Love and Marriage

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"And you told Martin everything that you just told me?" Leslie asked Samantha as she absorbed what that she was telling her. While she was ecstatic that they seemed to be talking and communicating their feelings again, she felt deeply saddened by everything that Samantha had just told her.

"Yes." Sam nodded. Unlike with Martin, she'd managed to tell Leslie everything about her first miscarriage and her fears about being pregnant without completely breaking down. Sure there had been tears, but not nearly as many and they were easier to control.

"You've been through a lot." Leslie gave her a small smile as encouragement. "But you're strong and still standing. You're also able to be a wonderful mother to Claire despite everything. That says a lot about you."

"Sometimes I don't feel strong." Sam admitted softly. "Especially when I think about the two children that never got to experience life. I can't help but second-guess everything and feel like it's my fault."

"It's not your fault Samantha." Leslie tried to assure her.

"I'd like to believe that." She stared aimlessly at a glass figurine sitting on the coffee table.

"What's stopping you then?" Leslie asked.

"I don't know. I just feel stuck in this perpetual cycle of guilt, anger, sadness and fear." She paused for a moment. "And I feel like such a failure."

Those were all normal reactions for Samantha to have. "Ok." Leslie made note of what she had said. "Let's start with the guilt. You have said many times that you feel responsible for this..."

"Because I am." Sam pointed out. "We can sit here and debate it all day long but at the end of the day, I am the one to blame for this. I didn't protect my children. It's as simple as that."

Leslie could see that it was going to be hard to get Samantha to let go of her guilt. It was a good thing that she loved a challenge. "Has Claire ever gone off to play and gotten hurt?"

"Yes." Sam nodded, not seeing what this had to do with anything.

"Off the top of your head, can you give me an example of an instance where that occurred?" She hoped that this exercise would at least make Samantha think about letting go of her guilt.

"Ok." She replied, still not sure why they had switched topics and were focusing on Claire. "There was one instance about a week and a half, maybe two weeks ago. We were at a birthday party and she went off to play in the backyard with some other children. But then a boy tripped her, causing her to fall and scrape her knee."

"Were you there to see it?"

"No. I was inside the house at the time." Sam explained.

"Did you think that the backyard was safe for her when you let her go out there?" Leslie asked.

"Well, I guess so. Most of the kids were older than her, but I figured she'd be ok."

"So what happened then?" Leslie asked.

"She came inside crying about how much it hurt. So I cleaned her up and put on a band-aid. You know, the normal stuff."

"I see. And then did you send her back out there with the boy that tripped her or did you make her stay by your side for the rest of the party?" Leslie guessed that Samantha had sent Claire back out to play.

"I sent her back out there but made sure that she pointed out which boy tripped her so that I could have a few words with his mother." Sam answered, still not getting the point of telling this story.

"Let me see if I have this story correct." Leslie paused a moment, thinking through the story. This was a risky move to pull on Samantha. If it was a success, she might stop feeling so guilty. If it was a failure, it would only support Samantha's claims of being a failure. She realized that she had to tread lightly so that she didn't screw this up. "Your daughter got hurt because you weren't there to protect her from the boy who tripped her. After you cleaned up her scrape you sent her back out there, knowing that the boy was still there. Is that correct?"

She wasn't sure that she was hearing and understanding Leslie correctly. "Are you trying to say that it's my fault that Claire got hurt?"

"No, not at all." Leslie reassured her. "I'm simply trying to draw a comparison here. You think that the miscarriages are your fault because you didn't protect your children. But what I'm trying to show you is that it is impossible to protect your children all the time. Things beyond your control are going to happen to them and the only thing you can do is try your best. After Claire got hurt, you did the right thing by talking to that boy's mother in hopes of protecting her in the future."

Leslie could see that she wasn't making a big enough impact on Samantha and chose another approach. "When my son was sixteen he got into a bad car accident. It wasn't his fault; the guy in the other car ran through a red light. But I still blamed myself. I thought that I had failed to protect him because I had let him get into that car and drive at night, even though he wasn't used to driving at night. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't my fault, and I'm a trained professional. I'm supposed to know better!" She gave Samantha a small smile.

