Grief.
No one ever told me grief would feel like the ocean. Vast, expansive, and never-ending. Sometimes as real as you or me, sometimes as illusive as a mirage.
No one ever told me grief would hit in waves. Sometimes strong and true, leaving me bowled over. Sometimes soft and subtle, leaving me with an almost imperceptible heaviness.
No one ever told me grief doesn’t come all at once, but in unplanned phases. That one moment I could be smiling and the next, turning my head away as unexpexted soft tears tracked down my cheeks.
No one ever told me, but I found out anyway.
My husband and I recently experienced a miscarriage.
To say IT SUCKED is a major understatement. I can 100% say that losing our baby was truly the hardest thing I have ever experienced in my life.
I wrote this poem because it’s been really hard for me to express how I’m feeling to my loved ones. It doesn’t quite align when I look at it logically. How I can wake up my upbeat self & be sent into a spiral as soon as someone asks me how i’m doing. How my eyes immediately well up, and I’m left apologizing and embarrassed for my lack of self control. How me saying, but I was FINE seems so at odds with my response.
To anyone who has been through a miscarriage - I want you to know I’m here for you. After learning about how commonplace miscarriages actually are, the lack of support systems in place for families who go through this is baffling to me. One resource I personally found super helpful was the book Carry Me: Stories of Pregnancy Loss by Frieda Hoffman.
In a society that focuses on moving on and staying positive (I can’t count the number of times people told me “you’re young, you’ll have another one!”), this book helped me realize that I’m not alone or weak for grieving as long as I need to. In fact, I’m all the stronger for acknowledging, accepting, and feeling all my feelings.