HOPE BLOOMS
sharing your stories and remembering your children
By: Sarah Gregory EPLA Vice President I received the announcement from my sister via text while I was in seminary. I opened the text and saw a picture of a precious little onesie. I literally squealed with glee. She and her husband were so ready to start a family. They had heard a heartbeat already at a doctor’s appointment. In a flurry of excitement, our whole family started to anticipate the arrival of a new baby. We had a shared Pinterest board for nursery ideas, full of whimsical, literature-themed decor. I started thinking about baby showers and baby clothes and diapers. A week or so later, the celebration ended abruptly. They had another appointment. This time, there was no heartbeat. She elected for a D & C (a surgical procedure to remove the deceased fetus). Our family’s world hovered in disbelief and shock. Thus was my introduction to the world of grieving mothers who miscarried. At the time, we didn’t know this would be a long, arduous road for Emily. My sister suffered through three miscarriages before her daughter was born. Later, other friends and family members experienced their own miscarriages. I was the supporter-friend for all of them. Close enough to each woman to be moved and sad, but not in the midst of the deep despair that the mother and father faced. As the supporter, it took time to unravel the complicated emotions and grief women bear when experiencing a miscarriage. When Emily had her first miscarriage, I didn’t understand the depths of her grief. My own response included sadness and tears. I spent time reflecting on the nature of unmet expectations and anticipation. My sister, on the other hand, was devastated. To provide comfort, I relied heavily on my seminary training. In seminary, I interned as a chaplain for a nursing home. During my time there, I had the privilege of sitting with families as they said goodbye to their loved ones. I would sit quietly and listen. Families would tell hilarious stories, stories of regret, and stories of triumph. Grief is often accompanied by this kind of communal catharsis. The bulk of my chaplaincy training centered around one simple truth: When someone is grieving, they need your presence. Your presence affirms their grief is heard and their grief matters. They need you to affirm that the person they are losing matters. But unlike the death of an elderly adult, there are very few memories to share during a miscarriage. Most stories about the baby are personal hopes and dreams, often still privately held and impossible to articulate. Sometimes, only a few people even know that the miscarriage happened at all. As a culture, we talk about babies younger than 12 weeks old in hushed tones. We do so to protect our loved ones from disappointment. But for many mothers and fathers, the end of a pregnancy is far more than a disappointment. Those of us who have never miscarried fail to account for all of the factors consuming a family devastated by miscarriage. They face physical tolls, gruesome images, and hormonally charged emotional spirals. Add to that the chorus of “you should try again soon,” and “at least you never (fill in the well-intended but soul-wrenching blank).” As a result, unlike other loss of life, the family grieving their miscarriage ends up defending their loss as something worthy of grief. To combat the isolation, the practice of presence is vitally important. During each miscarriage, I tried to simply be available for my loved ones. My presence affirmed that the grief was shared. Presence dampened the loneliness. Presence allowed communal catharsis to emerge. Even when I couldn’t understand the emotional complexity a mother was feeling, I learned to listen and support rather than try to fix her sadness. When I wasn’t nearby, I made phone calls and sent texts. If I could, I visited. These visits took different forms, I played triominos on the porch while eating cider donuts and making jokes about county fairs. One time I watched movies all day. Other times I cried and prayed. If you find yourself in the role of a supporter, be sure to be affirming and present. Don’t try to fix her. Don’t try to minimize the loss. She lost a baby. Rather than console her with attempts to bypass her pain, be with her. Keep her off of Google by giving her helpful information from established organizations. If you don’t know what to say, clean something, give her husband a chance to rest while you sit with her, sit with her husband who also may be mourning the loss, babysit her other children if she has any, make her dinner, or watch a movie. Most importantly, just be present. Sarah Gregory is a Christian Education freelance writer, consultant, and musician. Sarah lives in St. Louis with her husband Kaleb and her son Cecil.
