I was scrolling through my phone this morning when I came across an NPR comic: Signs It's Time to Quit. Obviously the title appealed to me, because there are so many cultural and societal road blocks to "quitting," or letting go of a dream, or moving on from something that's just not working. I love when there are thoughtful pieces about taking control of your life and letting go of something (even something everyone tells you is the MOST IMPORTANT thing you'll ever do) so that you can live your best life.
The comic has 7 signs, and each one spoke to me in some sort of way. The signs were a combined effort from three experts: Annie Duke, a cognitive psychologist; Colin Rocker, a career educator; and Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and professor. I thought I'd share the signs with you (go to the link above to see the comic, I don't think I can share pieces of it here without copyright issues), because wow were they validating. And sometimes...painful.
Sign #1: You're seriously thinking about quitting.
Annie Duke said, "Our culture is biased against quitting, so if the thought stays on your mind, it means it's clearly been weighing on you and it could be time to make a change." That is an understatement. We are told over and over to "never never never give up." To hang in for the long haul, because sometimes things take time. And that's true, but sometimes no matter how long you try to make something work that just...isn't, it won't come to pass. Sorry, refrigerator magnets, you're kind of lying. When we were going through our quest to parent, I had thoughts all the time after a while of "I don't know how much longer I can do this," but I quashed them because there was so much pressure to not give up and not quit. I started to feel like if I had those thoughts, I couldn't possibly want parenthood enough, and so I would double down on magical realism (these orange underwear will get me pregnant!) to my health's detriment.
Another piece of advice in this section: "Set a deadline to give yourself a fixed amount of time to deliberate on your decision and come up with an off-ramp plan." I was terrible with this. Bryce, however, was terrific. For as much as I masterminded our runaway train that went nowhere fast, Bryce took over when it was time to stop. He would initiate the conversations of how much longer we should attempt to transfer an embryo when my uterus wasn't cooperating, and eventually I would agree. It was Bryce who, after our time in adoption led to so much stress that it non-hyperbolically threatened my life, had us take a springtime walk through a flooded park full of soggy flowering trees, and laid out how we could take control by deciding ourselves on a stopping point. He convinced me that we could have a little buffer time to think through, but that it was actually empowering to proactively say ENOUGH. And so we began the off-ramp.
Sign #2: It's just not what you want anymore.
This one doesn't quite line up, because I wanted to be a mother so very desperately. For the longest time it was hard for me to even entertain the idea that I could go through everything and NOT parent. I did reach the point where what I didn't want was the constant stress, feeling of a life put on pause, indeterminate uncertainty, physical pain, and emotional pain of years and years of loss. Whether it was a negative pregnancy test, a miscarriage, a profile opportunity where the expectant parents went with another couple in the final pass...all of it made life unbearable. That's what I didn't want. And now, we can honestly say that we're fine not being parents. But it took a lot to get there. For a long time, all I saw was motherhood and I could not see through that thick want to recognize just how futile and self-destructive that quest had become.
Sign #3: You would quit, if it weren't for...
Oh, ouch. From the comic: "Sometimes we've spent so long on a path that we feel like we have to stick with it, even when it's not beneficial. It's a phenomenon called the sunk-cost fallacy, says Duke."
I felt this so deeply when I read it. It resonated. I felt so much like we would disappoint so many people if we walked away. And in a way, I was right, because the initial reactions to our news was often "NOOO!" or "YOU CAN'T" or "BUT WHY? YOU'D MAKE A GREAT MOTHER!" To be fair, these people were super invested in our success, and it's not really a common story to go through nearly 8 years of seeking parenthood through multiple means and have nothing pan out. But this is also why we waited to tell people until we had definitively made our decision, put it into motion, and even donated everything in our nursery. We felt terrible about all the support and love and things that people had provided throughout the journey and at our baby shower, but at that point, our happiness and wellness far outweighed anyone else's disappointment.
This also resonated not just with infertility, but with leaving an unhealthy relationship. (Also, clearly it applies to jobs and such, since one author was a career educator.) In my first marriage, so many people were incredibly upset that I was marrying the person. One time, I was dropped off in front of my best friend's house by my irate fiancé, who was screaming at me and even took off before I was fully out of the car. I stumbled to the curb, stunned, and then picked myself up, wiped my face with my hands, put my mask on my face (I had a lot of practice with pretending everything was okay loooong before infertility and adoption), and walked calmly to the walkway. I didn't know that my friend's mom was gardening out front where I couldn't see, and she had seen and heard EVERYTHING. There was no hiding. She was shaking and crying as she grabbed my arms and said, "You. Cannot. Marry. That. Man. You deserve so much more. You must think so little of yourself and it makes me so sad." I had validation! Someone had saw what I tried to hide, but I did not want it. My sad, broken response delivered with a smile? "But the wedding's in two weeks. I have my final dress fitting this week. It's too late. Besides, it's not always like this."
