Toxic positivity

How to encourage an energy shift without losing your goddamn mind

It seems like people are always trying to give me advice.

As someone who has, for the better part of a decade, made a habit of dissecting myself for the world wide web, I have witnessed the ever-growing compulsion of people to offer consultation, whether it’s solicited or not. I think the democratization of the internet has done this. It’s hard for people to fathom why a person would slam a hunk of themselves on the table for examination without expecting some kind of commentary in return. It’s part of the deal. I get it. I’m not here to complain — especially because, over time, I’ve learned to mostly ignore the hum of unrequested guidance from strangers on the internet.

Where I have a hard time ignoring advice is in real life, especially when it’s coming from people who I know, love, and trust. And lately, there’s one piece of advice that has been heaped on me from well-meaning confidents all over my life: "You need to keep a positive attitude.”

This isn’t the first time in my life that I’ve been offered this nugget of wisdom. In fact, I’d venture to guess that this is the piece of advice I have heard the most over the course of my 35 years. When I was single, and would lament the fact that I was yet again without a plus one to a wedding, I was told to keep my chin up. When I was in the midst of my freelance hustle, spiraling over where my next paycheck was coming from, I was encouraged to look on the bright side of things. Even recently, as Ben and I have begun our house hunt in probably the worst market ever (girl, the tariffs), I’ve been told to think positively, even as we toured our umpteenth fixer-upper priced at a cool $750,000.

The rallying cry of positivity has reached a fever pitch, however, now that we’re officially “trying to get pregnant while dealing with infertility.” (I’ve been trying to not label myself as “infertile,” for reasons that will become abundantly clear over the course of this newsletter, but have yet to figure out how to characterize our situation without that word.) I have been under an assault of affirmations for months — since before we’d even gotten an official diagnosis. But once we knew what we were dealing with, the bombardment increased overnight.

As soon as it was recommended that I see a fertility specialist, I booked an appointment with an acupuncturist on recommendation from a family friend who is a former fertility nurse. As my practitioner gently tapped needles into my feet and burned moxa over my belly, she gently told me not to worry about the escalated numbers my hormone tests were showing. “Nothing is set in stone,” she said as the smell of ground mugwort filled the air. “Just keep positive.” The RE we chose to move forward with labeled himself an optimist, and reminded me how important it was to keep faith that I would one day have a child. Both the psychic medium my mother and I saw and the intuitive I started working with to heal my energy drove home the importance of positive visualization. And there has been a consistent drum beat from every single person close to me in my life: You’ve got to keep positive, Maria. It’s so important to stay positive.

Here’s the thing, though. It is nearly impossible to stay positive when you are smack dab in the middle of the worst moment of your life. I can say without question that the two weeks following my diagnosis were that for me. I felt like I was in the middle of an ocean during a hurricane in the middle of the night — drowning, tossed around, exhausted, unable to figure out which way was up. I could have cried every single day, and stayed in bed until I hear different news. But I heard the drum beat in the back of my mind: You’ve got to keep positive, Maria. It was like my brain was telling me that my heart was going to keep me from ever getting pregnant, that my inability to maintain a sunny disposition was the reason why we’d never have a baby.

And so I fell into a kind of shame spiral. I’d feel terrible, and then I’d feel guilty about feeling terrible, and that would make me feel even worse. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Most women I know struggle with perfectionism. This is a very binary way of thinking, and I acknowledge that, but I tend to this it’s because we aren’t offered the opportunity to fail in the same way men are. We’re thought to be the more responsible ones — and not just in the typical ways, like remembering to take the compost out or keeping track of all of our friend’s birthdays. We’re expected to be more responsible for our actions, expected to be smart enough to change and adjust as needed. Because we know if we wallow, or allow ourselves to spin out of control, it will just prove every negative characterization that has been made about us since the beginning of time: hysterical, overly emotional, flighty, silly, unsuited for leadership.

I don’t think I realized until this moment how that need for perfectionism not only affected my actions, but my feelings, too. After looping through my cycle of shame for the better part of two weeks, it was Ben who finally pointed out what I was doing. “You can’t talk yourself out of feeling bad,” he told me after I’d asked him for my 20th hug of the day while sobbing into his shoulder. “You’re just throwing logs on the fire.” I took a step back and realized that by not giving myself the time or the space to feel despondent, I was actually prolonging my mourning period. And I did need to mourn — even though us having children is not off the table, we’d still been dealt a death blow to the type of pregnancy journey that we’d been promised.

There are so many things I wish I could control in this process. It’s my nature, the thing I will likely be working on until the day I die. But I’m starting to think that maybe this is all happening in order for me to relinquish that type of need for control and to just let things flow the way they’re mean to. I’ve already started to feel an energy shift in this direction. It’s like I’ve been struggling against a current for so long, and now I’ve given up, rolled over onto my back, and am just letting myself float in the direction I’m being pulled.

I do sincerely believe we will have children at the end of this journey. But there is very little I can do to speed up that process. The things I can control are simple: I’m drinking less, eating healthier, meditating to try to balance my mind. I get my steps in, and strength train, and say no to the things I don’t want to do. And on the days where I feel incredibly low, I just let myself feel it. I cry, and I lay around the house, and I soothe myself in any way I can. But I don’t guilt myself for feeling the way I do.

And you know what? If I give myself permission to feel, the sadness does eventually dissipate. I feel better the next day. And, for now, that is a beautiful thing to look forward to.