The Stranger Who Sees You Clearly
This beautiful piece by @meganminutillo is the perfect way to introduce sensitivity awareness. Because strangers need kindness too.
These words capture what so many of us feel- how we wish we could take away the pain of others who are walking in this path. How it’s hard to reach out when your suffering so deeply too. My heart goe
“We were both sitting in the tiny seating area in front of the nurses’ station. I was carrying the stress and the anguish that comes from going through an IVF cycle. I’m not sure what you were holding onto, but it was clear that it was upsetting you — for when I looked over, a few quiet tears were running down your face.
You looked away, and I immediately understood.
The whole process can be painful enough, and you didn’t want pity, too.
I went to the bathroom to look for tissues for you, but I couldn’t find any. So, I came back out, took my place on the tiny chairs in that small space of a waiting room, and averted my gaze not to make eye contact with you.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see you dab your tears away with your fingers — and my heart broke a little bit more for you.
But you must know that my heartbreak has nothing to do with pity and everything to do with understanding the heaviness that your heart and spirit are carrying. Treading the waters of infertility is not for the faint of heart, and I wanted you to know that you’re not alone.
I wish I had said something to you.
I wish I had whispered, ‘Can I get you anything?’
I wish I had dared to reach out and told you that I know how much this sucks, too. I wish I had shared my tricks for making the shots more manageable, and the soreness more manageable, and managing the never-ending appointments. I wish I had told you about the tiny things that have brought me and my husband joy and helped us stay afloat. I wish I could’ve let you know that even at that moment, you weren’t alone.
It takes a special kind of courage to bare the parts of your soul that you’re trying to hide from your family and friend, let alone a stranger. And yet, sometimes, the strangers are the ones who hear us the loudest. Sometimes strangers are the ones who can see our pain and hold it a little bit differently than the ones whom we call our own.
Sometimes a stranger is the one who sees you the most clearly, too.
One of my dearest friends is also walking the IVF road. She told me once that she was in awe of my ability to be so free and forthcoming with my story and that she had wished she had been able to do that, too.
I told her that it’s not always easy to share what I’m walking through — and that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I told her that sometimes, it takes a little bit of an internal push to share my words and our story.
But then I think of the countless women on the internet who were brave in telling theirs, and the strength I gained from that, and suddenly sharing my own doesn’t seem so scary. If I can help just one woman feel less alone, if only one woman feels as if they are not being swallowed by the dark, if just one woman knows that there is no shame in anything that she is feeling, experiencing, or going through — that will be enough.
It will be worth it, too.
The IVF road is long and tiresome. It can feel as if there is no fathomable way to climb your way to the other side of the mountain of grief and stress that’s facing you. As if the dark will forever swallow you, too.
Yet, there is a strength that brews within you that you never knew possible.
And even though the tears will fall, you will climb your way back to stand in the sun.”