Dear Carolyn: I struggled with infertility for many years and ultimately chose to be childless after many unsuccessful fertility treatments. A few weeks ago, my sister announced a surprise pregnancy, and I’m really struggling with it. How do I tell her this without sounding like a terrible, jealous person?
This will be the only grandchild in our family, and I can’t help feeling as if she’s getting something unfairly. There are some other family dynamics at play here. (Things always seem to work out for her, and my parents give her much more support.)
I feel like a terrible person/sister, but I’m also really struggling.
— Surprised
Surprised: I’m so sorry for your struggle. It’s understandable that your feelings are particularly raw right now.
That’s why it’s not only okay to tell your sister how you feel, but also important that you do. Kindly, generously.
There is always the risk someone will respond poorly to your honesty — especially someone who is both hormonal and adjusting to big feelings of her own. Your other ways of communicating, though, such as facial expressions, body language or conspicuous absences from family gatherings, will often tell the truth for you, whether you want them to or not, and less delicately than you would choose to in words. So words are your chance to get the message right.
I assume she knows of your treatments and disappointments. If that’s the case, then keep your approach to her pregnancy news simple, and make three key points: You are so happy for her. Your feelings are raw right now, so you might not always appear as happy for her as you’d like. You hope she can forgive you for that.
If she doesn’t know, then note your feelings are raw from tough decisions of your own about having children. No more data required.
Again, she might not receive your message well, no matter how kindly you mean it or effectively you deliver it. These are beyond a messenger’s control. You can only try to do right by both of you.
That can include your own reckoning, in private, with the resentment you still carry from your family’s dynamics. Just because it contributes to your current hard feelings doesn’t mean there’s any call to express it. And even if its origins are valid, you can still choose to maintain perspective and not indulge your resentment — with the help of a therapist, if you feel stuck. Your sister did not choose the position she’s in any more than you did. Any children she has won’t have chosen to bring attention to your sister or frustration to you.
In fact, if you and your sister are close enough familially and geographically, and if you have steadied your emotions by then, nurturing a bond with the child as a doting auntie could write a graceful twist into this difficult story. Whether that bond forms or not — something else over which you have only partial say — any openness and warmth you can show to a child, for decency’s sake alone, will be a balm to you both.