0 Comments
By: Madeline Gill It was my daughter's due date. I opened the journal I had started eight months before after losing her at five weeks' gestation. Within its pages I had expressed my first pangs of grief. I pasted in every card I received from kind friends, immortalizing the kindness of people who, having no great words, knew the power of saying simply, "Thinking of you." "Weeping with you." "Praying for you." I copied down poems that captured my sense of loss, like Wordsworth's "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways." Beside the poem I pressed a violet like the "half-hidden from the eye" bud he writes about. On her would-be due date, I picked up my pen to write a "birthday" note. I told her how much I missed her and wanted to hold her. "This day marks the time I could have met you - not as I did, but as a healthy, breathing baby I could carry and nurture. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel you in my arms. Other babies will come, God willing, but I'll never know exactly what it is to hold my Lucy. Not until I join you, at least." I was about to write that our reunion in heaven might be like that beautiful scene in The Return of the King when Frodo wakes up to a tearful, laughing gathering of his long-missed friends. None of the pain would matter in that moment. That's where I broke down, sobbing too hard to write. I realized that Lucy knows what heaven is really like, and I do not. But what killed me was that she had not read, and would not read, The Lord of the Rings. The analogy was worthless, and my favorite book was just another thing we couldn't share. I couldn't give her her first copy of Tolkien, watch her love it as much as I do, or argue with her if she underrated it. Suddenly, I hated that I was writing a letter to someone who would never read it. I was afraid that I would have nothing in common with my daughter. Would we be total strangers when we met in heaven? Whenever we lose someone, we grieve for the past and the future. On the one side are all the memories you have shared with someone, and on the other are all the experiences that will not come. In miscarriage, the balance tips heavily to the one side. Whether you long for what has been or what might have been, the hole is still there.
My husband and I won't start making memories with Lucy until we're in heaven. I don't really know what that will look like, but I have faith that it will be perfect. In the meantime, I still write letters. Madeline Gill is a homemaker and mother of two. She blogs about literature and motherhood at roadstainedfeet.wordpress.com By: Adam Carrington Men don’t grieve well. At least not most of us. At least not me. I didn’t truly learn this about myself until my wife suffered through her three miscarriages. Each one deserved—demanded—sorrow for lost life, sadness for broken hopes. But each one failed to bring out in me anything approaching the grief I thought required. A barrier existed, one that kept most of the pain locked away, with only an occasional, intense, but fleeting leak soon patched up. Some of the barrier was external, beyond my own psyche. First, it seemed that mothers could build a connection with their unborn children easier and earlier. I watched my wife bond with our lost ones from the first moments we knew our babies existed. She would tip me to her cravings by touching her belly and saying, “Baby wants pizza…and wings.” I also witnessed her morning sickness, unable to be on the same floor as the kitchen when I’d cook meals she usually loved. And I heard her fretting over everything she touched, drank, or simply stood in the same room as. Each instance a piece of a bond so new yet already as broad as every moment and as deep as the fiercest love. I had no physical connection. The pregnancies felt at times like an abstraction for me, mitigated but hardly eliminated by ultrasounds or relayed feelings from my wife. Second, fathers do not receive most, sometimes much, attention in a miscarriage’s aftermath. Nor should they receive the main part. My wife suffered in ways I did not, in ways I could not. She faced the actual removal of our deceased child, the second time naturally—a grotesque mockery of labor that confirms death, rather than reveals life. She endured the loss of all the previously-described connections she had built with our babies, every one a stabbing memorial. Instead of one of the grievers, fathers often serve as part of the support system. I sought to be a shoulder for my wife to cry on, to fill in on chores she normally would do, and to protect her from any hurtful comments from friends and family, regardless of how well-intentioned. Beyond that expectation from others, I felt it, too. I didn’t think I deserved to grieve as much because I knew I hadn’t suffered as much. These reasons present barriers to fathers feeling and expressing loss. But mine were internal as well. If you show extensive attentiveness to your wife after a miscarriage, you may look like a loyal and loving husband to some; perhaps even your own spouse. In my case, there was truth to that perspective. I do love her and wanted nothing more than to protect her as she suffered.