"I know it's not exactly the same situation, but the core theme is the same. As mothers we internalize the actions of our children and we take everything personally. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It can be quite helpful in some situations; however, it can also be emotionally exhausting. It's important to realize that it's virtually impossible to protect children 100 of the time. It doesn't matter if you're talking about unborn children or teenagers. The cold, hard truth is that external factors are always around and things are going to happen that we can't prevent. If you didn't blame yourself for Claire getting hurt at the birthday party, why are you blaming yourself for the miscarriages?"

"Because they are my fault." Sam sighed.

Leslie sighed too. She had really hoped that she would be able to get through to Samantha. "Will you at least think about what I've said?"

"Of course." Sam nodded.

Leslie looked down at the rest of the list she had made. "Now you also mentioned you feel anger. Who is the anger aimed at?"

"Myself mostly, with a little aimed at Martin." Sam confessed.

The cause of the anger she felt with herself was obvious so Leslie wanted to focus on her anger with Martin. "Why don't you tell me more about your anger with Martin? What is that about?"

"I guess I feel angry because we never sat down and really talked about the miscarriage. We argued, but we never talked about it. He seemed to assume that it didn't matter to me because I didn't want the child. But I did." She really hoped that she could get through this without crying so she took a deep breath to calm herself. "I just was afraid and then when the baby was gone, I didn't know what to think or feel. I needed Martin, but he was too busy pulling away from me to notice."

"Why didn't you ever tell him that you needed him?" Leslie asked.

"Because I didn't think he cared. I didn't think he'd believe that I really did want that child. We fought about it so much that I eventually just pushed it aside. I couldn't deal with it and I didn't want to so I ignored it. Most of the time it worked."

"That isn't healthy though and won't help you in the long run." Leslie advised.

"I'm starting to realize that." Sam looked up, biting her lip.

"Do you still feel anger towards Martin?"

"Sometimes." She hated to admit it, but it was the truth. "But especially when he brings up the children issue. I know that he wants more children and I want that too, but I can't go through it again. If I were to have another miscarriage, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to deal with it."

Leslie made a few notes. "So your fear of another miscarriage is what's preventing you from even entertaining the idea of having more children?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded slowly.

Leslie made a note to address her fear at a later time. Looking at the list of emotions Sam felt, she looked at the last item. Failure. Next I'd like to talk about why you feel like a failure."

"Let's look at the facts." Sam pointed out. "I failed Martin, Claire, myself, and my unborn children. I failed everyone I care about, which leads to more guilt."

"You were right when you claimed it was a perpetual cycle. Guilt. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Failure. Those are all normal reactions to what you've been through. Many women in situations like yours experience those feelings as well. I think you need to start letting go and break that perpetual cycle. It's not doing anything to help you and actually it's hurting you even more."

"It's not going to be fun and it's going to be hard, but my job here is to help you with this and I'm going to do everything I can to help you. Ultimately though, your success in breaking the cycle is going to be entirely up to you. I want you to think about what we've talked about today. It seems to me that your biggest issue with this is guilt. Your guilt permeates all of the other issues you have. If we can reduce the amount of guilt you feel, we'll be making wonderful progress. Grieving is a process and it's one that I don't think you've completed yet. Next session we'll take a look at the grieving process. Ok?"

"Ok." Sam nodded. She felt better after talking about this with Leslie and really hoped that she would be able to help her. She didn't want to continue feeling like a failure and blaming herself but she didn't know how to stop. As she started to get ready to leave, Leslie stopped her.

"I almost forgot to mention this, but I'm glad I remembered. I'm very proud of the progress that you're making. Sharing this with both Martin and then with me couldn't have been easy for you. But it seems like you're doing a very nice job of opening up more."

"I'm trying." Sam smiled, grateful for the compliment.

"Well keep up the good work!" Leslie smiled back.