These are my friends

So, I was a bit angry yesterday.
Sometimes I use this blog to vent.

That's the beauty of authoring content that you can post in an emotional fit and you don't have to think twice about those whom it addresses.  They will never don't know if it's about them, plus there's no telling if they are following along!

My online buddies got a peak at that post and boy did they have a thing or two to add. Many are feeling just like I describe, that so may friends & family just don't know how to be supportive. Even if they have gone through the pain of IF, no two persons have the same diagnosis or resolve. We are all different.  It seems such an easy concept. We are all different, so why not offer compassion to the relationship  when someone is hurting? Instead, I think, most people only know how to offer empathy.

According to Dictionary.com

Empathy: the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

The problem I see is that when we feel empathy, we automatically make it about ourselves, we make their sorrow with our own. We don't always reach outside ourselves to be of supportive, but instead this is where all those stories about "this one woman I know, stood on one leg and hopped backwards from LA to SFO and she now has beautiful twins", "you just need to relax".  Do this, do that, the list of 'fixes' go on and on, but the hurt party goes on feeling as though they haven't been heard.

When we offer compassion we are opening a door to join forces and find healing. I believe compassion is not offering a solution, but listening to the hurt party to support them in their own healing.

My online friends, the women on my boards, offer unending compassion for each other. It is so beautiful to read the posts they share. I have become email friends with some of them. I hope we stay friends long after our IF battle is done and well into our grey-haired days. 

I find hope in the future when a complete stranger online tells me she is thinking of me on the day of my procedure. When I get personal messages that ask how I'm doing, that she noticed my comment on another thread and it sounded like I was struggling that day. 

These are women of compassion. 
These are the mothers of the future.
These are my friends.