However, my seemingly selfless actions hid much more mixed motives. I loved her. But I also was scared. I couldn’t face what happened head-on. I couldn’t contemplate that the death was real and the death my own child. I couldn’t handle the reality of fatherhood with two hands not in a cradle but in the grave. Just a glimpse of its magnitude, just an inkling of the feelings accompanying it, felt overwhelming to the point of utter, soul-rending despair. So, I didn’t face it. Not full on. I poured myself into helping my wife, into keeping the house together, in working at my job harder every time my lost children came to mind. My supposed strength, whatever its solid substance, mixed with deep weakness. For all of my supposed support, in this point I failed. Not only to my wife, not only to my children, but to myself—the self I selfishly tried to protect. I had a grief deferred. Over the years, it didn’t go away. Instead, it remained a dark, mysterious, foreboding mass welling deep in my soul. To this day, I know I haven’t fully dealt with the loss of our children. But, slowly, I am starting to do so. I don’t have any magic formula for it. I don’t have an easy set of proposals. Instead, all I can offer is the call to fathers that we face our grief. Furthermore, that we do so in community—with our friends, our family, and especially the mothers to our lost children. Yes, we must hope for space from them and from society to mourn. Still, we then must do it. That process may not come naturally. It will not come painlessly. But in it is strength, not weakness. In it, ultimately, is hope beyond the despair. Adam Carrington is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. By: Linda Tibbitts EPLA Board Member Four years ago, I was preparing to order dinner at local restaurant when my cell phone rang. I was excited to talk to my daughter. I knew that she and her husband had a 12 week visit with the OB. She had decided that once they knew everything was okay at this visit, we could tell others about her pregnancy. My husband and I were eager to tell friends that we were going to be grandparents. I answered the phone and from the weight of her voice knew something was wrong. “No heartbeat?” I left the restaurant shaking in disbelief. “Are they sure?” From here some of the details are hazy. I remember at some point learning that she had a ‘missed miscarriage’, meaning the baby had died at 7 weeks in utero but her body had not yet delivered the remains. My heart wrenched. I was a grandma that would not meet my grandchild in this life. Now I would be telling my closest friends about the loss, knowing that many would respond with “But I didn’t even know she was pregnant!”. As I bumbled through my own feelings and tried to find the right words to say to my daughter, I remembered the physical and emotional pain of my own miscarriage thirty years earlier. My greatest hope was that her journey would be filled with more information, more compassion, and more hope than mine had been. As I struggled for those first words, I sputtered “Let yourself grieve.” Thirty years ago, my husband and I had experienced an early miscarriage. I recall the shock of realizing I was bleeding. I remember feeling dismay when we learned that this bleeding was in fact the beginning of a miscarriage. While our doctor was willing to talk with us about next medically necessary steps, no one coached us on the emotional and physical pain that often accompany miscarriage. One well-meaning family member assured me that there were “worse things in life”. She tried to console me by telling me that “I wasn’t really grieving. I was merely disappointed.” Others told me that I was young and could easily get pregnant again and fulfill my dream of being a mother. All of these well-intended condolences left me empty and confused. My grief was compounded by guilt and fear. I felt guilty as I wondered if I had done something to cause my baby’s demise. I was fearful that I might never carry a baby to a live birth. My doctor’s only words of ‘comfort’ were that after three miscarriages he would begin testing to determine a cause. When I told him that I didn’t think I could get through three miscarriages. He assured me that I didn’t know what I could tolerate. Since this experience was pre-internet, very little information was available. I walked downtown to the community library and searched the shelves of medical books trying to find any information I could about what we were enduring. I found one book that gave miscarriage statistics and was surprised to learn that approximately 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I wondered how something so common could be so hush-hush. So now as I heard my daughter’s painful words, I naively thought her experience would be different than mine. I assumed that there would be information packets given at the hospital much like people receive when they have a difficult medical condition. I imagined that in a society where people openly talk about difficult subjects, there would be available avenues for emotional support. I hoped that medical testing would give them answers they needed to reduce the guilt and fear.
