It was a human mistake, of course, to assume our experiences were similar. But it alerted me yet again to the ways in which we reflexively compare and contrast loss experiences—an outcome of our painfully inadequate understanding of death, grief, and trauma. Because in the absence of understanding, it seems, we’re left to rely on the context of our own experiences, and often make the mistake of using what we’ve endured as a way to gauge what we believe other people should endure as well. The common refrain is “I made it through this, so you can too.” What is meant to come off as support is in actuality dismissive.
Let’s aim to refrain from assumptions and, most especially, from minimizing or magnifying these grief-stricken journeys. I’ve seen this so many times in my office, women saying some variants of: “I feel like I should be over my loss by now. I was only six weeks along. It could have been so much worse.” “At least it was early.” “At least I know I can get pregnant.” “At least my milk didn’t come in.” “At least I didn’t feel the baby move.” “At least I wasn’t overly attached.” “At least my grieving process won’t go on and on like theirs might.” “It feels indulgent to feel this.” It’s a base impulse, to compare, but it really doesn’t serve anyone. Why does it matter whose suffering is “worse”? And is this even a thing, comparing and contrasting pain? Pain is pain. Grief is grief. Incalculable at their best, sadistic at their worst, pregnancy outcomes surely don’t lend themselves to a discrete or linear hierarchy. No one wants to find themselves atop a mountain of pain, shouting, “I win! My loss is the worst-possible scenario. Worse than yours and yours and also yours!”
With patients, I used—and still use—a careful response: “Your pain is just as real and valid and important as anybody else’s. Your loss matters because it is your loss. Your hope, dashed. Your body, grieving. Your sadness. Your love. Try to resist the urge to compare and contrast. There needn’t be a loss/grief hierarchy. It only serves to minimize your experience. Face your pain without distracting it by somehow making it less than. Or too much. You are significant. Your heart is shattered. Lean into the ache. It’s yours.” Within the safety of my practice, I felt comfortable parsing out this innate reaction to pain and loss more thoroughly. I could push back on the notion that one’s level of grief needn’t be dictated by another’s, especially because in doing so I was also doing my job.
But in my personal life, I felt like I had no choice but to stem the tide and cut off these types of conversations. Instead of wading into vulnerable territory to disprove the belief that our traumas must be measured against the size and significance of someone else’s, I amped up my boundaries, repeating my own version of the “I’m good” refrain, somewhat defensively: “I wasn’t even sure I wanted a second child anyway.” “I was terrified to raise a girl in this culture.” Probably my most frequent utterance was “I’m okay, really.”
But just as I’d seen countless times before—yet somehow still wasn’t prepared for in my own life—the sticky tendrils of my trauma began to strangulate. Flashbacks, numbness, avoidance, sweat-soaked night terrors, anxiety, hypervigilance—you name it. Berated by a cacophony of discordant thoughts, I was officially rendered compassless.
And though I’d heard from patients about the unintentional and seemingly universal horror of platitudes, navigating this firsthand was another thing entirely. Some conversations were smooth, others stilted, some not halfbad. I wasn’t sure what to make of the disappointments, the strained face-to-face interactions at preschool drop-off, the awkward pauses with friends I’d been close with for decades. Each a sucker punch to the gut.
Some subtle, others demonstrative, these blows hurled me into elaborate fantasies of intermittent hiding. But I had to resist; I had to push on.
• • •
I figured I’d huddle up close to those I’d known the longest. After all, they knew me—and I knew them—best.
So I set out to meet up with Sara. While Sara has never lost a pregnancy, she has lost people close to her, and she is one of my dearest childhood friends. We met in the fourth grade and have remained close ever since—ski trips to Mammoth, cross-country visits during college, long phone calls about our respective crushes, career ambitions, budding sex lives. She has a heart of gold and that wit of hers brings me to my knees in belly laughter every time. I knew she’d throw her arms around me and her embrace would remind me of the person I was before this horrendous experience. A person I so desperately missed.
