Interview: Hayley Manning of Time to Talk TFMR on finding "alternative rainbows"
Interview: Hayley Manning of Time to Talk TFMR on finding "alternative rainbows"
"I wanted to focus on our happiness and joy as a family of three, and my attention shifted to other possibilities."
My son is not an ‘only’ anything. He is an everything. I realised that there was nothing deficient about me and my kind of motherhood.
— Hayley Manning
Many people are aware that the term “rainbow baby” refers to a child conceived after a struggle of some sort, and often after a loss. Yet some loss parents chafe at the term.
Why?
No loving parent wants to think of a lost child as a storm, as strictly something bad that happened to them.
For those who have survived pregnancy after loss, they will tell you it’s no rainbow either; more like a dark path through a frightening woods.
Furthermore, like a real rainbow, the promise of transcending the grief of losing one child by having another is elusive, ungraspable, ever-receding. As
writes in An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, there is no version of life that is not still dampened by the loss, even with a miraculous “rainbow baby” bouncing in the stroller beside you.Often, however, it feels like there is no other widely-understood way, besides a rainbow baby, to demonstrate to yourself and to the world that your life is no longer defined by your loss.
Hayley Manning has set out to change this.
As the brains behind the popular Instagram account and podcast Time to Talk TFMR, she posted last year about needing “alternative rainbows” — ways in which loss parents can show and honor our healing that don’t involve a subsequent pregnancy.
Like me, Hayley has a living son, conceived after prior fertility struggles. She also had a daughter-to-be, lost in late pregnancy. Hers was named Luna, which means moon, while mine was named Saule, after the Lithuanian goddess of the sun. It is perhaps for this reason that the red thread of fate connected us online that day.
As Hayley shares below, after losing Luna, she herself needed to pursue the path to “alternative rainbows” in order to find real healing:
I had decided to stop trying to conceive because I wanted to appreciate what we did have. I wanted to focus on our happiness and joy as a family of three, and my attention shifted to other possibilities. These possibilities became places for me to pour my energy, love and intellect into. Things that wouldn’t be possible, or would have been very difficult to do, if I did have another living child. And these things were enriching my life and me as a person.
If we want to have better, more trauma-informed conversations with loved ones and clients who have experienced birth and medical trauma, then we need to acknowledge that there are many possible “right” choices to make about how best to heal. Including this one.
Below, see how Hayley’s initiations have led her to become the skillful advocate and communicator on this topic that she is today — as well as a soon-to-be bona fide therapist who is interested in leading groups on this topic, for others pursuing their alternative rainbows.
Ryan: How do you define initiation?
Hayley: Reading this question, my mind went straight to ‘initiation ceremonies,’ the kind you’d see in some American eighties high school movie – something really embarrassing and definitely something that would be frowned upon now! Gawd, I’m weird…or am I?
The word initiation does mean ‘a special ceremony or responsibility that signals the acceptance of someone into a group,’ and so it is more than just the start of something for you as an individual, it also marks the entry into a group of others, like you.
Can you tell us a bit about the place where you are from? What grows there? Was it the right place for you to grow?
I was born in Toronto, Canada and I grew up (mostly) in Markham, Ontario. It’s a little big town. Housing estates and fields of corn or soyabean grow there! It wasn’t the ‘wrong’ place (there are lots of things about that place to be grateful for), but I also always knew I would leave, and I know I will never go back there – not on a permanent basis anyway. I never felt comfortable where I grew up, always ‘different’, an outsider, awkward.
What was the first time you remember thinking to yourself ‘life will never be the same’?
When my father died. I was twenty, and I knew nothing would ever be the same again. I felt so vulnerable, exposed.
If you had to make a list of your major life milestones or initiations since then, what would be on that list?
A couple of years after my dad died, I left Canada and came to the UK. That in itself is a long story. I knew I would be leaving from a fairly young age, but my dad’s death catapulted me across the Atlantic.
A few years later, my mother got sick, and a couple of years later she died too. I was twenty-eight. I helped to look after her in her final few months.
After that, I started a business, I got married. I had a miscarriage. I got divorced. Leaving my first husband was a crucial pivot moment.
I met my now husband; got married. Had another miscarriage; then a live birth (our now nine-year-old son). Conceiving, pregnancy, labour, c-section, breastfeeding, etc, etc. — the initiation of Matrescence is huge.
Another miscarriage; a termination for medical reasons (TFMR). I split open; my self was fractured by the death of our daughter, Luna. I sat on the edge of my sanity staring into the darkness. I thought I was going crazy many, many times.
Then another miscarriage and the eventual decision to get off the ‘make a family’ ride.
A change of career in there too!
What strikes me about your list of initiations is how much pregnancy loss has been a part of so many of them. And, like me, you have also lost adult family members. What have you noticed about how those experiences of grief feel internally, in terms of similarities and differences?