Unfortunately, at that time, very little had changed from our experience thirty years prior. My daughter and her husband were faced with making decisions about next steps with very little information. They were assured that the hospital would take care of their ‘product of conception’ as ‘medical waste’. They were given little insight into the emotional and physical pain they might be facing. And testing is still often not administered until a woman experiences three miscarriages. After my daughter had her second miscarriage experiencing similar gaps in care, she began articulating how she wanted to be part of changing the social script around early pregnancy loss. After conducting a series of focus groups and hearing the painful, lonely stories of numerous women and couples, she formed the Early Pregnancy Loss Association. As a board member, I have had the opportunity to network with other organizations and professionals that share a similar mission. I see a movement focusing on changing the climate that surrounds early loss. More hospitals, OB offices, crisis pregnancy centers, and non-profit agencies are recognizing and providing for the loss community. More people are openly sharing their loss stories. As this movement gains momentum, I have genuine hope for a world in which no family has to suffer miscarriage alone. By: Alyssa DiCrasto I have never been pregnant, so I admittedly cannot comprehend the pain that accompanies losing a child in the womb. But, most of the important women in my life are mothers who lost precious little ones during their pregnancies, so this issue is very close to my heart. When I was 14, my parents wanted to have another child so my sister, who was 2 years old at the time, would have someone to grow up with. The whole family, all seven of us, was so excited for the new baby because we needed a new little nugget to spoil. But one Sunday, my mom became very sick and had to go to the hospital. Through hushed tones, my brothers and I learned that something was wrong with the baby. It was the next day when my dad finally got the strength to tell us that the baby had died. I have an image burned into my memory of my mother closing her bedroom door with tear-soaked cheeks. This was a very unsettling sight for me, a girl who had never before seen her incredibly strong mother cry bitter tears. Of course, this experience was hard for all of us, but after that day, my mom never talked about the miscarriage, except to tell us that she had named the baby Jaimie. She mourned in silence, behind closed doors. That was the kind of mourning that made sense for her, and that was okay. My mom has since told me that when she lost Jaimie, so many women confided in her that they had also lost pregnancies. My mother was exposed to a community she hadn’t known existed before her miscarriage. This community helped her cope. For the longest time, I thought this kind of grieving was the norm for women when they had a miscarriage: they would cry, name the baby, talk to other women, and move on in silence. Although this is true for some, each woman grieves differently, and they should be able to grieve the way they need to. When my brother and his wife became pregnant, I was the first person he called with the news, but they lost their first baby, Oliver, at 16 weeks. My heart ached for them and their situation: a young, freshly-married couple who had lost their dreams when they lost Oliver. Sadly, I did not know how to help them. I thought that my sister-in-law would need the same things that my mom did a few years prior: space and quiet. You can imagine my shock when she was not only very open about her miscarriage but also very vocal about it. It seemed to me like she wanted the whole world to know the pain she was going through. I struggled with what words to say, and for some reason, I had it in my mind that I had to say something because she was saying so much. To my shame, I probably said something to the effect of, “You still have time for your family, it just wasn’t your time yet.” When they became pregnant again, I was thrilled for them. The timing seemed right, but they lost their second beautiful baby a few weeks after their announcement, and within the next year, they lost a third baby. With each loss, my sister-in-law became more and more vocal, grieving loudly. But by the third loss, I realized that this was how she needed to cope. She needed to grieve loudly to make her loss feel real and so that others would know her loss was real. There were absolutely no words that I or anyone else could ever say that would make their pain right. All they needed from me was to know that I took their loss seriously and felt their pain deeply and that I would be there to listen when they needed to talk. To this day, my sister-in-law is a champion for miscarriage awareness. She often tells people that miscarriages never “happen for a reason,” but instead were never supposed to happen in the first place. Losing a baby is unnatural and wrong, but most importantly, miscarriages are not any less of a loss than the loss of other human life. My sister-in-law grieved very differently than my mother had, but both were able to move on despite the people who tried to “help.” We’ve not forgotten any of our lost babies, but these incredible women taught me that everyone grieves differently. The best thing we can do for loved ones experiencing early pregnancy loss is to treat it as a real loss and let them know they’re justified in mourning whatever way they need to. Alyssa DiCrasto is a Digital Marketing Content Creator at webSURGE By: Heather Heritage As I grieved my miscarriage, I was surprised to find that what stayed with me most was how people responded when I shared my sad news. Understandably, many were shocked. Some people knew I was pregnant, so a matter of fact, “We lost the baby” reply was my response to questions about how I was feeling. Others didn’t even know I was pregnant, which made the conversation a bit awkward because I also had to provide a backstory. Once I opened up and shared my story, it felt like I joined a club that no one wants to be a member of. The commonality of