E20: Returning to Routine Is Not Moving On

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Sometime after a loss, there comes this strange period of transition.
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Things start to look like they're getting back to normal.
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It's hard to say exactly when it starts to happen, but as the person grieving, you can see it.
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The phone calls slow down, the text messages become less frequent.
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People who are checking in every day start checking in every now and then.
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And little by little, life starts asking things from you again.
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From the outside, people may see you getting back to routine and think, oh, he's getting back to normal.
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He's finally moving on.
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But what they don't see is how much grief has changed you.
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That getting back to routine is not as simple as moving on.
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That learning to integrate who you are becoming into day-to-day life can be one of the loneliest seasons you experience.
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So today I'm talking about how to weather the season when everybody else may assume that the hardest part is over, but you're still trying to survive what's changed.
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I'm Kelly Jean-Philippe.
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By the end of this episode, you'll be able to understand how grief may still be affecting your identity and daily routine without judging yourself for not being who you were before.
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Pregnancy and baby loss can shake the foundation of who we are as fathers.
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And for many of us, that foundation is built on two fixed pillars.
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I remember when my wife told me she was pregnant for the first time.
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After I calmed down from running around the house, two big questions instinctively came to mind.
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How will I provide for my family?
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And how will I protect my family?
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Maybe you've asked yourself the same questions too.
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And if you have, I want you to do a quick little exercise with me.
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I want you to write these two questions down on a paper or on your phone.
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I'll give you a few seconds.
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How, will, for, my, and family.
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If you did this little silly exercise correctly, what you're left with are two simplistic sentences.
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They even sound caveman-ish.
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I provide, I protect.
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And look, I know it's stupid, but I think you can see where I'm going with this.
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I want you to notice now just how little distance there is between the pronoun I in both sentences and the word next to them, provide and protect.
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These two words represent two very deeply ingrained ideas that shape how most of us see ourselves as men, husbands, partners, and fathers.
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For me, the first time those ideas became strong was when I became a husband.
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But when I found out I was going to be a dad, the first time they got even more intense.
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It was like something in me turned all the way up.
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I had to provide, I had to protect, and I wanted to be ready.
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But then my wife and I went through our first losses.
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And those losses forced me to realize that the two pillars were not as stable as I thought.
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Because what do I do when the thing I most want to protect is something I can't control?
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What do I do when I can't protect my wife from my losses, from our losses?
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What do I do when I can't protect her from the after effects of a DNC?
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What do I do when I can't protect her from the trauma of her own body expelling the fetus?
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What do I do when I can't protect her from all the emotional pain she was carrying?
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Who am I when I can't protect?
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And maybe you've been there too.
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Maybe you've blamed yourself for not being a good enough protector for your spouse, your partner, or your baby.
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And that's part of what makes baby and pregnancy loss so painful for us as fathers.
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It doesn't just shatter your heart, it has the power to shake the foundation of who we are as dads.
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I want you to notice the pattern in the series of questions I asked a little while ago.
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The question within the question is, what do I do?
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Another way to reframe it is to ask, how do I provide?
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And what that tells me is that when we experience something seismic like the loss of a pregnancy or a baby, we instinctively look for security, turning to the pillar that feels more stable.
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I'll share two stories.
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I've talked about this moment before when my wife asked me to bring her a fan to cool her body down after the miscarriage that happened in our home.
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I couldn't do anything to protect her from that horrible experience.
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But asking me for that fan gave me a sense of purpose, a clear practical goal, something achievable, doable.
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She gave me a lifeline as a provider.
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I remember thinking, a fan.
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Yeah, I can give you that.
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The second story I'm gonna share comes after my wife's second DNC procedure.
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After that happened, I felt the need to go back to work.
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I hadn't told any of my close friends, family, or colleagues that she had been pregnant.
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So nobody knew what I was carrying when I came back to work.
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I was at the pediatric hospital working as a chaplain.
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So being in that environment was complicated.
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Staying home with my wife was too much.
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Again, because I couldn't protect her from the emotional and physical after effects she was experiencing.
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So being at the hospital was easier in some ways.
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It felt easier to comfort someone removed from me than it was for me to console someone so close to me.
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But I also had practical reasons for going back so soon without taking any time off to care for myself.
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The most practical reason was the paycheck.
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As a provider, I could feel better about myself, knowing that I was contributing to a paycheck that would help take care of the things that needed to be taken care of while we were figuring all of the other stuff out.
