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By: Rebekah Slonim “I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.” —Wendell Berry[1] I think about my two pregnancy losses every single day—the miscarriage three days after Christmas in my first year of marriage, the ectopic pregnancy on a beautiful fall day in my second year of marriage. Time, many supportive conversations with friends and family members, and a living baby have eased the pain and ache. The miscarriages no longer actively hurt me. But the grief remains. After my first miscarriage, I struggled mightily with the idea of “moving on.” The perception I found lurking in my own mind and in some comments that people made to me was that, in order to grieve in a healthy manner, I had to “move on.” “Moving on” seemed to suggest “moving away”—to bury and ignore my horrible sense of emptiness, both physical and emotional. Eventually I opted for the phrase “moving forward.” I came across the above Wendell Berry quotation and began to envision my grief as a chapter in the book of my life. I would not always be in the chapter of crying in the shower, sleeping in late to avoid the yearning, cringing at every pregnant woman in the grocery store, trying to change the topic if anyone was talking about baby-rearing. Still, that chapter would always be part of the book. It was essential to the story. It would never be removed. Grief shapes my life. As a teenager, I remember rebelling against the idea in L. M. Montgomery’s “Rilla of Ingleside” that there would be “a little patient ache . . . in [Rilla’s] heart until she died” after her brother Walter was killed in battle in World War I.[2] Yet now I live with a similar patient ache, most of the time submerged and not really a part of all the thoughts flitting through my mind about sleep training and dishes and my work as a copyeditor. Still, that grief shapes my life. It’s always in the background, and it comes to the surface every now and then. A sense of loss attends me when I mark down my son’s family tree in his baby book, feeling like he is not really the first or only child, but knowing that in practice he is. The patient ache returns when I remember, acutely, how painful it is to see a dark expanse on a ultrasound screen rather than a tiny body with a tinier, pulsating heart. And every single time someone asks me how many children I have, or if I have children, I wince just a little. Barbara Crooker writes, “How many children do you have? / Two, we answer, thinking three, / Or three, we answer, thinking four; / They are always with us.”[3] And so I answer one, thinking three. Grief reflects a true sense of the way the world is. To live with a sense of loss is not improper. We shouldn’t try to scrub it away. We live in a world full of loss. To have a particular loss imprinted upon us enables us to understand ourselves, other people, and the world around us better. While in my grief I initially closed in upon myself, I also found that—gradually—the world began to open up to me in a new way. Before my miscarriages, I had never had a great loss—the kind of loss that turns your life upside-down, makes you confront your dreams and expectations, and makes you wonder what happiness and contentment will look like. But great losses are a near-universal human experience. Now when a friend or acquaintance talks about any type of loss, I lean in and listen carefully. My pregnancy losses have opened a door into a different kind of experience. I live life differently because of them. And I am grateful to have been molded and transformed by two tiny unborn babies with brief but meaningful lives. Grief gives me gratitude and perspective. As Michelle DuBarry explains, “Grief is exactly as painful as you think it will be, but with time you will learn to love your sadness because of the tiny shoots of joy and gratitude that sprout around it, like new growth on scorched earth.”[4] I do love my sadness. I love how it gently instructs me. It causes me to notice when another woman seems uncomfortable with talking about babies. It helps me to delight more in everyday pleasures. And it is the necessary backdrop to what my son’s life and birth mean to me. The cliché that grief is the price of love is true. I hold onto my grief as a reminder—a sign and symbol of my love. It’s the only way I can love the babies that I lost. My grief is of course not the whole story of my life. It cannot be—that would be wrong and misguided. There are other chapters in my life, other stories being told and yet to be told. Yet I do not wait or wish for it to go away. It has its time and place. I remember it and return to it and learn from it and hold it close.
Rebekah Slonim, a 2016 graduate of Hillsdale College, is a freelance copyeditor, proofreader, and indexer. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, with her husband and son.
[1] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2000), 148. [2] L. M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 189. [3] Barbara Crooker, “The Lost Children,” Verse-Virtual.com, 2016, https://www.verse-virtual.com/barbara-crooker-2016-march.html. [4] Michelle DuBarry, “When Sturdy Love Is What You Need,” The New York Times, October 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/style/modern-love-when-sturdy-love-is-what-you-need.html.
