Filling The Void

Our Keepsake Journal is Here! 🎉

I am a person who likes to keep myself busy. I like to dream big. I like being involved in a lot of different activities in a lot of different capacities. If I find a new project, idea, or interest I can become obsessive. I will pour my heart and soul into it until the point of exhaustion or burn out. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy having relaxing lazy days, but let’s be honest how many of those do we really have anymore? We all have crazy busy lives and are all pulled in many different directions that seldom do we have time or allow ourselves time for relaxation. I am going to share something about myself with you all that isn’t easy to admit but will hopefully resonate with a few of you.

I HAVE to keep myself busy. I HAVE to be involved in a million activities that take up a lot of my time. I just am a better person and function better if I do that. I have seen what happens when I don’t. It’s called “Filling the Void,” and I am a pro at it. “Filling the void” means to keep yourself so busy with different projects, activities, and ideas that you simply do not allow yourself time to feel or think about anything that is difficult or missing in your life. When described like that it doesn’t sound so bad or like such a bad concept really. Honestly, when talking to people I think that’s what a lot of people do to cope with the difficult situations life deals us sometimes. “Conceal, don’t feel” – just like Elsa in Frozen. It’s what I have done and continue to do sometimes in order to deal or actually not deal with a lot of my feelings about our infertility struggles over the years.

I wasn’t really aware that I was doing this until my Mom pointed it out to me a few years after Jayden was born. Mom’s know best and she saw it in me long before I ever would’ve recognized it. When we moved back to Nebraska I went back to college, and had several different jobs, all while raising an infant. I was very busy and a lot of the time very stressed out. I was not at peace or content with anything. It always felt like something was missing, and I just kept searching to find it. I wanted more children so badly, and I wanted Jayden to be a big brother so much. Those feelings hurt so much that I simply had to keep stuffing them away and not let myself feel them. And the only way to do that was to stay busy.

When Jayden was four I told my family that I really did know what I wanted to do with my life and that was to finish nursing school. That was always my original plan out of high school, but it just never was completed. I needed their blessing and their support because I knew it was going to be hard. I also knew that this time I couldn’t quit or change my mind. They were all worried about how I was going to do it with a young child and that it might not be good on any of us to do this. It was the first time my Mom made me aware of my constant effort to “Fill the Void.” While she was supportive of my decision and knew that I always wanted to be a nurse, she was worried that this was another desperate attempt to stuff my feelings about our infertility situation by keeping myself wrapped up in something else.

I did get accepted into nursing school, and it was extremely challenging and stressful. For 2 ½ years I didn’t have much time to see outside of my nursing school books and my planner. There were many times I thought I wasn’t going to make it and wanted to give up but I wouldn’t let myself. It was hard on all of us and I think we were all so happy when I was finally done. It was a really big deal for me because it was something I had wanted for so long and something I had finally finished.

After I graduated I honestly didn’t know what to do with all of my time that I now had. I was working full-time but there wasn’t anything else to occupy my evenings that I had spent studying after Jayden went to bed. I felt lost and very out of sorts. That unsettled feeling began to lurk inside me again. It felt familiar and it was irritating to me. I had just completed one of my biggest goals for myself, and I still didn’t feel content or at peace. Something was still missing, and I didn’t have anything at the time to take my mind off of it. I wanted another baby, and this time I couldn’t think of anything else to “Fill the Void.”

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Check out our new Keepsake Companion Journal that pairs with our So God Made a Mother book!

Order Now

So God Made a Mother's Story Keepsake Journal

Her View Shop

infertility pregnancy

Shannon Bauer

Shannon is a wife to her husband Jeff, mother to her son Jayden, 11 years old, and a Registered Nurse by day. She grew up on a farm outside of Wilcox and now resides in Hildreth, NE. She enjoys exercising, cheering for her son at his sporting events, shopping, singing, gardening, sipping a cup of coffee, Sunday dinners with her family, and spending time with friends. Her road to motherhood has been a challenging and bumpy one with many highs and lows and something she will never take for granted. Learning about infertility and helping others experiencing it is a passion she holds deep in her heart. Her journey along this road is a constant work in progress and something she is growing and learning from every day. It is her goal to one day write a book or start a blog telling her story. She and her son Jayden share their favorite bible verse Phillipians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and find great comfort in these words in life’s challenging moments.

The Last Text I Sent Said “I Love You”

In: Friendship, Grief, Living

I’ve been saying “I love you” a lot recently. Not because I have been swept off my feet. Rather, out of a deep appreciation for the people in my life. My children, their significant others, and friends near and far. I have been blessed to keep many faithful friendships, despite the transitions we all experience throughout our lives. Those from childhood, reunited high school classmates, children of my parent’s friends (who became like family), and those I met at college, through work and shared activities. While physical distance has challenged many of these relationships, cell phones, and Facebook have made...

