I Had a Miscarriage by Jessica Zucker (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

look at a horrific or heartbreaking situation. Sometimes when we try to make sense of why bad things happen to good people, we find ourselves searching for meaning where there is none, getting caught in a manufactured duality. We can hold both. There is room and necessity for nuance, complexity, and gradation. We can be hurt and healing simultaneously. We can be grateful for what we have and angry about what we don’t at the exact same time. We can dive deep into the pit of our pain and not forget the beauty our life maintains. We can hold both. We can grieve and laugh at precisely the same moment. We can make love and mourn in the same week. Be crestfallen and hopeful. We can hold both. And so it goes. We grievers might stumble upon these notions the hard way (I’m not so sure there’s any other way to come face-to-face with them), but nevertheless, we work to integrate them and, in time, deftly tuck them in to our pockets as hard-won wisdom we might just get the chance to impart someday.

This is what I’ve learned—as a woman, as a therapist, as a griever, as a mother. Though “healing” might not be the most apt word to describe what happens to us after we survive pregnancy or infant loss, we aim to become familiar with our newly shaped lives. We rest in this strange and unfamiliar place. We do our best. We arduously wrestle with and try to predict what might come next. We wonder if we will ever be our (previous) selves again. We ruminate on the what-ifs. We might even become impatient with grief. We make plans, knowing they, too, might take a left turn, even though before we were most always certain they’d go right.

Maybe for some, the concept of healing resonates. Either way, what matters most is that we take a stance of unequivocal compassion for what follows pregnancy and infant loss. Lacking in self-judgment, we do our best to play it by ear and show up for ourselves in whatever it is we are feeling. We can’t always plan it. Control is out of reach, ephemeral. We can’t get “out” of grief or “past” it or even “through” it, necessarily. And crucially, we should not try to circumnavigate or dodge it altogether. We can exist in it, together. We already do, actually, by the mere fact that we are one in four (miscarriage), one in one hundred (stillbirth), one in eight (fertility struggles)—the list goes on. Statistics adding up to the millions means we are plentiful and robust. But until women no longer silently muse, I am in this alone, I feel isolated, and Why am I the only one this is happening to? our work is not done. My work is never finished.

We must challenge ourselves communally and individually to do our part to shift the narrative: be it by sharing your own story, checking in on a friend, or claiming your truth aloud despite the fear. Big or small, your effort and place in all of this matters. Whatever version feels right for you, do that. And then maybe stretch a little further the next time. Stretching the empathy might yield transformative change: empathy for yourself and maybe even toward a reproductive outcome unfamiliar to you.

Together, we have the chance to rewrite the reproductive-loss script—we already are, in fact—for grievers and loved ones alike. It’s underway, this much-needed zeitgeist shift. Imagine if the reproductive-loss landscape looked and felt fully inclusive of the spectrum of reproductive outcomes; if grief were no longer conceptualized as something to do away with, but rather were respected as the wise teacher it is; if silence, stigma, and shame dissipated altogether, and we actively moved closer to uncomfortable conversations, rather than further away. Then, and only then, will society change form. Permeating culture, storytelling would—once and for all—replace silence, making as much room for heartache as it needs, in perpetuity. With no rush, no expiration dates, no comparing or contrasting, no turning in on the self. None of that. Instead, this newfound spaciousness would normalize the circuitousness of bereavement and reframe discussions around pregnancy and infant loss.

Make no mistake: this is radical. Our mothers and grandmothers, aunts and sisters do not necessarily know what this world looks like, and it may be a difficult mindset to adjust to. What we are creating, through our vulnerability, our stories, our deeply personal and yet magically universal histories, may stir mixed feelings: everything from resentment that they did not receive the same support we are offering to those who come after us, to old and unprocessed grief—grief they were not allowed the time nor the space nor the language to process. Through truth-telling and expanding the reproductive dialogue to include grief as a mainstay—as well as apathy and relief—a much-needed metamorphosis might just be in order.

Your story might be the very genesis of this. I dare you to find out. I am here, rooting you on and supporting your every step. Sometimes a witness is precisely what we need to be seen, to be heard, to be honored for who we are, exactly where we are. To be seen amid transformation. A transformation that is so deeply personal, so profound. What’s more is if enough of us dare ourselves to speak up, then maybe, just maybe, we can collectively incite a cultural transformation. A revolution of reproduction.

I have learned an immeasurable amount from the women who have sat with me in these moments. Through these potent exchanges of emotional intimacy, I have been bowled over by both the beauty and the catharsis that comes about from sheer vulnerability, benevolence, and tenderness. These connections have been legitimately life-changing, and they so deeply reflect what happens when we allow ourselves to share with one another—candidly—about these harrowing experiences. I’ve learned that getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is part and parcel of the grieving process. I’ve learned that silence is suffocating and that