Talk about sunk-cost fallacy. I felt that the expectation was that you marry the person you love no matter what, and calling off a wedding wasn't an option. How would I even do that? Where would I go? How could I face people? Better to adhere to what I said I would do. Even when I was married, and I knew that my relationship was dysfunctional and harmful, I didn't feel that I could leave just because I wanted a better life. I felt it would be shameful and stayed until there was what I thought was an acceptable reason -- rampant infidelity. So yes. I thought very little of myself, and all I could think of was that sunk-cost and all the what-ifs that paralyzed me until I had a concrete out. It was the inverse of the sunk-cost fallacy with infertility and adoption -- this time people wanted me to quit, but I felt a weird societal pressure to lie in the bed I had made and try to make the best of a situation. Good gracious am I grateful that I finally chose my own happiness, as hard as it was then, because it led me to the greatest happiness and joy of my life.
Sign #4: Everything about it feels hard, like really hard.
Ummmm, yes. That pretty much sums it up. Loss after loss after loss just took a cumulative toll, and after a while it felt delusional to think that things could work out. Although, man I kept trying, and bless Bryce, because he was willing to say NO! to me when I had "solutions" that would ultimately just make things harder. One of our very few big fights was when I suggested we sign on with a second adoption agency in our second year, that it might give us better odds, and he was just like, "NO. I can't do more than we're already doing, and honestly what we're doing is too hard on both of us, whether you see it or not." He was right.
Sign #5: You don't love your chances of success.
From the comic: "Calculate how likely you are to reach your goal by doing research....then find out how comfortable you are with your chances." This was so hard, thanks to society's cult of "never give up" and "miracle babies" that aren't evenly distributed. It always felt like, "if we just do it one more time it will work!" or "this next profile opportunity could be the one!" -- so I had to be the complete mess physically and mentally in order to accept that it was just too hard, and pretty much our odds were slimmer than slim. In IVF, people at the clinic or support group seemed to always get pregnant on their last try, with some wacky protocol that was experimental, or with a 13th cycle. I did do a 13th cycle (although several were cancelled just before transfer, my body still went through so much with the injectibles and ultrasounds that I count them), and it left me feeling utterly broken. Other people had profile opportunities all the time, or had a one in a million connection, or had "the call" right when they were going to walk away. It just didn't work for us. Even when a friend was chosen out of two final couples by expectant parents right after we left the process, I just knew... we would have been the other couple who, for whatever reason, were told "it just isn't your time." The agency used to say it was "worth the wait," but when the wait went on for years and was a death of a thousand cuts, we had to say our sanity and health were worth more. Again, kudos to Bryce, because he got to that point a LOT faster than me, but was still supportive until it was just too much.
Sign #6: Your loved ones say it might be time to let go.
This was a two-headed beast for our parenting journey. People were very supportive of us ceasing IVF, because the impact was so clearly evident on my body and our well-being. The financial cost was a known entity. People were willing to say to our faces, "how much longer are you going to do this to yourself?" and mean it out of love and care.
But with adoption, the impact was mostly emotional (and also murkily financial, and most definitely ethical). The reality of domestic infant adoption is very, very different than the sanitized version presented in movies, books, magazines, religious organizations. It allows for very well-meaning people to see through incredibly rose-colored glasses that block out all kinds of ethical issues, inequities, and dehumanization of birth mothers. So there were very few people who thought we should leave adoption. It led to questions like, "what about international?" or "what about foster?" when the type of adoption we chose was deliberate based on many factors and we had our emotional reserves pretty well tapped already. There was a sense that the system should be there to MAKE US PARENTS, instead of what it truly is, to provide a loving and safe home for a child, who has to experience the loss of their first family in order to be welcomed into their adopted family. Even with open adoption, it's not a small loss. And, so often (but not always), the situations that resulted in placing a baby were based in inequality, poverty, and lack of services. That was very hard to wrap our heads around, and so many people have deeply ingrained beliefs on who "deserves" babies. Including, at the start, us.
Sign #7: Your goal is costing you...a lot.
Not much to say about this one because I think by this point, you know just how much our goal was costing us. But there are two lovely quotes that really spoke to me from the comic that encapsulate what "giving up" can do for you:
"Duckworth suggests looking at the opportunity cost: Is the time you're spending on this goal keeping you from investing in other things that might make you happier?" and "Think about what quitting could free you up to do."
I wanted to be a mother. We wanted to be parents. We would have made EXCELLENT parents (at least we think so). But at some point, you have to stop beating the bloody pulp that used to be a dead horse. We chose to live the life we have, instead of constantly fighting every last thing to attain the life we originally wanted. It was not easy. It was saying goodbye to a dream that was central to our lives for so long...so we could say hello to a life where we were free to be happy, to live in the now.
I am so glad that pieces like the comic are out there, to remind people that there ARE choices if things aren't working out. But also, that it IS NOT an easy button. It is hard. It is a huge loss. Everyone's ENOUGH is different -- but how lovely that there are explicit explorations of how you can evaluate your off-ramp.