The holidays were always a difficult time of year for me when I was going through fertility treatments. While my friends were busy shuttling multiple children to various holiday events, I spent my time at home alone watching made-for-TV movies. I hoped that losing myself in a holiday movie would help take my focus off my grief in not having a child of my own. This did not work.
It seemed like every made-for-TV holiday movie had the same basic theme. The main character was so caught up in the things that don’t matter that he or she had lost sight of the things that matter most in his life. Throughout the course of the movie, the character would come to realize that what matters most in life is your family, and he has had his family right there all along.
Take It’s a Wonderful Life as an example. This is one of my favorite holiday movies, but it had that same basic theme. George Bailey spent his entire life being deprived of the one thing he wanted most – to travel and see the world. Every time he thought he would get out of Bedford Falls, something happened to make him stay. No matter how hard he worked, he always seemed to get the short end of the stick. After learning what life would have been like if he had never been born, George realizes that what he needs to be happy has always been in his life. The movie ends with him embracing his family and finally appreciating that he is “the richest man in town” because he has friends and family who love him.
While this is a warm and fuzzy message for people who have a family, it is painful for someone who cannot have a baby. All I needed was one baby to fill this empty void in my life, while George had four children who he seemed to view as nuisances earlier in the movie. I felt the same way when I watched other holiday movies. I already knew the lesson of how important family is, and it made me angry to be deprived of a child when all of these characters were blessed to have children and did not even appreciate them. While I knew the characters were fictional, I also knew the movies were made as “wake up calls” for real people who really did not fully appreciate their families. I would ask myself once again why those people got to be parents while I did not.
Now that I am a parent, I can enjoy these types of movies again. They have lost their sting because my son has filled the painful void in my life. However, during my infertility years, these types of movies only brought me pain.
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Challenges: Christmas category
Photo credit: Faith Allen
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