The pregnancy losses have a much more ethereal quality. I am grieving an idea of someone. With my parents, they had whole lives and other people they impacted. These people can tell me their stories of the relationships they had with both of my parents, this helps to maintain connection with them. With my pregnancies, it doesn’t work this way. No one has any stories to tell. And my own memories are limited. Yet the grief is very deep.
What are you noticing, through this work, about how your own culture – which you can define however you like given your dual citizenship – responds to the loss of a pregnancy vs. the loss of an adult loved one?
With the UK, there is the ‘stiff upper lip’ element to the culture here. I think generally there’s the idea that whatever grieving you do, you do it alone. If you are too exuberant, emotional, loud, they generally don’t like it, or at least, it makes them feel uncomfortable.
Pregnancy/baby loss is very taboo in many cultures. It may be true that Westernised countries have lost the knowledge of rituals and forgotten the importance of community though.
There’s a book I think you’d like, called The Wild Edge of Sorrow, by Francis Weller. He talks about what we’ve been allowed to grieve for, and not, in our societies.
With [grieving] my parents, they had whole lives and other people they impacted. These people can tell me their stories of the relationships they had with both of my parents, this helps to maintain connection with them. With my pregnancies, it doesn’t work this way. No one has any stories to tell. And my own memories are limited. Yet the grief is very deep. — Hayley Manning
In this space, we talk a lot about how the “love, marriage, baby carriage” experience is often oversimplified in the way that it’s sold to women. How has your thinking about love evolved over time?
I very much am not a leading expert in love. I am an expert in co-dependent relationships though! My thinking has evolved to a place of what love is not. You shouldn’t have to squash yourself into the smallest possible box for love. Love is expansive. My husband and I work towards this idea in our marriage, supporting each other to grow as individuals, together.
Did you always want to get married? Has anything surprised you about the experience of being married, both in your prior marriage and then in this one?
Yes, I think so. I guess I always saw it as a mark of a committed relationship, and I’m all about commitment! As I’ve got older, I am more practical about it. And the fact that both my parents died young, I suppose I see it as a way of making sure your life partner and children (if you have them) are taken care of in case you die. Not the most romantic of sentiments, but in a world where it’s acceptable and relatively easy to end relationships, committing to stay and look after each other feels pretty radical.
Circling back to “getting off the ‘make a family’ ride’”: You and I both experienced the uniquely painful initiatory experience of losing a wanted pregnancy. We initially connected for this interview because you had expressed via social media that we needed to have more language for “alternative rainbows.” Meaning, we need more ways to recognize that that we have healed or are healing from this initiation, that do not involve conceiving and birthing a subsequent living biological child. I shared with you that this felt important to me for so many reasons. I’m wondering how your thinking on this came about.
I never liked the term ‘rainbow baby’, or all the many other terms that get used (granted, mainly on social media), for babies who live or die while you’re building your family. I get that these are ways for people to label their experience, a way of making sense and meaning. That’s not a bad thing at all. It’s just not me.
I’m going to be really honest here and also admit that hearing other women talk about how having their ‘rainbow baby’ has helped heal some of their pain, and having the slowly dawning realisation that this is not going to happen for me, I felt angry and jealous. But most of all, I felt so hurt. It took a long time to come to terms with this, and there are still times when it hurts, and those ugly feelings come up. It has been a grieving process, working through the loss of the family I had imagined for myself.
There are so many valid reasons for deciding not to pursue subsequent pregnancies after a late loss like ours. I think this surprises people and is not well understood. What made you decide not to pursue a subsequent pregnancy yourself?
After my last miscarriage, I didn’t know if I could put myself, my husband, or son through more anxious waiting and more loss. I was worried about what it was doing to all of us. I didn’t want to feel sad and anxious anymore, or at least not so constantly. I was tired of tracking my cycle, tired of sex for conceiving, tired of worrying about how old I was (I was about to turn 40). I felt like a husk of my former self. And after every loss, it took more from me, it took longer to emotionally recover. This wasn’t living.
The term ‘alternative rainbow’ came to me as I was working through the grief of stopping trying to conceive. I think it probably came after reading another ‘I had my rainbow baby, I hope this gives you hope you can too’ post on social media, and something just clicked.
I had decided to stop trying to conceive because I wanted to appreciate what we did have. I wanted to focus on our happiness and joy as a family of three, and my attention shifted to other possibilities.
These possibilities became places for me to pour my energy, love and intellect into. Things that wouldn’t be possible, or would have been very difficult to do, if I did have another living child. And these things were enriching my life and me as a person.
This is what post-traumatic growth looks like, and it is powerful. Healing happens here too.
I had also let go of my need to ‘prove myself’ as a mother. Women take part in this losing game all the time, on many different levels. Mine looked like ‘I have to show that I can get pregnant again and stay that way this time.’ I also had encountered the ‘only the one?’ questions from other mothers…that’s when another chink in the wheel turned for me. My son is not an ‘only’ anything, he is an everything. I realised that there was nothing deficient about me and my kind of motherhood.