Even though my anxiety was nearing an unparalleled level, I didn’t want to let myself reschedule our lunch plans. I knew seeing her would be good for my soul and that catching up face-to-face might rejuvenate me. I let her know in advance that my anxiety was at an all-time high—9.75 out of 10, to be exact. I wanted to give her a heads-up on my unfortunate labile state, to give her the opportunity to cancel in case my mourning was too overbearing. She was still up for it.
I arrived early. She was ten minutes late. I didn’t feel well. I thought about leaving. I waited.
She showed up in a turquoise A-line dress with gray side-zip booties and a trio of beaded gold, silver, and copper necklaces. She looked effortless as she floated toward me; her joie de vivre lit up her dark-brown eyes adorned in elongating mascara, with just a puff of blush illuminating her pale, porcelain cheeks. I envied the feeling she emanated. It was so good to see her. It had been a while. But it was hard too. Seeing her in her natural vitality underscored how desolate my insides felt, how downtrodden I must have looked. Connecting with someone who knew me when I was full of life mirrored back to me just how low I’d sunk.
As we picked at our salads, we talked about stuff going on in her work life, our kids, and the anxiety I’d been confronted with ever since my miscarriage. “Do you want to see a photo of the baby?” I ventured. “I know it’s intense, but I wondered if you might want to see what I saw; if you’d like to see her.” Sara’s eyes glazed over with empathy. “Of course I want to see her. I can’t believe you have photographs.” I grabbed my phone, opened the camera roll, and clicked on one of the images taken that day as I lay on the table during the D&C. I felt thankful again that my midwife friend had had the presence of mind to snap these, knowing what an important vestige they’d be as I navigated my grief.
“NOOOOOO!” Sara screamed, not quite loud enough for other tables to hear, as she averted her wincing gaze from the fetus that fell from my body a couple of weeks prior. She looked disgusted. The mood plummeted. I felt horrid, like I’d done something wrong. I quickly found myself trying to make her feel better with a string of bumbling apologies as I awkwardly shoved my phone deep in my bag, as if to bury the evidence. I could feel my face warm with shame. Or maybe it was anger? Perhaps a commingling of both.
“I’m sorry. Should I not have shown that to you?” I muttered in an embarrassed, hushed tone, as if I’d somehow done something wildly inappropriate.
Encapsulated in a cloud of silence for what felt like an eternity, we sipped sparkling water, chewed chunks of ice, and avoided eye contact.
Things devolved from there.
In an attempt at a lighter note, Sara looked up from her now-empty water glass.
“You look svelte; as if you weren’t even pregnant. Aren’t those your prepregnancy J Brand jeans?”
Gulp. I gave a perfunctory nod. “Yeah, the baby weight came off almost overnight.”
I could feel even my skin withdrawing from this seemingly frivolous direction of the conversation. From dead-baby photograph to the size of my body and jeans? This can’t be happening, I thought to myself.
“Lucky you! That must be a relief.”
A relief that my baby died and that I don’t look like I was ever pregnant? Please don’t erase my pregnancy with a trivial remark about the shape of this body of mine, I shouted in my head.
I calmly replied, “I guess.”
Her attempt to redirect the conversation put us smack in another emotional minefield: Talking about women’s bodies. Mine, specifically.
People had said similar things to me after my son was born—“You look like you were never pregnant!”—and I found myself chafing against the declaration, which was so earnestly meant to be a compliment. I was, of course, changed. I wanted to be changed. I welcomed, was even overjoyed at, the physical and psychic changes brought about by motherhood. This moment was entirely different, but nonetheless the same. This pregnancy had left a mark on me; I didn’t want to hear that Sara couldn’t see it, or that it had been erased entirely. Also, I wished I were still pregnant, so hearing that I didn’t look like I had ever been pregnant was no consolation at all. Everywhere I looked, I was boxed in by another conversation I did not want to have. Conversations I knew were intended to help, but which too often blatantly missed the mark.
