A loss is a loss, no matter how small

When I think back to the first several miscarriages, I remember having these big emotions but no idea what to do with them. I didn't feel like anyone understood why I was so angry or sad. Part of the reason I think it was difficult for me to understand my feelings back then is that always in the back of my mind I would ask myself how I could be grieving for something or someone whom I never knew.  

Back then, when I thought of grief, I thought of sorrow over the loss of a loved one with whom I had made memories or whose familiar voice I’d never hear again. The deep feeling of loss I experienced with miscarriages was confusing to me because I couldn’t explain exactly what it was or whom it was that I was missing. Because I didn't accurately identify what I was feeling as grief, I wasn't able to recognize that everything I was experiencing was simply part of a grieving process. So, I basically just thought I was crazy. I felt like it seemed like I was being melodramatic or having too big of a response to what had happened. Because of that, I denied my pain. It was the most vulnerable state I'd ever been in and without being able to properly acknowledge my loss and my emotions, the things I was feeling mutated into anger. And I was so angry. For a so long.

I can't remember what it was that helped me begin to identify miscarriage as a loss, but when I did I also began to understand that starting from the very moment I found out I was pregnant, I began imagining my child. Would they be a boy or a girl? What would we name them? How would we decorate their room? Even during later pregnancies after my son was born, I'd imagine what he would be like as a brother and how he would react to the news. I had almost immediately begun thinking of this child as a life - as a walking, talking child that my heart wanted and loved. What I was grieving was everything. Everything this child would have or could have become. I was grieving the loss of tiny footsteps, first words, and first Christmas.

I finally began to acknowledge the magnitude of what I felt I'd lost, and in giving myself the space to see what it was that I was feeling, everything changed. I began to, rather than feel anger, feel the intense sorrow that the anger was masking. I began to understand that, in many ways, anger is an easier emotion to feel and, sometimes, a more acceptable one. So I had to give myself permission to be sad. It wasn't easy. When you're sad, those who love you want you to feel better. But I am adamant about the power of allowing yourself to feel the sadness. Healing comes so much more easily when we give ourselves grace and space to just feel what we feel rather than deny it, hide it, or try to push it away.

Once I understood and accepted that I was in the throes of grieving, I began to know that my loss was a loss, no matter how small. It didn’t matter that I’d never held or seen my baby.  I had known him or her in a way that only I could have, and I had loved them.

Since then, I've thought a lot about grief and paid attention to how various people move through loss differently. My experience didn’t teach me the right way to grieve.  Instead, it taught me that there is no right way to grieve.  And each loss is unique. I used to be afraid - afraid of losing those I loved; afraid of losing a part of myself. And I have lost both of those things - time and again now. But what I've gained from my losses is a greater ability to let my emotions rise and fall like ocean waves. I'm not afraid of my anger anymore because I know that it is just me trying to protect myself. So, I thank my anger for that, and very often it dissipates into sadness. So I cry. I cry my own baptism and let the cleansing waters wash over my heart in the knowing that relief will come when it does. I let the tears fall as long and as often as they come, and my tears are a salve to my soul. Eventually my heart and body rest. And then I wake ... to a new day. A day that looks different than the one before. I look in the mirror and see a different person than I did before. But I find that I'm able to breathe. I feel gratitude for that. And I put one foot in front of the other.