Infertility is Like an Airport | How to Cope with Infertility
Years ago I read a short but moving essay, “Welcome to Holland,” by Emily Perl Kingsley (you can read it here). The author describes what it’s like to raise a child with special needs by comparing the experience to planning a trip to Italy but finding out that your plane has landed in Holland.
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place….It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.
-Emily Perl Kingsley
The analogy of Italy being where you always planned to go and Holland being where life actually takes you has always stayed with me. I don’t have a child with special needs, but recently events in my life have taken a turn in an unexpected direction that caused the analogy to resonate with me in a different way. Now that you have the context, I’ll share the adjustment I added to this essay that describes my situation:
Imagine that you plan a trip to Italy. You prepare, anticipate, and buy your plane ticket. You’re full of hope and excitement about embarking on this adventure. You get to the airport and patiently stand in line, eager to get on the plane. Just before you board, a flight attendant stops you and says, “Sorry, your flight’s been delayed,” and you have to go back and sit down in the airport and wait for a month. The month slowly rolls by and you get your hopes up that surely, this time you will board the plane. You wait in line again, but the same thing happens. Your flight’s been delayed, even though everyone else in line was able to board, and you have to go back and wait in the airport. But you want so badly to go to Italy, and you don’t have another way to travel there, so you wait in the airport and do your best to be patient. Every month you get your hopes up and every month you are unable to board the plane. After this has been going on for several months, you tell yourself not to get your hopes up, but somehow you still do each month, and you have a monthly cry when, as before, you are not allowed to board the plane. You sit in the airport and watch all your friends easily board their flights, and their faces glow from the joy it brings them. Some people seem so nonchalant about boarding their flights that it drives you crazy. Do they really walk past you multiple times in the airport without realizing you’d give anything to be in their shoes? Yet they don’t seem to appreciate their ability to hop on a flight whenever they feel like it.
In time you feel that you don’t care where you fly—Italy, Holland, or somewhere else—you just want so badly to get out of the airport and on a plane! And at some point, you promise yourself that if you ever do get on a flight, you won’t complain about any part of it. You are just so sick of sitting in the stupid airport, waiting, waiting, waiting, looking at the same boring view out the airport windows.
Infertility. That’s the situation I just described and it’s the situation my husband and I are dealing with right now. The reason my analogy doesn’t have seem to have a positive conclusion or lesson learned is because I’m not there yet. Right now I’m sitting in the airport looking out the window. I know that God has a plan for me and that someday I’ll be able to be a mother, but that part of my life isn’t happening the way I expected.
One thing I have learned is that I’m not alone in the airport. Whether we are young or old, married or single, parents or childless, all of us have times in life when we feel like we’re stuck in the airport in one way or another, waiting for a righteous longing to be filled, and not understanding why it hasn’t happened yet. Fortunately, there isn’t a single one of us who is truly alone in our airport, because whether or not we realize it, Jesus Christ is sitting next to us. I know that our Savior stands by us in good times and hard times and waiting times, and I know for myself that He will not leave us comfortless.
During my time in the airport so far, I’ve found that the more I talk about my experience, the less I feel alone. I’ve also noticed that it helps when I focus on the things I’m grateful for, pray to my Heavenly Father with real intent, keep myself busy, study the scriptures, and write my feelings in a journal.
Are you waiting in one of life’s airports? What do you do to help pass the time or ease the pain? What suggestions do you have for how to cope with infertility or another trial? I’d love to hear your story.
This is such a brilliant way of describing infertility, particularly unexplained infertility. Thank you for finding a way to explain how I feel when I’ve been at a loss for words.
Kelly, thanks so much for reading! I’m so glad this post resonated with you, I can’t think of a better way to describe what infertility feels like to people who have no clue what it’s like. Prayers, luck, and baby dust to you! xo
After spending 2 1/2 years in the airport for my first trip to Italy, I thought when we decided to go back, the ticketing agent would greet me with open arms and direct me to my first class seat. I had no clue I would spend 4 more years staring out that airport window, waiting for my flight. That being said, thank you for the much needed reminder that He is always here waiting with me. It’s so easy some days to let the anger and resentment take over. Although most days blaming Him gives me some relief of blaming myself. Thank you for putting what so many of us struggle with into words that make sense for all those frequent flyers.
Bridget, thanks so much for your kind words & for sharing your perspective with me! I’m sure I would feel that way too–years of infertility for #1 is bad enough, it seems only fair that after enduring such a hard struggle, everything after that should be easy! So sorry that you’ve been waiting so long, but glad that He’s always with us in our seasons of waiting. I hope your flight comes very soon! xo
Dear Hannah, What an amazing article summing up exactly how I feel! I’m sitting in the airport too and have been sitting here for over 4 years. Some days the airport is not that bad…you have all this time on hand to walk through all the shops in the airport and buy whatever you want, some people even envy you! But other days it feels cold and lonely and unfair. Some days I just want to get out of there and forget all about my travel plans and just accept that this is my life and it is good enough. That I will be happy to never see Italy…after all, I’ll never know what I’m missing. But then there is a flicker of a chance that my flight might just board and actually take off. And I stay put. Infertility has taught me that we do not understand the Lord’s will for us. And that His will is okay no matter how we feel about it. It might be that I never have children and I have to accept it that way. And He is not punishing us or hating us. He loves us and no matter how hard it is to believe, His will is the best and we have to keep looking at the good of the airport and be thankful to be there even if it sucks. Hold on to Philippians 4:4 – Rejoice in the Lord always!
Henriette, thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! You’re right, getting to shop and spend money how you like isn’t so bad during the wait! I think one of the most difficult things about infertility is the repeated heartbreak of hope and disappointment. Like you said, sometimes I want to give up and forget all about it, but then the hope of “but what if this month is the month?” creeps back in, so I stay only to be disappointed again. And one day, I really think it will be worth it, because I yearn so deeply in my soul to be a mother, and I believe God desires that for me too. I believe infertility is simply a condition of mortality, a sickness or problem with my body that just happened because life on earth is hard and imperfect, not that God would punish me with it. I believe His will is for me to learn from infertility things that I couldn’t learn in any other way, and to overcome it in time–whether by actually bearing children one day or by becoming a mother through adoption, or something. We do have a lot to be grateful for even in our season of waiting in the airport, thanks for reminding me of that! Hope and prayers that your flight comes soon! xo
Thanks so much for writing this. You finally gave me the courage to share my struggle with my broader community because this analogy is on point. Nothing can ever capture the humiliation really but I guess being called out of line and told you cant board for no reason would be pretty humiliating too. Thank you also for bringing Jesus back into this. I’m clinging to my faith in this journey, I cant imagine doing this without knowing God. Feeling grateful for this post and wishing you well.
Heather, thank you so much for reading and for your kind words! It is scary to open up about such a private struggle and feel really vulnerable, but overall I’ve found relief in being able to talk about how I feel instead of holding it all in, and for the most part people tend to respond in supportive ways. There really is such a humiliating feeling with infertility…guess what, everyone, my body can’t do the one thing it was designed to do! It hurts. But I also don’t know what I’d do without my faith in God, and I remember all the stories of the women in the Bible who struggled with infertility, and it comforts me that they felt humiliated and isolated too, but God clearly did not think any less of them and often used them to raise some of his chosen servants who had an important work to do. Best wishes to you, and I hope and pray your flight to motherhood will come in very soon!