I grew up at the tail end of a generation that didn’t know how to grieve. Sadness, mourning, grief, were all wasted time.
Your dog dies - it’s just a dog.
Had a miscarriage - wasn’t a baby yet.
So when I had a miscarriage at 24, 2 years after my first born son, I didn’t let myself feel.
In fact, I didn’t think about it much or reallze the impact it had on me until reading Gabby Bernstein’s story of her loss. When I realized that she was mourning a miscarriage and not a living, breathing baby, I finally felt the flood of emotions rise up from the time of my own. It’s startling to me how disconnected I was and praised myself for being when I specifically remember wishing I could be “the soft mom” but I didn’t know how.
I ache for this version of myself that was so afraid to feel. To love and be loved. I wish I could be the mother to little ones I would be now, but know that I couldn’t get there without being here after all of the things I’ve been through.
We lived in town but still, very much, carried old farm beliefs from generations past. Feelings were difficult - hard work praised. I love the hard work part, but I’m changing the way I support myself and my people around feelings.
The floodgates of shame opened up after realizing what a “monster” I was during that time. How could anyone have even loved me, I was a shell of a person. I held onto rage and anger as the only safe way to express. (Editor's note: I have the best peope around that reach out because they don't want me to feel this way - I don't feel like I'm unworthy of love anymore. Even if I rage, I know that I'm deserving of being loved. Maybe more so in those moments)
Finding out the baby I was carrying, that didn’t make me throw up morning to night (it was a sign), had no heartbeat actually devastated me. But the factual way the doctor delivered the info in that room just the two of us, let my brain compartmentalize it as something not to think too much about. I wasn’t entitled to feel sad for the little girl I knew I would have after my first boy. I knew this my whole life. I felt it in my bones. I am truly grateful for this passing little girl so I could have the pleasure of meeting, knowing and raising 2 sons. Something I think is the greatest gift of my life.
There in that room alone I subconsciously decided to not become a burden. I could’ve chosen a DNC and known when the baby would leave my body but I would’ve needed to take time off work and have someone take me. I thought it would be easier to do it on my own. In the time my body wanted to do it. I regret this.
When it finally happened I was on my way to get my oldest after work, the pain tore through my body in copious amounts I couldn’t swallow. I didn’t want to have my husband leave work so I called my mom and told her what was going on and took myself to the hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital they took me to the old labor and delivery section that was no longer in use for birthing babies but still seemed like it was. And it did. But not quite a birth, now it was an ending.
The doctor and nurses gathered around me, the way she looked at me told me I should feel something so I doubled down on externally feeling nothing while inside I felt so scared and alone. From my 44 year old lens, I would’ve thought “what is this baby doing here alone having a baby”. It shocks me I did this and wanted to do this.
They were so caring and tried to be tender but when my cervix wouldn’t tip for this baby with no heart to leave, manual maneuvering was necessary.
I don’t believe I’ve ever felt pain like that before or again since.
By myself with strangers, in a cold and sterile room, a baby with no heart was taken from my body.
I left the same day and picked up my son. Returned to work on schedule. Life went on.
Not much more happened regarding that day that I can remember.
This is how I stored the pain of not being able to bring a life into the world.
I needed to be shown by someone I didn’t know that this actually mattered and at first I thought “the baby wasn’t even born yet and you feel this sad?” Then it hit me. I didn’t allow myself to feel the pain of what that loss felt like. I didn’t allow myself to feel the pain of a freshly 24 year old girl going through the confusion and devastation of a baby not come to term.
I look back at that time and how violent it felt during the miscarriage and can’t help but see my body desperately trying to express the pain I would not (could not) feel.
Our bodies are incredible organic computers not separate from energy or emotion. If we won’t feel it to know it, our bodies will show it.
You probably think I might’ve uncovered these feelings around my miscarriage shortly after going through it but it was just before we moved in 2023, almost 2 decades after that I finally realized the pain I suffered alone with. By choice.
No one made me feel like I couldn’t speak of it or couldn’t feel it. It was actually probably the opposite, it was me who shut the world out.
I wanted to suffer alone. I didn’t feel worthy of taking up the space to grieve. That was my decision I didn’t know I made.
I held onto anger. It helped me cope.
I find myself wishing I could’ve been a different kind of mother and I think I would change my whole personality if I could keep all the good parts like my kids. I wish I knew how to feel earlier. It’s like finally living in color. I know you’re not supposed to say you wish it to be different, but I do. My kids deserved better and so did I.
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