Joy and Pain FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Have you ever noticed during what is considered to be a wonderful moment in your life, there is something not so wonderful going on at the same time? For example, when my daughter Erica was planning her wedding in 2019, I told her, “It’s rare to have a perfect wedding, something always goes wrong, but no matter what it is, don’t let it take away from your day.” For Erica and future husband Ramsey, it was the wedding cake. The bakery forgot to bake it. It sounds worse than it is because I wasn’t even sure they wanted a cake, since they had a dessert station with tables of mini-treats including cake pops, fruit tarts, and a sundae bar. A cake did arrive in time, although it was two tiers instead of four and white celebration instead of lemon. But the cake fiasco was a minor blip on an otherwise perfect day. It’s something we laugh about now, and most important, it’s the “thing”we’re happy that went wrong at the wedding because it wasn’t very important. For the most part, I try to not let the negative experience take away from whatever it is I’m planning, whether it’s personal like a vacation, business like our three-day Success Summit we host every August, or a milestone like celebrating my daughter’s wedding. Then, on the rare occasion, there are the tragic moments in our lives. We all have them. Sometimes we share our emotional pain with others, and other times, we keep it to ourselves as they are too devastating to discuss. So, when my daughter Erica gave birth to the sweetest little girl Emma this past March, I wanted to tell everyone, as it is one of the happiest times in my life. But it is also bittersweet, as there’s no way I can say I’m a grandmother (but you can all me Mimi) without
saying that my first grandchild, Shayla, died before she was born, and Emma is my second grandchild. Over a year ago, when Erica was pregnant with her first child, I wrote about it and also shared one of my most heartbreaking losses that I hadn’t discussed much, and that was the loss of my best friend to suicide. Grief is one of the most painful emotions we feel. At some point, we’re all going to grieve the loss of someone or something. The depth of that heartache and how we react and heal from it is different for everyone, but how it feels is universal. Grief is like an injury — the more the loss, the bigger the wound. And just like time heals the wound but leaves a scar, the same is true for the sadness of losing whoever or whatever is lost; it heals but leaves a scar. Talking about baby loss is a somewhat taboo subject, as I’ve learned many mothers feel guilty about it. I don’t want to write about the details of Erica’s loss because I feel like they are not mine to share, but I needed to say it happened out of respect to her. I never thought about baby loss that much, and not many of my girlfriends ever discussed it. But when Erica shared her tragic experience online, it opened the doors for other moms to no longer feel alone in their grief and start to heal, too. Many women reached out to Erica and let her know how much her story helped them. When I’ve told my friends and other women what Erica went through, so many of them opened up and shared their stories to me of how they’ve lost a baby, stories I never knew about. The women of my generation kept their baby loss and fertility
Mimi and Emma
struggles to themselves, as sometimes the two go hand in hand.
Emma has brought so much joy into not only her mommy and daddy’s life, but also to everyone in the family on both sides. But the pain of losing Shayla will always be remembered. Just like grief is a universal feeling, so are joy and pain. How you deal with it varies according to your beliefs, mindset, and the nature of who you are. It also depends on the severity of what is going on, like the difference between a missing cake versus a loss of a loved one. This brings me back to my question to you: How do you handle the times in your life when there’s joy but also pain going on at the same time?
How do you balance those two emotions simultaneously? It’s something to think about.
–Roslyn Rozbruch
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