Turning points happen when you least expect them, I guess. I learned this too well through the trauma of my loss, and here again, reiterated in love. This galling exchange stung to the core; and so, I licked my gaping wounds as I grew more anxious on my brief drive home, up into the placid hills, even more depleted than I had been two hours prior.
Sometimes—I found rather quickly—having history with someone doesn’t necessarily protect you from egregious statements, unintended harsh comments, or unfortunate stalemates. Sometimes, instead, hearing afflictive words from someone you’ve known your entire life can be arresting, blanketing you in an isolation no one should ever know.
• • •
“Oh, the karma!” a family member exclaimed when I shared by phone that the bleeding, which had finally ceased, began to trickle once again. Blood spilling from my body once more: a continued consequence of the miscarriage. I didn’t have the stamina to digest this misfire amid the reinjury I was navigating, as I riffled through my bathroom cabinet in search of yet another clunky pad. I thought I was done with these. Later, however, when I had a moment to think, I was effectively flattened by her off-handed insinuation. Was she implying that I somehow deserved this miscarriage and the subsequent, seemingly never-ending bleeding? That I had done something in my life that set me up for this grand devastation? Sucker punched once more, I felt the wind knocked out of me.
Questioning my own hurt feelings and my interpretation of this comment, I went to Google and looked up the formal definition of karma. Maybe it was me who didn’t understand. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma means “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.”19
I was speechless as I mulled over what this utterance—Oh, the karma!—signified about how this family member of mine viewed me, life’s trajectory, and perhaps, most especially, spotlighted her conceptualization of tragedy. Was she implying that my miscarriage was in some way my fault, and my fault alone? A lesson I deserved to learn? Something I’d done in my past now catching up with me, something so abominable that I somehow had a hand in my fate, now crushing my spirit? To make matters more confusing, had she suddenly adopted religious/cultural beliefs outside of her own (Judaism) that she likely knew little, if nothing, about? Did she fully comprehend the meaning of the word “karma”? I couldn’t make sense of it. The comment burrowed into my bones. It remains there. It festers sometimes, still.
• • •
There were lots of little instances like this, off-handed remarks burned into my mind with their (perhaps unintended) cruelty. Take the first Thanksgiving after my loss, which featured a showstopping awkward moment when a family friend excitedly shouted from across the table, “Congratulations on your pregnancy!” It was six weeks after my miscarriage. He hadn’t heard that I’d lost the pregnancy. Stunned, I calmly looked around the room to secure a waiter to bring me a vodka tonic with a twist of lime, and fast. In hushed tones, this uninformed friend was quickly educated about my recent loss as I sipped my cocktail, now tinged with tears.
The following day, Jason, Liev, and I boarded a plane originally meant to take us on a celebratory “babymoon.” Instead, with a hollow uterus and pulsating hormones and no baby to nurture, I had a sad week on a stunning beach.
While there, I thought, Fuck it, I deserve some self-care. A massage or two could ease the tension in this body of mine that had just been to hell and back. So I shuffled into the airy, lavender-infused spa, and lay still on a wooden table. I would have given anything to experience a sense of peace for even a few minutes.
“Anything specific going on in your body?” she asked.
You can say that again, I thought to myself. “Well, yeah, I lost a pregnancy at four months along recently.”
She uttered words of sympathy and began to touch my tender body. Halfway through the treatment, as I began to feel the calm I’d been yearning for, she spoke.
“So, do you think there’s something you did that caused your miscarriage?”
And just like that, on the precipice of peace, I was pulled back into war.
• • •
In the wake of so many missteps—so many well-intentioned comments, questions, and regurgitated platitudes gone awry—I felt discombobulated. In an effort to try to carefully balance between my desire to retreat and regroup alone, and my acknowledged need to reach out and locate the arsenal of support that would no doubt flank me, I felt suspended in my grief: Do I risk bringing people into the fold who, like Sara, I believe could offer me the support I need? What if I, like I had been with Sara, was wrong? Could I handle another devastatingly awkward conversation about my jeans size? Could I weather another comment about my now nonpregnant body?
