Core Value Series: Affirming Life

By: Emily Carrington EPLA Founder and President

In the core value series, the editors of Hope Blooms seek to show the heart of the EPLA by describing our core values. We encourage you to remember the children we’ve lost and stand with families suffering from miscarriage. 

Affirming Life
Early pregnancy loss is the loss of a unique and infinitely valuable life often bringing great grief to women and families as they suffer this loss.
While it might be hard to perceive the life of an embryo without technology, we affirm that a mother is caring human life at any stage in development from fertilization on. 

The word miscarriage is often used to describe pregnancy loss in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Women who have experienced a second trimester miscarriage might have already felt kicks, started to show, heard a heartbeat, or have seen their little one on an ultrasound. Other women who have experienced a first trimester miscarriage might not have had any evidence of life other than the positive pregnancy test.

Every pregnancy loss experience is different. Some women have been longing for a baby; some women are facing an unwanted pregnancy. Some women have suffered multiple miscarriages, some this is their first. Some women have had multiple healthy pregnancies before a miscarriage while others have had multiple miscarriages with no living children. For each of these women, when her pregnancy ended, so did a life. 

What does this mean? 
We want to help change the public script to allow space for grief following miscarriage. We believe that affirming life is the first step for giving this space. We must first understand what we are grieving so that we might grieve it properly. 

This does not mean we all will experience this grief in the same way. Or even must adapt the same rituals and ceremonies to process our grief. Just as we all experience other deaths differently, families will respond differently to miscarriage.

Photo by David Alberto Carmona Coto from Pexels

For each of these women, when her pregnancy ended, so did a life. 

Emily Carrington is a freelance writer, wife, mother, and founder of the EPLA.