth to him. That he was beautiful in every way but unfortunately we were not lucky enough to have him physically present in our lives. That although he’s not here with us in body, his spirit lives on in so many ways. That he is very much a part of our family and we love talking about him.
It’s mentally exhausting. Not knowing how people are going to behave with you or what they will or will not say. I end up trying to integrate Shayen into conversations with people as casually as possible. So they know that it’s OK to talk about him. But I have found that this can lead to more awkwardness which isn’t my intention. I’ve hit a bit of a wall in terms of how to manage this issue. I’m just hoping that as time passes and people become more comfortable with being around me, the eggshells will slowly disappear. For the time being though – it’s just hard!
