“You need to grieve”. I heard that phrase more than a few times. The problem was, I didn’t know how how to grieve. I cried all the time, did that count? How do you grieve for something that you never had? Something that doesn’t exist? In recent months I’ve realized that maybe grieving isn’t something that happens all at once. Grief comes and goes like a tide and it’s not just about the big things. It’s about the little things too, the ones that people take for granted every day. So here’s a list of things I am grieving.

1. Pregnancy.

I will probably never be pregnant. I won’t feel life growing inside my body or have people ooo and ahh as they watch my stomach grow. I won’t know what it feels like to carry a baby inside me and know their every movement. I won’t have 9 months of excitement, tiredness, nursery shopping or planning as I get ready to meet my child. I won’t get to complain about cankles or send my husband out at midnight because I need cookie dough ice cream. I won’t have a birth story.

2. Naming my child.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had my children’s names picked out. Of course, they would change every couple of years but I’ve always had the desire to name my baby. I’ll never have a list of boy names and girl names that I make with my husband and then wait expectantly to see which one is just right. Your name is the first gift your parents give you. It’s a gift I wanted to have a chance to give.

3. The joy of building a family.

We still plan to grow our family through adoption but one thing that’s been lost over the last couple of years is the joy that should come when you decide to have kids. We’ve had a lot of decisions to make, a lot of going back and forth and disagreeing and compromising. A lot of paperwork. The goal is still the same – to grow our family – but I’m under no illusion that this goal will be realized without significant heartache, stress, and sadness.

4. Normalcy.

There’s a certain normality to life that most people have that will never be mine. I watch as my friends get pregnant and have kids. I listen to their conversations about family and try not to be jealous. I hear them complain about not sleeping and laugh about a conversation they had with their toddler. It’s all part of the beautiful-messy reality that is motherhood. And I don’t get to be a part of it.

5. Having it easy.

You get married and then if you want to have kids, you have kids, right? Or sometimes you don’t want to have kids but they come anyway. You do your part and bam, there they are. For us, it didn’t work that way. We did our part, and the doctors did theirs, and then we waited… and nothing happened. Our only choice is to fight and fight hard, and even then, there’s no guarantees. This has probably been one of the hardest things for me to deal with. Especially as I watch my Facebook feed and see a collage of pregnancy announcements. Having a family is not going to be easy for us.

These are some of the things I’ve been grieving. These are the things that cause me pain just to think about. For me, grieving is naming all the pieces of what I’m missing out on. It’s giving them their place and acknowledging the loss, and then putting them aside (not away). They all have their place and they all deserve to be grieved because there is loss. It might not be a loss that other people will understand but grief isn’t straightforward or predictable. It’s messy. And sometimes, it’s all you’ve got.