Keep Reading

I Obsessed over Her Heartbeat Because She’s My Rainbow Baby

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Mother and teen daughter with ice cream cones, color photo

I delivered a stillborn sleeping baby boy five years before my rainbow baby. I carried this sweet baby boy for seven whole months with no indication that he wouldn’t live. Listening to his heartbeat at each prenatal visit until one day there was no heartbeat to hear. It crushed me. ”I’m sorry but your baby is dead,” are words I’ll never be able to unhear. And because of these words, I had no words. For what felt like weeks, I spoke only in tears as they streamed down my cheeks. But I know it couldn’t have been that long. Because...

Keep Reading

We’re Walking the Road of Twin Loss Together

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Mother and son walk along beach holding hands

He climbed into our bed last week, holding the teddy bear that came home in his twin brother’s hospital grief box almost 10 years earlier. “Mom, I really miss my brother. And do you see that picture of me over there with you, me and his picture in your belly? It makes me really, really sad when I look at it.” A week later, he was having a bad day and said, “I wish I could trade places with my brother.” No, he’s not disturbed or mentally ill. He’s a happy-go-lucky little boy who is grieving the brother who grew...

Keep Reading

Until I See You in Heaven, I’ll Cherish Precious Memories of You

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Toddler girl with bald head, color photo

Your memory floats through my mind so often that I’m often seeing two moments at once. I see the one that happened in the past, and I see the one I now live each day. These two often compete in my mind for importance. I can see you in the play of all young children. Listening to their fun, I hear your laughter clearly though others around me do not. A smile might cross my face at the funny thing you said once upon a time that is just a memory now prompted by someone else’s young child. The world...

Keep Reading

The Day My Mother Died I Thought My Faith Did Too

In: Faith, Grief, Loss

She left this world with an endless faith while mine became broken and shattered. She taught me to believe in God’s love and his faithfulness. But in losing her, I couldn’t feel it so I believed it to be nonexistent. I felt alone in ways like I’d never known before. I felt helpless and hopeless. I felt like He had abandoned my mother and betrayed me by taking her too soon. He didn’t feel near the brokenhearted. He felt invisible and unreal. The day my mother died I felt alone and faithless while still clinging to her belief of heaven....

Keep Reading

Can I Still Trust Jesus after Losing My Child?

In: Faith, Grief, Loss

Everyone knows there is a time to be born and a time to die. We expect both of those unavoidable events in our lives, but we don’t expect them to come just 1342 days apart. For my baby daughter, cancer decided that the number of her days would be so many fewer than the hopeful expectation my heart held as her mama. I had dreams that began the moment the two pink lines faintly appeared on the early morning pregnancy test. I had hopes that grew with every sneak peek provided during my many routine ultrasounds. I had formed a...

Keep Reading

To the Healthcare Workers Who Held My Broken Heart

In: Grief, Loss

Baby hat with hospital certificate announcing stillbirth, color photo

We all have hard days at work. Those days that push our physical, mental, and emotional limits out of bounds and don’t play fair. 18 years ago, I walked into an OB/GYN emergency room feeling like something was off, just weeks away from greeting our first child. As I reflect on that day, which seems like a lifetime ago and also just yesterday, I find myself holding space for the way my journey catalyzed a series of impossibly hard days at work for some of the people who have some of the most important jobs in the world. RELATED: To...

Keep Reading

I Loved You to the End

In: Grief, Living

As your time on this earth came close to the end, I pondered if I had given you the best life. I pondered if more treatment would be beneficial or harmful. I pondered if you knew how much you were loved and cherished As the day to say goodbye grew closer, I thought about all the good times we had. I remembered how much you loved to travel. I remembered how many times you were there for me in my times of darkness. You would just lay right next to me on the days I could not get out of...

Keep Reading

I Hate What the Drugs Have Done but I Love You

In: Grief, Living

Black and white image of woman sitting on floor looking away with arms covering her face

Sister, we haven’t talked in a while. We both know the reason why. Yet again, you had a choice between your family and drugs, and you chose the latter. I want you to know I still don’t hate you. What I do hate is the drugs you always seem to go back to once things get too hard for you. RELATED: Love the Addict So Hard it Hurts Speaking of hard, I won’t sugarcoat the fact that being around you when you’re actively using is so hard. Your anger, your manipulation, and your deceit are too much for me (or anyone around you) to...

Keep Reading

Giving Voice to the Babies We Bury

In: Grief, Loss

Woman looking up to the sky, silhouette at sunset

In the 1940s, between my grandmother’s fourth child and my father, she experienced the premature birth of a baby. Family history doesn’t say how far along she was, just that my grandfather buried the baby in the basement of the house I would later grow up in. This was never something I heard my grandmother talk about, and it was a shock to most of us when we read her history. However, I think it’s indicative of what women for generations have done. We have buried our grief and not talked about the losses we have experienced in losing children through...

Keep Reading