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By: Stephani Francl I've had a couple of bad days in the last week. Days spent mostly in tears or teetering on the edge of tears, fighting to maintain enough normalcy to keep my kids from asking too many questions; nights praying for sleep to come in it's forgetful relief. Today was a good day. I have lots of good days - days where life is normal, and I get to just live. But in this season, some days are really... In the first sentence, I called them "bad days," but I don't think that's quite the right word. The word "bad" can mean lots of things - of poor quality, not to be desired, putrid, not appropriate, unwelcome, naughty, etc. I don't mean I've had bad days in any of those ways. I'm not sure what a more appropriate word would be. Sorrowful? Heavy? Necessary? Hard. I'll just go with hard. From today, a "good" day, I can look back on the hard days and know that they are necessary; I can even be grateful that I've walked them. Imagine losing something of value but never acknowledging the loss. Imagine someone empties your bank account, hacks into your IRA, snatches your life savings, and steals your inheritance, and your response is merely to shrug your shoulders and say, "Que sera, sera." ("What will be, will be.") No one would actually do that. You'd call the police, you'd hunt down the thief, you'd hire lawyers and private investigators if necessary to get back what was rightfully yours. And let's be real, by the time you get all those people involved to help bring justice to your case, you've spent a TON of time dealing with merely the logistics of the situation, let alone the emotional upheaval. I look at the hard days kind of like that. Grief requires an investment of time; it must be dealt with; it must be faced. Those who don't stare it down are somehow not facing the reality of what they've lost. Now, that's not to say that we all deal with grief the same way - far from it! Some need solitude, some need lots of people; some read books, some escape to the outdoors; some carry on with normal life, some need a major change. There is no right way to grieve, though we can often recognize wrong ones when we see them lived out in others. So, some days are hard, but they can be good too. ...which I suppose means I need to revisit my labeling of normal days as "good days." Calling them "good days" implies that the days spent doing the work of grief aren't good. And while I suppose in some ways that's fair to say, I would counter that the days I spent deeply grieving this week were good days, too. Necessary, healing, part of the process, and validating my loss. So I guess I have normal days and hard days, and not good days and bad days.
Alone One of grief's biggest schemes is to make me feel isolated. Feeling alone in what I'm facing is just miserable. I mean, it's true. I don't know anyone else who has lost one twin in-utero at 15 weeks. I have friends who have friends who have gone through something sort of similar at 11 or 20 weeks, but not exactly what I'm facing. And let's be real - I don't want friends of friends to understand me - I want my friends who I already have to understand exactly where I'm at. But they don't, and they can't, and I pray that they never will. Oh God, that no one would ever face this. It's true. My situation is unique in my circle, but so is yours. I don't live your life. I don't carry your burdens. You can tell me about the skeletons in your closet, and you may even let me peek in once or twice, but they live forever in your closet. And I have my own hidden away in mine. The lie grief tries to convince me of is that I'm the only one who has ever experienced this, the only one who has ever felt this way, the only one who has ever faced my future. And I could easily agree and say to grief, "Yes. It's all true - I am alone. No one understands. Poor me." And perhaps I'd be right. But the reality is, if loss hadn't happened, if Thomas (my son, a twin, lost at 15 weeks gestation) was still here, if Chet (my older brother, who died at age 17) had never died, if a few of those skeletons didn't haunt me from my closet, the same would still be true. I would still be the only one who has ever experienced exactly this life, the only one who has ever felt exactly this way, the only one who has ever faced my future. We are all unique, living unique circumstances, facing unique challenges. I can always find someone facing what I think is an easier or harder road than I am. In seasons like this for me, it's helpful to look to the harder roads for perspective. The story behind the song "It is Well with My Soul" comes to mind. Or Corrie Ten Boom (I reference her a lot, but it's because The Hiding Place is in my recently read pile). Or the main guy in Unbroken. Talk about hard roads. Holy cow. Their stories don't negate my own struggles nor minimize my loss. But they do help me to be grateful for the countless blessings I have and provide me perspective to have hope for the future. Because out of crushing circumstances, heartbreak, pain, torture, starvation, and so much more, God brought about beauty in their stories. We still sing "It is Well with My Soul" nearly 150 years after it was written, because the truth therein is so profound. The author of those words would much rather have had his children live, than to have me singing the hymn he wrote today. But, because his children did die, he wrote from the abyss of grief, and those words have carried a legacy of truth to Christians for over a hundred years. Corrie Ten Boom's story challenges me every time I think of it. To forgive her Nazi captors? To (spoiler) build a place for their restoration and healing after the war? That is un.be.lievable. And the main guy from Unbroken - a book, and two movies made of his life that was so difficult. I would have died on the life raft a couple of weeks in, but his will to live, and his forgiveness of his torturer... I don't understand why bad things happen. I really don't understand why bad things happen to good people, though many books have been written, sermons have been given, and wise people have tried to answer that question. I don't get it. But what I do get is that beauty can come even from hurt. On the hard days I faced grief. Normal days are the days of grace in the midst of the hard. And hope springs new every morning.
