07 May MOTHER’S DAY WITH SENSITIVITY FOR THOSE NOT YET MOTHERS

While some are
counting down to
Mother’s Day this
Sunday with great
excitement and
anticipation, many are
looking at the calendar
with dread and anxiety. For those desperately
longing to have a child but have been denied
by nature or because they are waiting to find
a spouse, Mother’s Day and all the fanfare
that surrounds it only pours salt in wounds.
While many of our young men and women
of marriageable age assume that once a
couple decides they would like start a family
it is simple to conceive and bring a healthy
baby into the world, the truth is not so simple.
One out of eight couples suffers from
infertility, which includes the inability to get
pregnant, secondary infertility, or loss of a
pregnancy/stillborn. Up to twenty percent of
those who do become pregnant experience a
miscarriage. Eighty percent of those
miscarriages occur within the first trimester,
when the couple is unlikely to have told
anyone they were expecting and before the
woman begins to show.
Our matriarch, Rachel, knew the pain of
childlessness. She screamed out, “im ayin,

meisa anochi, if I don’t have a child I am
already dead,” from which the Gemara
(Nedarim 64b) likens that the pain of being
childless while wanting children to a form of
death. Indeed, those longing to have children
describe the pain of their disappointment as
the death of their dreams and hopes and the
grief similar to the loss of a loved one who

isn’t coming back. Day after day of taking
shots, undergoing fertility treatments,
attempting IVF cycles, and going into debt to
afford it all is extremely painful, but well
worth it if resulting in a healthy baby. But
when the results come back negative, the
procedure turns out not to help, or the IVF
proves unsuccessful, the physical and
material pain is negligible compared to
the emotional agony and anguish.
Compounding this deep pain is the
reality that most of the people struggling
with infertility or who have suffered a
miscarriage are grieving without anyone
even knowing.
They are forced to
spend their days
interacting with
others as if all is
well, when in fact it
isn’t.
Since others don’t
know about their
struggle, they are
deprived of
awareness, support,
love, or assistance
and it leaves them
feeling lonely.
Talk to anyone
suffering with
infertility, or with
loneliness and the
longing to meet
someone and start a
family, and they
will tell you that
worse than the
indifference of
friends and
acquaintances is
the unintentional
insensitivity of so

many who have been blessed with healthy
children and who make comments, tell
stories, share pictures, or complain about
their kids.
Our parsha enjoins us, V’chai achicha
imach, when your brother or sister is feeling
down and out, uplift them and support them.
We can’t necessarily help our single family
and friends find their spouse and we often
don’t even know who around us is in anguish
from infertility. However, we can all do
better—we must do better—to be sensitive in
how we talk, what we post, when we share.
On Mother’s Day, rather than turn to social
media as a public stage
to profess love and
appreciation to mothers
and wives, we should
directly and personally
tell the mothers in our
lives how we feel, or
take the time to write a
private heartfelt card
making our loved one
feel good without
making others feel bad.
Rachel’s prayers were
answered, and her hopes
realized. She not only
became a mother, but is
known in perpetuity as
our Mama Rachel, the
mother of our whole
people. Take a moment
on this Mother’s Day
weekend and pray that
all those longing to be
married and those
longing to have children
have their prayers
answered and their
dreams fulfilled.