Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
10/17/24
Five Tips for Coping with Grief from a Therapist
Although each person’s experience of grief is unique, there are common principles of how to navigate grief in a healthy way; and as a therapist specializing in infertility and pregnancy and infant loss, I often get asked how to cope with these specific types of grief. I am happy to share some of my thoughts with you. Here are five tips that I invite you to consider, as you navigate your own loss and grief.
8/22/24
You Belong and are Needed
I can emphatically affirm right now that you are irreplaceable and unrepeatable in the Church, just because of who you are! Not because of what you accomplish or what you achieve. You have a unique personhood and presence and particular strengths to share with the Church and we need you. You are a valuable and needed witness in the Church and no one can enrich the Church in a life-giving way like you can. Your value to God and to the Church are not defined by your “success” of adding more children to your family than what you currently have.
4/27/24
Hope: A Light in Your Darkness
Have you ever struggled with hope during your infertility journey? Perhaps, at times, you had renewed hope that you would finally conceive and maintain a pregnancy, only to receive yet another heartbreaking negative pregnancy test or pregnancy loss. Maybe you have been trying to have a baby for years and it looks like it will never happen. Or maybe time has run out for you to conceive and your hope is gone. If any of this is true for you, I am truly sorry that you’ve had a complicated relationship with hope because of the anguish and devastation of infertility.
3/6/24
Navigating Infertility in the Workplace
We know the workplace can be another area of our lives where the cross of infertility can feel heavy. That's why we wanted to welcome licensed counselor, Edward Luersman, back on the podcast. Edward shares practical ways we can feel seen yet safe at work while carrying the cross of infertility without feeling crushed by it. Please share with us any coping strategies you've found helpful for the workplace, because they might be helpful for someone else!
10/12/23
The Lonely Grief of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss
There is a real void in life where children could have been in our lives and it is painful to be reminded of that and to imagine how things could have been different or how old those children could have been by now. We grieve the identity of mother or father and the reality of parenthood that we expected to have at this point, as well as the lost sense of belonging among our family, friends, coworkers, and church community. We grieve how much simpler things used to be now that we distrust that things will ever work out; the trauma changes us and we can grieve that we lost a blissful or innocent part of ourselves.
10/4/23
How Should We Process Grief? w/ Edward Luersman
For our Desert Reflection this week, Jillian welcomes back licensed counselor, Edward Luersman, on the podcast. The topic of discussion is on grief and how it can manifest itself during infertility. It is completely acceptable and healthy to grieve your infertility, and Edward gives our listeners some practical tips on how to process that grief.
8/30/23
Restoring Relationships with Our Fathers during Infertility
Jillian and Christina welcome Edward Luersman to today's episode. Edward is a Springs in the Desert contributor and Licensed Professional Counselor whose focus includes infertility, miscarriage, and their associated grief. He begins by sharing about some of the common feelings and experiences he sees in his practice among people struggling with infertility or loss. Then he discusses how we might often see God the Father through the lens of our earthly father, which can lead to a misunderstanding about who God the Father really is. Our human relationships are imperfect, and our earthly fathers fall short and even disappoint us. But God is our eternal, loving Father, whose arms are always open to us.
8/10/23
How the Church Can Support Catholics Experiencing Infertility
Perhaps the Church feels like home and a safe space in the turbulence of the world; perhaps it has felt unsafe or oblivious to your emotional pain. If the Church has been solely a source of consolation in your suffering, I’m so grateful for that. If the weakness of the human dimension of the Church has been a source of additional isolation or suffering for you, I am sorry that has happened to you. I see you.
6/15/23
Brother, How Are You Really Doing?
I’m here to tell you that you have every right- the same right as your wife- to grieve the child(ren) you hoped you would have at this point. There is nothing “unmanly” or weak about acknowledging and expressing your emotions throughout the roller coaster of infertility. If anything, you are stronger and better served by facing the pain instead of drowning it out with distractions, avoidance, or self-medication with unhealthy means.
3/23/23
Perseverance through Infertility
My clients often do not believe they possess strength because they feel weak and defeated; they are mistaken. They, and you, are very strong in that you continue to get by day by day, week by week, and this is despite all the deep emotional, physical, and spiritual anguish of daily life.
1/27/22
The Unspoken, Invisible Suffering of Infertility: A Counselor’s Take
You may feel distraught, alone, abandoned, or perhaps infuriated. You may feel an unspoken, invisible pain that no one else wants to see. It can seem like everyone else gets the miracle of a child and you are left standing on the sidelines, perpetually waiting for your own miracle.