miscarriage binds us together. Most women know someone who has gone through early pregnancy loss. I shared, so they shared. It was cathartic and healing; we bonded in an unfortunate sisterhood. Other women who had gone through it knew the grief, the awful experience, the dashed hopes, and the fear. I remember many of the caring responses I received, and those who gave them still stand out in my mind. They are kindred spirits - men and women who had gone through it themselves or understood the grief. The amount of helpful, kind responses I received completely outweighed the hurtful ones. However, blurred together are the hurtful responses I did receive. They did not help me grieve, and sometimes layered on more confusion and pain. When someone shares news that is surprising, shocking, or sad, it is sometimes difficult to respond with empathy. But, responding to what a person has been through with empathy acknowledges their humanity. An un-empathetic response can devalue a person as a human being. It is one of the cruelest ways we communicate, and most of the time it happens accidentally. We just don’t know how to respond or what to say. So we go with what makes us feel better. Empathy takes work, practice, and concentration. It’s much easier to respond with clichés or murmurs than to deal with listening for the raw emotions hidden in tone and what’s not being said. When we are not being empathetic, we tend to respond in ways that make us feel most in control of the situation. Here are five examples of what NOT to say to someone who has experienced an early pregnancy loss, because these responses can minimize the grief a person is going through. 1. Solving the Problem Examples include: “I know what you could do,” or “Let me fix this.” “My doctor could help you.” 2. Unsolicited Advice Examples include: “My friend had the same problem. This is how she handled it.” “Check your medicine. Are your sure you are on the right one?” Or, suggesting a particular “fix.” 3. Dismissing Feelings Examples include: “It’s not that big of a deal,” or “you’ll be OK.” “At least it was early.” “You’ll be able to have another baby.” “These things happen.” “It’s providence.” 4. Self-Promotion Examples include: “That same thing happened to me,” or “Be happy it wasn’t worse” (followed by a comparison of some sort). “Well, I was 18 weeks and had to have a D&E – that was awful.” 5. Silence Examples include: ignoring the message or speaker completely, or responding with a quick “that’s too bad,” or “Oh yeah, so-and-so told me about that,” before changing the subject. Do any of these sound familiar? If we’re being honest, we’ve probably all used one of these negative responses at some point with someone sharing difficult news. So how do we respond with empathy? Here are some things others did that helped me when I was going through my loss.
1. Listen carefully and quietly. If someone is sharing a raw moment with you, listen to them. This also means you can’t listen to your internal dialogue. Stop thinking about what you are going to say next and be in the moment. 2. Be aware of your nonverbal communication. Where is your gaze? Straying glances indicate discomfort or that you have something better to do. What do your facial expressions look like? Authentic concern is obvious to the speaker. It’s easy to see. Show it. 3. Listen for emotions. If they say something particular about how their feeling or give name to their emotion, you have permission to respond to it. If they don’t name an emotion explicitly, take your best guess using some descriptive emotional words. Not sure what these are? Start here with Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. A simple, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. It really sucks. I am here for you, and I love you,” will suffice. Paying attention to others’ needs, listening, and communicating empathetically will change your relationships for the better. Going through a pregnancy loss forced me to acknowledge my own areas of weakness in responding with empathy and truly listening to others. Sometimes, you really do have to walk a mile in another’s shoes to understand a situation. Through that, you can see the hurt you may have caused without realizing it. But, thankfully, these experiences can encourage growth and understanding. After all, the one thing that could change the world, person by person, is a bit more empathy. Heather Heritage is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Cedarville University and has worked in both health communications and public relations "Views expressed in blog posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Early Pregnancy Loss Association" By: Andrea Hubin “Ups and downs.” “Highlights and lowlights.” “Glees and glums.” Whatever he chose to call it that week, the drill was the same: each Monday morning, my teacher would ask everyone to share one positive and one negative thing from the previous weekend. I’m sure it was just a strategic way for him to get all our chatting out before class so that we’d pay better attention. However, it pointed to a truth that still resonates with me today: Good and bad are a part of every day. How you define any particular day or circumstance depends on your perspective. The day I heard the heart-stabbing words, “There’s no heartbeat,” was such a day. Those three simple words caught me completely off guard. Fewer than two weeks prior, I had visited the doctor to confirm my excited suspicions—I was pregnant with my second child. I heard the baby’s heartbeat (166 bpm) and immediately began planning how and when my husband and I could begin sharing the news. Now, only days after making our announcement to family and friends, we stared at the motionless body of our little one on the ultrasound screen. After a rather dazed conversation with the doctor, I asked if he could print some photographs from the ultrasound for me. He agreed and told us to wait a few moments in the lobby. As my husband and I sat holding hands in numbed silence, a woman stood up from her seat across the waiting room and made her way over to us. “I don’t know what you believe as far as religion and Christianity