Dear Meghan, are you OK?
Honestly, how can you be?
You have lost a life that was being nurtured within you.
I felt your grief – in the poignant way you wrote your New York Times editorial and described this heartbreaking episode: you cradling Archie and humming a cheerful lullaby to calm him and yourself, knowing that it would be the last time you’d be carrying both of your children.
Your grief, the pang of it – it is a tangible thing. You feel it, your husband feels it, I feel it, we all do. It is not a solitary grief to be endured alone.
One moment you were going about the usual mundane tasks of a mother content in caring for her family and home; in the next moment you were lying in a hospital bed, feeling numb yet feeling everything, as the sterility of the white walls amplify the grief of having just lost your second child.
Now those mundane tasks have become triggers and painful reminders. And I can imagine this will be the hard part after a miscarriage: to continue with the mundane, to survive this and – though this may be the hardest – to keep smiling for your eldest child when all you want to do is to scream or disappear.
Image source: iStock
You can have your silent but heavy moments because you choose to do so and not because of a social obligation to not make others feel uncomfortable. But you are also entitled to demonstrate your grief and to give it a voice.
Many still find child loss as a topic too taboo to discuss, but go right on ahead and make us feel uncomfortable. You expressed in your article that to share one’s story of loss is an act of bravery. And I totally agree, because bravery is to face the agony of loss head on. And courageous acts bring about positive change.
So talking honestly about losing a child and listening to the truth of it, the grief becomes lighter, the burden of it more bearable, and paves the way toward healing.
So I want to thank you, for the candor in which you have shared the grief you are experiencing. Your candor helps pave the way to recovery, which I hope will inspire more acts of bravery and bring about the collective healing of every bereaved parent. You are brave.
You are hurting. And I am immeasurably sorry for your loss.
You may not be OK right now, but you will be.
And you know what? Take all the time you need to get there.
(Images courtesy: Creative Commons-Wikipedia)
Find more resources on miscarriage here.