By: Emily Carrington EPLA Founder If you haven’t already read Meghan McCain’s miscarriage story in the New York Times, do yourself a favor and read it. In her intimate first person account, the co-host of The View puts politics aside to articulate the burden of miscarriage. Her words serve to legitimize the grief of so many families who have suffered the same loss, and she frames the difficulty of walking through loss alone. “Because even to this day, the subject of a miscarriage carries so much cultural taboo. Miscarriage is a pain too often unacknowledged. Yet it is real, and what we have lost is real. We feel sorrow and we weep because our babies were real.” Her story is painful yet uplifting for all of us who have walked this dreary road before. Her reflections on her love for her baby give a glimpse of joy in the midst of suffering. “I had a miscarriage. I loved my baby, and I always will. To the end of my days I will remember this child — and whatever children come will not obscure that. I have love for my child. I have love for all the women who, like me, were briefly in the sisterhood of motherhood, hoping, praying and nursing joy within us, until the day the joy was over.” And she reminds us of a very important truth. “You are not alone.” We hope that Meghan’s words bring you comfort. But we also hope she emboldens you to speak up, too, if you need to. You do not need a daytime talk show or a platform like the New York Times to be heard. You can follow her example in your own community, you can start your own blog, or you can even send us your story for this blog. We are hear to listen! The more we raise our voices together the more we can change the culture.
Emily Carrington is the founder of the EPLA and mother to four children.
By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor While the research is mixed, some studies suggest that couples are more likely to break up following a miscarriage or stillbirth. Sometimes the couple was struggling before their loss; other times, miscarriage led to unhealthy grief habits that affected the relationship. Men and women often grieve differently, and loss parents may have difficulty understanding the other through their pain. Women may feel severely depressed or anxious after a miscarriage for up to three years. The heartache will often either bond a couple together in inseparable ways or cause a schism between the two that is hard to heal. Loved ones may or may not see the cracks forming in the aftermath, but regardless, couples need help in myriad ways, including encouragement in their relationship. Here are a few ways to help them as they grieve and learn to live together following a miscarriage. Encourage Counseling Loved ones should be careful in suggesting a couple receive counseling after miscarriage. First, many couples do not need counseling; they draw closer together or remain strong during the grieving process. But, even when a couple is struggling with their relationship, seeking counseling is a deeply personal choice. However, if you are extremely close to a couple and see issues that a trained counselor can deal with, you may suggest they seek therapy. Sometimes, they need a push to do what’s necessary to strengthen their relationship. Counseling will help them understand how the other grieves and how they can be a healing balm to each other. Watch Their Kids While They Go Out Kids are one of the greatest blessings in life, but they also cause plenty of stress in day-to-day life. Loss parents with alive children may need a break from the rigors of child rearing to spend time together. Even a few hours out can make a significant difference in a couples’ relationship. If you are family, you may offer to watch their kids for an entire weekend. Parents can invest some time in their relationship and get a breather from the demands of their everyday. Suggest They Go on a Marriage Retreat Marriage retreats serve as part vacation and part counseling. They provide concentrated time for couples to enjoy each other. Churches often sponsor marriage retreats, and if you go to church with loss parents or know of another marriage getaway, you may want to encourage parents to attend. We all benefit from intentional effort on our relationships. For couples in an intense grieving state, it may be even more crucial. Watch their children, pay their way if you can, and ensure they can be alone together for a short time. Be Slow to Speak and Quick to Listen This popular truth from the book of James is vital to coming alongside loss parents. While there is a time to suggest couples get help, they may benefit most from a caring, listening ear. Don’t try to “fix” the situation; be supportive and loving. Listen. Couples and Miscarriage Miscarriage affects every aspect of life, including the relationship that formed that precious child. If you are a loved one, you can help ease some of the strain that couples feel after losing a child. It’s a tough road back after losing child; let’s do all we can to make the journey a little smoother.