Turns out, the decision was somewhat made for me. Aside from a smattering of people—a handful of individuals from various parts of my life whose only commonality was showing themselves present, empathic and willing—the vast majority of people that I knew did not seem accessible. Those who did rush to my side were instrumental in my healing, eventually helping to restore me back to some patchwork version of who I’d known myself to be. But for everyone else, it seemed as though my unconscionable experience somehow forced them to flee.
Where have they gone? I wondered. I began to second-guess myself. After all, I was navigating wonky hormones, and my sensitivity was without a doubt on high volume; so I turned inward and asked myself: Was I misunderstanding something? Overthinking, maybe? Or were these friends of mine, both old and new alike, indeed reaching out to me with less frequency than they had prior to my loss?
My hunch was confirmed not long after by a dear friend of mine, who relayed the feelings a mutual friend of ours had expressed to her. It went something like this: My miscarriage triggered her own fears of losing her pregnancy, propelling her to avoid interacting with me when she could. Lacking any certainty of what exactly it was she should say to me, she opted instead to say nothing at all.
I get it: the fear of talking about the incomprehensible. We are human after all, and so it is understandable that we shy away from what the vast majority of us have labeled as “tough topics.” But we must attempt to embody a sense of eagerness when it comes to those we love, those in our inner circle, and also, hopefully, our community at large. We at least need to try. To grasp at words, convey love, communicate care. Something. Anything. Anything other than silence, avoidance, or disappearing altogether.
• • •
As time passed, and I had conversations with patients and friends, it became increasingly clear that my miscarriage—and therefore I—was seen as some sort of contagion. People seemed to think that if they should dare get too close, they might be putting themselves at risk of experiencing what I’d gone through, or some semblance of it. And while to the objective mind that concept is obviously unfounded, it seems to be a permeating theme, dominating the thought processes of countless women who’ve been pregnant, who wrestle with the fear of loss, and who’ve seen firsthand what destruction grief leaves in its wake.
This story is, of course, not unique to me. Time and again, women have reported similar feelings of overwhelming isolation.
• • •
Alexandra spoke of these themes often during our weekly sessions together. At the customary twenty-week anatomy scan, she’d learned that her developing baby had a fatal heart condition, and was advised to terminate. Up until this point, there had been nothing alarming on ultrasounds, and the baby seemed perfectly healthy. Receiving this diagnosis meant her baby would not survive, let alone thrive. Plagued with guilt and a sense of alienation from her usual community, she talked about how alone she’d been navigating the choppy waves of grief, and described her inclination to hide the actual details of her story due to the unfortunate politicization of her so-called choice.
“Even my friends who’ve miscarried don’t seem to understand. My friend who had a stillbirth at thirty-eight weeks doesn’t seem to get me either. People think that because I got to choose, because I made a decision, my grief can’t be anywhere near as overwhelming as theirs,” Alexandra repeated each week as we discussed her disappointment and flagrant lack of support. She saw that in speaking her truth, she was met with people’s judgment. And so, she opted to no longer talk openly about terminating, instead saying, “I lost the pregnancy,” in an effort to steer clear of moral evaluation and earsplitting reactions. Unable to share the extent of her painful truth, her feelings festered.
She, too, was barraged by the usual platitudes, as so many women are: “At least you know you can get pregnant.” “God has a plan.” “At least you already have a healthy child.” Perhaps most frequently, she was met with, “It just wasn’t meant to be.” These statements rang hollow for Alexandra, as they do for so many of us, so she searched for support high and low, in places previously foreign to her: message boards, Instagram accounts, a Facebook group for those in a similar situation, and here in therapy. It was difficult for her to find what she was looking for “out there.” “Out there,” support continued to come up short.
I Had a Miscarriage Page 8