“Alternative rainbow” shows the rounding out that has happened in me. It shows that healing can still happen, even without a living baby. It speaks to the resilience, creativity, growth that being human, especially a woman, is.
I had decided to stop trying to conceive because I wanted to appreciate what we did have. I wanted to focus on our happiness and joy as a family of three, and my attention shifted to other possibilities. These possibilities became places for me to pour my energy, love and intellect into. Things that wouldn’t be possible, or would have been very difficult to do, if I did have another living child. And these things were enriching my life and me as a person.
— Hayley Manning
I think it is deeply human to feel grief for what you’ve lost, or to long for something you want and do not have. As Kate Bowler would say, there is no cure for that. There’s also nothing wrong with flexing your agency and autonomy as a woman to go after the thing you want, whether that means pregnancy or something else.
What I fear for myself and others is what you’ve described: falling into the same old capitalist-patriarchy trap instead, with a different set of bars. Instead of being sold just one more face serum or sparkly dress or engagement ring, now we’re being sold one more expensive fertility tea, restrictive special diet, or painful medical procedure. Just one more, and we’ll be able to cross what Amelia and
call The Chasm in their book on burnout — that is, the gap between who we are and what we are culturally expected to be.In our case, those of us who have “just one,” or no living child at all, will finally be “enough” in the eyes of everyone around us.
What we seem to be talking about is exploring what happens if we stop seeking that. If, as Mary Oliver says, we stop crawling through the desert on our knees, and begin to just let the soft animals of our bodies love what they already love.
What does that look like for you, in this current season of your life? What would you give more love to, right now, if you could?
We are all in danger of living a life that others expect of us. Of being, responding, doing things that others think are ‘good’ and valid. For example, I tend to take too much responsibility in relationships and it’s exhausting.
A human fulfilling their potential goes through a process of learning (re-learning) what is going to make them thrive and grow. This is part of the self-actualising tendency that Maslow spoke about, and that Carl Rogers talks about when working with people to find their ’internal locus of evaluation.’
I would give more love to this. To being in tune to what I need.
You now have a very popular Instagram account, as well as a podcast, both called Time to Talk TFMR. Is your advocacy on this topic also one of your alternative rainbows?
You’re right, it is one of my alternative rainbows. I see it that way too.
The podcast is something that sat in the back of my mind for awhile, a half formed idea. Then in 2020, I was asked by [fellow loss mom] Catherine Mousley to work with her on content for Babyloss Awareness Week. That went well, and I enjoyed working with her, so I asked if she’d be interested in doing a podcast with me. But to be fair to my friend Fiona, who produces the podcast, it was her that gave me the kick to actually do it. If she hadn’t volunteered to help, I’m not sure it would have happened. I have absolutely no interest in editing audio!
You are now almost finished with your training to become a therapist. Why this path? Why now?
It’s a path I’ve been walking in parallel with for a very long time, I think. It didn’t feel like a major shift, it was more of a ‘I’m ready now.’ Luna was the catalyst, but there are many things that were pointing me this way. It’s like I just stepped into the path next to the one I was on and kept going! Plus, I’m 45 now, and with parents who died young, I’ve learned not to waste time thinking about something too long, if it feels right. I’m grateful I’m here.
You have also mentioned that you’d like to offer some groups of your own, for women moving through the same initiation that you did — finding alternative rainbows after a loss that don’t involve a subsequent pregnancy. What might those look like?
My thinking is that initially it’ll be for women/mothers and they may be either childless or have living children, but no longer building their family. They’d be small groups, 6 - 8 people at a time, and run for 6 weeks. I’d offer them online to begin with, but it’d be great to offer in-person as well. People who are interested in this group can contact me at hayley [at] hayleybmanning [dot]com.
Maybe in time I’d also run one for men/fathers/partners, and maybe one for couples. But all in good time!
That’s the beauty of this path, I suppose. Nothing else holding you back from chasing the next alternative rainbow.
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Hits close to home on many levels. Thank you BOTH for the important work you do and conversations you continue to have.
On a related note, I read the book The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer a few months ago. There’s a quote at the end that I found so beautiful and have revisited it many times since, as a way to describe the relief I felt and beauty I’ve found since deciding not to pursue having a living child anymore. Feels relevant here…
“We tell people to follow their dreams. We tell them they won’t be complete until they do, that they’ll be miserable until they start reaching for that brass ring. they never tell you how good it feels to give up on a dream. That it’s a… a relief. I decided one day that kids weren’t ever going to happen for me, that I was going to be single and childless and that was that. And I woke the next morning, and the sun was dancing on the water, and the coffee tasted better than it ever had. It tasted like one less thing to worry about. One less promised to keep. One less fight to win. One less heart to break. And it was sweet. Almost as sweet as victory. The sweetness of giving up.“