go,” she said tentatively, “but I felt God telling me to come over and pray for you.” She went on to explain that she was not even supposed to be there that day. She had some prior obligation at a nearby building and somehow found herself in this office. (Admittedly, her explanation may have been clearer than this, but my mind was not in a state to remember exact details.) “I have no idea exactly why or what’s going on in your life, but I felt that I should obey Him. Perhaps this is why I am here today. May I pray for you?” In our darkest moment to date, our gracious Heavenly Father immediately sent us a precious reminder of His steadfast love. As we sat in our grief, not yet knowing how to pray, He sent another one of His children to intercede on our behalf. This is not to say that this trial was automatically easy, or that there was no place for further grief. On the contrary, after grieving only briefly together in the doctor’s office, my husband and I stopped at a park on the way home to weep together and jointly cry out to God in our disappointment and heartbreak. But that woman’s prayer was a glimmer, a ray of light pointing to God’s love on a day when it would be hard for us to see anything but darkness and disappointment on our own. The Bible tells us that we live in a world full of sin and suffering (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9). It is no wonder, then, we tend to find plenty of “glums” in a any day. However, the Bible says in Psalm 145, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” Even in our darkest moments, we found abundant evidence of God’s steadfast love and kindness. In the days and weeks (and months) that followed, God showed us so many evidences of His outpouring of love that I have not time to fully recount them all:
The list goes on and on. The name we chose for our son sums it all up: Jaron Tobias Derived from Hebrew, “Jaron” means “to sing or shout out” while “Tobias” means “Yahweh [the Lord] is good.” We chose his name to be a constant reminder—in any and every trial—to sing out that the Lord is good. Though this is not the road I would have chosen, I can truly say with all my heart: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, GREAT IS YOUR FAITHFULNESS.” Andrea Hubin is a pastor's wife and homeschooling mom with four precious children. By: Mariah Shull
“I was devastated. I did everything right. I didn't smoke or drink alcohol or caffeine. I took my vitamins faithfully and ate balanced meals. It never occurred to me that I would lose this baby.” Connie Shull was a young wife and mother of a two-year old daughter when she experienced the heart-wrenching grief of a miscarriage. Since she already had a child, she believed that this pregnancy would go just as well until she learned at a routine check-up that her baby didn’t have a heartbeat. “I passed the 3-month mark, so I thought that it would be safe to share with others that I was expecting. I miscarried at about 3 and a half months and had already told family, friends, and folks at church that I was pregnant.” Amidst that internal heartbreak, Connie chose to act composed so that others wouldn’t feel awkward. “It’s an incredibly unpleasant conversation for people who haven’t gone through it. I then became responsible for their emotions. I had to say, ‘Oh, it’s okay…’ even though it wasn’t, just so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.” Well-intentioned comments such as, “Oh, you’re young, you’ll have more,” would cause “those raw emotions of loss to come crashing back.” People did not seem to understand the significance of losing a child in the womb. Connie felt numb. Empty. She recalled moving through life in a dark, depression-laden haze for about two weeks before she could move back into her old routine. The combination of postpartum depression with the pain of losing a child caused Connie and her family to spiral into what felt like an “emotional pit.” The loss of a child is enough pain; families shouldn’t have to deal with the social etiquette that miscarriages are something to be kept private and mourned in secret. Connie’s husband was supportive, but he didn’t always know what to do: “I didn’t know how to make her feel better; all I could do was hold her as she cried.” Connie says that “I knew that I was loved and prayed over, but I felt completely empty.” A friend from church, Linda, reached out to Connie, and even though she didn’t feel particularly social, Connie accepted her invitation. Having experienced several miscarriages of her own, Linda knew just what to say and what not to say. “She prayed with me and just listened. That's the thing about loss: you have to walk through those trials to be a comfort to those in need.” It was from that experience that Connie began to heal. “I don't shy away from miscarriages or parents who have lost children now because I know their pain and how to minister to them.” Melissa, lead labor and delivery nurse at a University of Michigan hospital, says mothers often struggle with the thought that their child will be forgotten or replaced. She tries to “meet the parents where they are and acknowledge that their grief is real, that their loss is real, and that their child will not be forgotten.” Though she cannot completely take away their emotional pain, she does her best to give them space and grieve with them. Mothers often need this kind of care. The March of Dimes estimates that as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, which means that most people likely know someone who has gone through this tragedy. One way we can support one another is by openly talking about and sharing our experiences; just as Linda comforted Connie, we can help each other commemorate the precious life that was lost and move forward. The EPLA seeks to help women and families find support in others who have experienced pregnancy loss and overcome the stigma of quietly “getting over it,” because no family should suffer the pain of miscarriage alone. Mariah Shull is a senior Professional Writing and Information Design major at Cedarville University. She is also active in ROTC. |
Archives
December 2023
Categories
All
|