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By: Maria Servold EPLA Editor One of the hardest things about miscarriage is that many families don’t have anything physical after the event to remember their babies with. While a memorial item can never replace the baby that was lost, they can bring comfort in times of grief and help keep the memory of a miscarried child alive. My own miscarriage was very early, and I was treated in an emergency room, so I wasn’t given any sort of memorial items that many women receive if they miscarry in a labor and delivery unit. The Early Pregnancy Loss Association hopes to change this in a small way, by including memorial items in both sizes of our miscarriage care kits. We include small things like knitted blankets and journals, but there are many companies that offer beautiful and meaningful memorial items for miscarried babies. Here are just a few: My Missing Peace, an Australian company, offers unique and beautiful memorial pieces, like colorful resin hearts that contain a model of an unborn child. You can order a heart to feature one or multiple babies at whatever gestational age you’d like. Heaven’s Gain Ministries, with whom we partner on our miscarriage care kits, offers beautiful burial boxes, urns, and memorial pieces. A nonprofit loss support group, M.E.N.D. (Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death) has a page listing many different small companies and groups that produce memorial items for miscarriage and stillbirth, like jewelry and stuffed animals. Etsy also lists dozens of miscarriage memorial items for sale. While a memorial item will not be able to replace a child lost to miscarriage, many families find them helpful and comforting. If a memorial item is something you are looking for or you think a friend or family member may like, these pages will be a good start! 
Maria Servold is an Editor at the EPLA, Assistant Director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism, and Lecturer in Journalism at Hillsdale College.
By: Maria Servold EPLA Editor Most of us do not bear the burden of fame - we do not live our lives in view of the general public. But for those who do, loss of any kind, especially miscarriage, can be particularly difficult to deal with. On July 4, while many Americans were busy celebrating Independence Day, Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth announced that she and her husband, Austin, had lost their baby to miscarriage at 20 weeks gestation. Joy-Anna is one of the 19 children of the Duggar family, who has been featured in several television series. The young couple has one son, but announced last week that they lost a baby girl to miscarriage in late June. They shared photos of them holding the little girl, whom they named Annabell Elise. We can learn a few things from this tragic moment in the lives of the Forsyths. First, we see the importance of sharing stories of loss with others. Because they were open to sharing the loss of Annabell with the world through social media, the Forsyths demonstrate the importance of telling stories of loss and how that sharing can invite others to help them grieve. Secondly, the couple’s announcement gives dignity to all unborn children. By naming their baby, they honor her life and the lives of all children who are miscarried. Many families who suffer miscarriage share stories of their babies and honor them with names, but it is especially heartening to see a public figure demonstrate this respect for life in such a public way.
Maria Servold is an Editor at the EPLA, Assistant Director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism, and Lecturer in Journalism at Hillsdale College
By: Emily Carrington EPLA Founder Every year I brace myself for Christmas and Easter, for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but the one that always surprises me is Independence Day. Yup, that mid-summer holiday celebrating our nation’s independence. The one marked by hot dogs, fireworks, baseball, and family time. It is that last one that gets me -- after three miscarriages, a large part of my family will always be missing. I was recently struck by this reality when I was looking at some pictures from the summer of 2015. The thought that haunted me was that no matter how happy I looked or how much fun I seemed to be having, the reality was that my children are missing from these pictures. I had lost two little ones approximately a year earlier, my first in May and my second in September of 2014. I would go on to lose a third only weeks after these pictures in August 2015. I remember how greatly I felt the loss of my children every single day during 2015, but I also remember how amplified that loss was during the week of the 4th of July. Parties, family BBQs, and parades only reminded me that my family was incomplete. This feeling still sneaks up on me the first week of July. For our family, Independence Day is a big family celebration. We come from as far as Michigan and Tennessee to meet at my in-laws' on the banks of the Ohio River. The only plans for our days together orbit around two things: food & family. But each year I am reminded that three of our little ones will never be with us. Three of our little ones will never see the great river at sunrise or sunset, or run in the summer sun with their cousins. I feel this weight with each celebration. I am sure other loss parents have experienced some sneaky rough holidays too, Maybe this week is hard for you too. Or is it your annual Memorial Day Celebration? Or New Year’s or Halloween? Whatever it is, these surprising reminders that our children are gone can hurt.
