Away

It’s been a minute since I have posted anything here. Shortly after Christmas, I unexpectedly found out that I was pregnant. I was actually going in to get and IUD placed when I found out! I was super excited, but scared about what that would mean for our family. Then, a couple of weeks later, the worst happened. I had a miscarriage about 7 weeks along. This was my second miscarriage in about 18 months.

Understandably, I was racked with grief. Not only for the baby that was lost, and the dreams I had for him, but for the fact that, most likely, this means that I will not have another child. I am almost 39 years old, and with the track record, I don’t think this bodes well for the melding of our genes. And honestly? I don’t want to keep going through this nightmare. So I was dealing with grieving for the larger dream as well as the specific one.

The day the miscarriage started, I wrote this:

It started this morning. 
No jarring, spectacular event-
Just a sudden, ruby-back moment, 
as hope dies, and drips out of me. 
Leaving behind;
Empty.
A ball of trapped feelings, 
lodged in my stomach. 

What do you do for a miscarriage?
No body-no form to mourn,
except the shape of your dreams. 
There's no casket for these. 
No urn for your tears. 
Nothing to show that HERE WAS LIFE-
gone. 
Here was a dream, a new beginning, 
gone.
No service is held to stand with the world to say,
"I have lost that which I loved."

Just a toilet, a maxi-pad, and my grief. 

The loss from a miscarriage is real. We need to share and talk about this more. Something like 20% of all pregnancies are lost this way, and we treat it as some kind of secret shame. It’s not fair. There SHOULD be a ritual for this. I imagine a circle of women surrounding the grieving woman. There’s a big bonfire. She can wail, scream into the void, bleed, shriek and otherwise grieve in any way she wishes. The women hold and bless her and the baby she is losing/has lost. If there’s something to bury, they could do so. Maybe under the moonlight. There is prayer, incense and oils. Something like that.

After the ritual she should be bathed and placed in a warm, comfortable bed. She should be fed nourishing things and be given all the meds/weed/whatever soothes her body. She should be able to rest and grieve and heal in any way she chooses for a few days, with no stresses or obligations. There should be some sort of funding for this.

I’ve got no good way to end this post, so I guess this is it. I’ll be writing more as I can. Love you.

Photo by Jack Taylor on Unsplash