And today I’m feeling sad again. I didn’t think that my grief was done with, but I am surprised it reared its ugly head again so soon. At least it’s not a major step back…
There was a trigger. I saw a stop animation of a pregnancy that someone in the IF community shared on Twitter. It made me weep because I think miscarriage destroys that blissful state of pregnancy. The one where you are so excited and confident that things are going to work out that you make a cute video to show the progress of your swelling belly with the little pilgrim inside. Even if I got pregnant again, I don’t know that I would allow myself to create something fun to mark my pregnancy. Miscarriage robs you of that.
Today I am no longer angry with all the insensitive ways P-SIL has treated me. In anger’s place is the real reason for my sadness. Simply, I wish it were me. I wish I were still pregnant. I wish it were October and people around me were excited.
So if I can’t have that, I wish people around me would remember that I was pregnant too once and acknowledge that this is a hard time for me. To tell me that I’m doing a good job, that I’m strong, that it’s to be expected that I am sad. That they’re sorry Bean isn’t still growing.
All I want is for someone to say I don’t know what to say, but I can imagine this must be a hard time for you… Would that really take away from their happiness? Am I so selfish to hope that people would remember me too?
I always think the “right thing” to say after a miscarriage is the same right thing after anyone dies. My father has terminal cancer, but at his passing would you imagine someone saying “there must have been something wrong with him, or he would have survived”. Would they say “this happens all the time to people”, or turn to my mother and say “well the good news is that you CAN get married”. I don’t understand why grief is so hard to comprehend and be sympathetic with.
Egg-zactly. !
The grief will never disappear entirely, it will just change. Very, very slowly the lows will become less low and the highs a little more high. But you can always go crashing back down at any moment, unfortunately. Three years since my first miscarriage and it still hits me unaware sometimes. The only difference between now and then, however, is now I know it’s normal to have a little bit of a slide back now and again; then, I beat myself up for not being “over it already.”
In the two months that it has taken me to respond to your comment, I have felt such changes take place, ButIF. Just when I think, Pshaw, miscarriage grief — I got me some bigger genetic fish to fry! something will take me by surprise. Sometimes it’s an old trigger (the idea of PSIL coming over) that I can talk myself out of, other times it’s one I can’t (a pregnant belly). And sometimes it’s the opening of a wound that I thought had scabbed over. I’m learning that this sorrow will haunt me, you, all of us, for the rest of our lives, in some way, but that though it may have shaped us, it, hopefully, won’t define us.
I feel that with us, there is no “right” thing to say, but when one is willing to listen to us, even when years later we wonder what that person who might have sat in that empty chair at the table might be like, it eases things just a little. As I said, we are mothers who lost our children. It makes no difference if we lost them prior to or after birth, we LOST our children. They died. Our grieving process is the same. I do know this: I wish this pain on no one. Judging by the hell we feel/felt, they wouldn’t be able to handle it so that job fell to us. We are in a unique club. We can hold up and support one another, and when we come across someone new experiencing this, we can open our hearts and arms to them because we’ve actually “been there” so they can cry, vent, etc…You are the strong one for creating this blog. It is like a “safe haven” for those who need support but do not feel that they really have it (and in some cases they don’t have it)…(((HUGS))) I’m glad I found it. It has helped me to accept and open up about my own experience. Hang in there Lauren. You’re still a “young ‘un”. You may be an old soul but that doesn’t mean you’re walking around with one foot on the grave and another on a banana peel. I think I’m closer to that! ;-)
Sweet Tina, I am so glad that you have begun to mourn your loss. It really says so much about you that, even carrying this sorrow for 25 years, you are a warm and funny person who gives so much to others. I really respect you. Thank you for sharing your journey with me as I follow mine. x
You sound like you are spinning around in your mind a lot right now, love.
I think there will often only be a few people whom you trust and love who will totally understand you where you are at, and then there will be some complete strangers who somehow know exactly what to do/say. Everyone else is wrapped up in their own lives and not intending to hurt you. They either need to protect themselves, or simply don’t/can’t let your energy in.
It’s so hard, but try not to take in their callousness as your own hurt. Otherwise you let their vices in to eat away at your own wholeness. My advice: keep trying some activities that are uncomfortable. Use them as pages out of the practice workbook of crappy stuff. It tones your emotional muscle, and gives you the wisdom to help others get through similarly crappy stuff.
Lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove this wisdom. YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!! Damn, that’s a powerful reminder, really needed it again today. I love you so much, friend x