This is Not a Test
Why Jess Van Wyen no longer looks for the "lessons" in times of suffering
In this post, I’m re-visiting a conversation with my friend Jess Van Wyen, and what she believes about about goals and grief work: that grief is not a test we can pass, especially not for the sake of getting closer to our pre-loss goals, and that death and illness are not signs that we’re failing at the goals our Higher Power has for us.
These things just are.
Read on for her take on this below.
“Being able to think to myself, ‘This is not some test that I have to pass. I just need to find the things in me that will help me get through it intact’ — this was such a relief.”
— Jess Van Wyen, loss parent, reproductive rights advocate and grief group facilitator
Ryan: You and I have talked about the surprisingly strong reactions people have had to your decision to be Done with family building, following many years of infertility and loss. It is almost as if people do not believe that if you're not constantly whipping yourself and spurring yourself onward, and you're just allowing yourself to exist and rest and thrive in a more gentle way — that you can actually be happy.
Do you think this is a uniquely American reaction? A religious one? A universal one?
Jess: There is some sort of reverence for suffering here in America. And I find that, especially in Mormon culture, where I come from, with people who are going through hard things, they think it's proof that God trusts them enough to test them to get through it. That then equates to, if people choose not to suffer, if they choose to step outside of it, then they are going against what God wanted for them. And now they're going to lose a bunch of blessings, and they're selfish.
You end up being defensive about not wanting to subject yourself to more harm.
Right. It gets equated with like, you're taking the easy way out. And it’s like, “What part of this do you think has been easy for me? Can you point to it?”
I wonder, too, if there’s a fear, that if you are choosing to be free from suffering, then you lose your narrative about what all of your prior suffering was for.
Yes. This makes me think of when I was Mormon and single and watching all my friends get married and have babies, I wanted it so desperately, and I thought that I was being tested. I thought that this was a trial that God was giving me to test me for some reason. And so I put so much pressure on myself to learn the right lesson.
If I could just show that I learned the lesson correctly, or if I could pass the test by finding out what I was doing wrong and fix it, then I would finally pass the test and get what I wanted. And so I felt like I was being given this suffering and I could not find the reason for it. So then on top of like being sad, I was also punishing myself and feeling a lot of shame for not getting it right, and figuring it out.
What I realized is that life is messy and hard and the fire comes for everybody, because it's the nature of this universe.
It was really interesting to fast forward to experiencing infertility and IVF and embryo loss with that mindset. Biology is complicated. Getting pregnant, staying pregnant, having a healthy baby, getting through life without disease or injury — it’s complicated. It's impossible to get through life without death. This is the nature of life.
Being able to think to myself, “This is not some test that I have to pass. I just need to find the things in me that will help me get through it intact” — this was such a relief. Experiencing the death of my son, Jacob, was way harder for me than not being married. But in some ways I was able to navigate it in an easier way, because I wasn't feeling ashamed, or like it was a punishment or a test. And that made a huge, huge difference for me.
And I would never want to go back to that mindset, because not having to deal with those feelings of shame and pressure on yourself, and wondering why this is happening, instead of just understanding that it's the nature of living, made it so much easier in that way.
“Biology is complicated. Getting pregnant, staying pregnant, having a healthy baby, getting through life without disease or injury — it’s complicated. It's impossible to get through life without death. This is the nature of life.”
— Jess Van Wyen
Ryan: I think in listening to you say that, I am realizing that this is the initiation I am in. I am on the threshold of that door.
Because, look, I'm a teacher by training. I value learning so much. I want to pass the test. I want to get an A. I want to learn all the things that the universe has to teach me.
To leave that school mentality behind — to know there you may not have been doing anything wrong that needed to be corrected through suffering, that this is simply the nature of life — that is an initiation.
Jess: Exactly. We know in our work together that there is an emphasis on participating in your grief. There is no avoiding it. If you try and do that, by imagining you can just test your way out of it, there are going to be some really negative repercussions at some point down the line.
I am wondering now: is our belief in redemptive suffering akin to what the Buddhists would call a “second arrow”? That is — the first arrow is whatever life shoots at you, the second arrow is what you shoot at yourself.
Yes. Exactly.
So the belief in redemptive suffering is the second arrow in so much of our grieving experiences.
Yes. It leads to self-flagellation and additional harm. Or even flagellating others who are walking with us — believing like we're a teacher and we're motivating them.
What if we just let ourselves exist?
If you found this helpful, please feel free to forward this email to a friend!