Should We Really Just Be Grateful?

Fiona Ng - 7 Feb 18

I learnt something recently which I have dwelled on before however I didn’t really grasp or understand this enough to completely stop myself from doing it until now.

And that is we can’t take someone’s experience of what they are going through away from them.

It happens every single day and it really is devaluing someone’s experience, feelings and emotions by not honouring what is true to them.

Something that is so fresh in my mind is a blog that I read not so long ago on this Selfish Mother platform by a contributor being vulnerable and honest sharing the pain she experienced trying to conceive one of her children no doubt in a quest to say to others 1) You’re not alone if you are currently going through this and 2) For some kind of therapy outlet to open up about something so close to them that has affected them in unimaginable ways.

The comments I read underneath went along the lines of:

‘Just be grateful you got pregnant in the end some people never get to be a mum’

‘That wasn’t a long time at all to try to get pregnant try x amount of years – you have no idea’

‘At least you already have children’

You can’t devalue someone else’s experience by 1) comparing it to your own or someone else’s that’s deemed ‘worse’ or 2) by telling them just to be grateful for what they have got.

Both

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When someone is brave enough to express their thoughts and feelings in order to perhaps free themselves from pain, trauma or something else that they are going through they need to be listened to and understood.

Pain is not measurable. Neither is someone’s experience.

The thing is if you think it is, when does it stop?

I’m the first to call myself out and I will call myself out on something I am no longer going to do.

That is when someone without children tell me how tired they are. I would always roll my eyes to my husband and be like they have no idea what tiredness is and by doing that I would naturally take away an experience that is true to them, devalue it, put my own interpretation on their tiredness and slowly severe what could be a real empathetic relationship.

How about when people are struggling with their job, the long hours and poor management – an experience that they live day in day out but when they open up about this they get greeted with comments like “Well be grateful you have a job, some people don’t have a job!”- again, really not useful.

Is it any wonder people fall so low down into depression and decide to stay quiet about their feelings because every time they took the courage to do that they were shot down with a comment such as “You have nothing to be depressed about.”

And how about parents of a child who has just been in hospital with an illness, an experience which was difficult for them – and then others devalue that experience by saying things like well just be grateful they didn’t die. When really the family just want to be listened to, understood and for their emotions to be validated.

These comments lack compassion and empathy and can hurt someone so much that they decide to hold their pain and vulnerabilities inside out of fear of thinking their experience isn’t worthy enough.

I have so many wonderful people message me on my social media channels and a lot of them start with “I know I’m not a mum, but….” and then they go on to say how they can relate to something I have shared. That provoked this blog as I don’t want people thinking they are any lesser of a person because they aren’t a mum, or I don’t want them to devalue their own struggles and experiences because they don’t have children.

What ever you are going through right in this moment matters. Nobody can take that away from you. You can’t measure it, you can’t compare with others, you can’t dumb something down that’s real to you in case others jump in and tell you to be grateful or tell you that it isn’t that bad.

There are good days and there are bad days and there are all the grey days in between. Honour your experience as it is real to you. You live and breath through your body and you see and experience the world in what ever way you choose.

Don’t let someone take away your map and rewrite it with their own 💫

Fiona Ng

Newcastle upon Tyne. Mum to daughters age (3) and (1) Entrepreneur, Writer, Conscious Parenting Coach

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