Emily Carrington is the founder of the EPLA and mother to four children.
By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor Two years ago, a cousin of ours had a miscarriage. She also almost lost her life. Her and her husband dealt with the grief, the sadness, the physical recovery, and the bills. As with all miscarriages, it was a tragedy. That cousin is due to have her second child (first born) in two months and has had a healthy pregnancy. She recently shared with us how joyous it was to save for medical bills for the birth of her coming little one. At first, that notion seemed crazy. Medical bills? They typically agitate us, sometimes to the point of angst as we argue with insurance companies and forego other desires to scrape enough together to keep debt collectors at bay. How can saving for them bring such exuberance? We came to understand that the pain of paying necessary medical bills for her miscarried child made the act of saving for this baby a joyous one. Paying the necessary money for her child would always be worth it. But, after taking the financial hit without the reward of a little one, our cousin has a new perspective on what real “cost” is. At the EPLA, we know just how hard it can be to receive medical bills after a miscarriage. Those numbers on a piece of paper can feel like a dagger to an already lacerated heart. And depending on when you receive your bills, it can feel like they’ve opened a wound that just started to scar. One day, the EPLA hopes to help people who have miscarried by paying part of their medical bills. It won’t heal that wound completely, but maybe it can be a balm that provides a little relief. It will be one more way we can come alongside those suffering. Right now, we aren’t in a position to achieve this goal, but we are actively setting aside money for this purpose and with every donation, we get a little closer, and that gives us hope. If you have miscarried, know that we have thought about the totality of your pain, including the agony of paying medical bills. At some point in the future, we aim to ease that pain just a little, and maybe for a moment, engender some peace.
Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University.
By: EPLA Editors
Sunday was Father’s Day and as Facebook filled up with beautiful tributes to all of the amazing fathers out there, we couldn’t help but notice some very special posts honoring the brave yet heartbroken loss dads. We see you out there. Your arms long to hold your little one, but instead you grip the mother of your child as she weeps. You weep too, and that is okay. We see you, we thank you, and we want to honor you. Here are some of our favorite articles honoring loss dads this Father’s Day:
And our favorite Facebook posts were on these pages: Know that today and every day, you are a father. By: Emily Carrington EPLA Founder Last week Dear Abby responded to Crystal in Nevada about her aunt who was still grieving a stillborn baby who died 20 years ago. Crystal was concerned about her aunt because she has “lived a morbid lifestyle.” Examples of morbidity included wanting to have a 1st Birthday party and recently asking for the baby to be included in the list of grandchildren at her grandfather’s funeral. Abby responded by validating Crystal’s concerns and invalidating the aunt’s grief. She started by saying that this woman needed grief counseling and then that the idea of the birthday party is “truly sad.” She did suggest that it wasn’t that out of line to want to include the baby in the list of grandchildren, so there is that. As many in the baby loss community have pointed out, Abby’s response was not only out of touch, but it is actually harmful to loss parents. While grief counseling is a great tool for learning to live with grief, what type of result does Abby think grief counseling will produce? This response at Unexpected Family Outing says it well: “You assumed that her aunt had not sought any kind of counseling. Perhaps, you think counseling cures a person’s heartache for their child?” The same piece continues to point out the flaws with Abby’s advice: “You could have shared that there is no timeline when it comes to grief. You could have used your influential platform to help those normalizing the grief experience. Instead, you decided to continue the very harmful narrative that grief is about moving on.” And many others took to Facebook to express their disgust with Dear Abby. At the time of publishing the Dear Abby post had over 430 comments that largely expressed displeasure and pain with Abby’s answer, a much greater response than any recent posts on the page.
From our perspective at EPLA, two things are very clear from this whole episode:
The Dear Abby issue shows us just how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. We rejoice in our progress and look forward to the challenges ahead -- because no family should suffer miscarriage alone. Emily Carrington is the founder of the EPLA and mother to four children. |
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