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That felt doable.
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Going back to work also made it easier to pretend I wasn't hurting or grieving.
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I could focus on somebody else's suffering, someone else's pain, someone else's grief.
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In some ways, I was trying to convince myself that someone else had it worse and that I had no reason to feel as bad as I did.
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Being at the hospital also gave me a way to escape the reality that I was trying to avoid.
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In full transparency, some afternoons when I just didn't have it in me, I'd stay in my office for hours, numbing myself by watching YouTube videos.
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I didn't have to feel anything.
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And I didn't have to think about anything.
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At least that's what I tried to convince myself of.
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I was jeopardizing the most practical way for me to provide for my family without fully even realizing it.
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Ironically, I was trying to numb the feeling that I was also failing as a provider because I couldn't give my wife the emotional support I was giving to other people at work.
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I couldn't give her an escape, even though I was using work as my escape.
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I couldn't give her a version of me that wasn't hurting, even though that's what I think other people saw at work.
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But the truth is that no amount of YouTube videos, no amount of hours at work, and no amount of patients I visited erased or even eased the pain that I was carrying.
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Because deferred pain only gets more intense and more complicated to deal with later.
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And it took a long time for me to resolve the guilt I felt when I decided to go back to work instead of staying home to support and comfort my wife.
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And I had to accept it for what it was.
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I was responding to the instability at the core of how I thought of myself.
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I was looking for safety.
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So I turned to the thing that felt most concrete.
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And maybe you've had a similar experience too.
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I want you to know that there's nothing wrong with needing to escape from thinking and feeling.
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There's nothing wrong about leaning into the half of your identity that gives you something to do, some sense of purpose, somewhere to drop your anchor.
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There's nothing wrong with any of that as long as the way you're going about it is not compromising your well-being, your family, and your relationships.
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Understand that how you go about it doesn't mean you have to leave your grief and your baby behind.
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It can't mean that.
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My only caution is not to turn it into an excuse to not give the support you need to help you cope with your grief.
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It's okay to let people know that even though you're back to work or to some routine, it doesn't mean you're back to normal.
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You can also let people know when you're having a hard day, for example, or when people have the urge to fix you that you don't need fixing.
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Like I said in last week's episode, it's already hard enough living in a world without your baby.
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So it's not your burden to prioritize someone else's discomfort on the days when you do or you don't want to talk about your baby.
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The point is you're learning what you need as you go.
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And the truth is you may not always have the answer.
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At work, if you have employee benefits you haven't used yet, exploring what those are with your HR representative and your employer is a good place to start, too.
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If you've already exhausted all your benefits, your work benefits, and need more support, returning to your work routine.
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Look for resources outside of what work offers.
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Join a support community of other bereaved dads so you have a space to talk about what you're going through with peers.
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There's nothing like being around people who you don't have to explain yourself to.
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Connect with a licensed mental health provider.
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If you're a person of faith and you feel safe to lean on your spiritual community, let them help you carry your cross.
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If you're on healthy relational terms with your partner and she's been consistently responsible with your emotions before, let her into your struggle.
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One of the most consistent questions I get comes from women who want to know how to get their partners to open up to them.
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As someone supporting a father who is returning to routine, don't assume that his going back to that routine means he's moving on or recovered from grief.
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If you want to assume anything at all, let it be that what he's able to do doesn't fully reveal what it costs him to do it.
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So the most important thing you can ask yourself is how can I make his coming back to this setting or to this activity less stressful?
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Look, you don't have to choose to ignore your grief just so you can look like you're okay in providing.
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You can find the right balance.
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However, you go about doing that is okay as long as you're not compromising yourself, your family, or your relationships.
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If any part of today's episode captures your experience, I want to know about it.
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And I also want to know about you.
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You can email me at Kelly at dadalways.com.
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I also offer different one-to-one coaching options for dads who are having a hard time coping and can benefit from the accountability.
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You can learn more at dadalways.com.
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If you're a black father and you're looking for a space with other bereaved black dads, register for the peer support group I host called Black Dads in Loss.
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It's in partnership with Postpartum Support International or PSI.
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You can also do that at datalways.com.
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Please help others discover this podcast by writing it a review and don't forget to follow wherever you stream it so you don't miss when a new episode drops.
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Also, make sure to share this episode with someone who you know might need it.
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Until next time, remember that your connection to your baby is what makes you their dad.
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Always,