Capture Your Grief, Day 12: Normalizing Grief

March 13, 2015 | Rainy Day | Longview, Tx

Day 12: Normalizing Grief

I've gotta say, I've never been so shocked, amazed, heartbroken, and encouraged all at once than I was when we posted our initial letter about our journey to parenthood on this blog. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who came forward both publicly on social media, and privately via email or text, saying that they could relate to our loss in such a deep and personal way. I will also say, on many levels, this broke my heart...why are we all doing this alone? Why do none of us feel like we can be more open? Why is it that grief of any kind makes so many people uncomfortable when it is truly so incredibly common? The loss of a pregnancy can be so unbelievably isolating. The constant tug and pull to validate my own emotion and pain within my own heart has been daunting, let alone the fight with those around me and the general public. And yet, I'm one in four. One in four. That means when I see one hundred women during my day at work, at the store, at the post office, twenty five of us have experienced the loss that in some way manages to cover our eyes and ears and make us feel alone. One in four. I have this picture in my mind of us all with black bags over our heads, suffocating in the darkness with our arms outstretched desperate to find comfort. And we're all there, we're all in need of community...we just can't see one another. So we grasp at the air together, completely alone. It's heartbreaking. This blog has been terrifying for me on an almost daily basis. If it weren't for the fact that I have a topic guide leading me through this process, and the comfort of hiding behind a keyboard while I'm in leggings and my dog curled up next to me - I don't know that I could do this. But why? I can tell you why. Because the anxiety that comes along with what people will think, how they will perceive, react, and respond to these posts, can be scary. The vulnerability that comes along with standing up in front of the world wide web and saying this is my struggle, these are my fears, these are my wounds, is hard. But what I am daily amazed by is how in this process I have realized that I am anything but alone. Grief, of many kinds is normal, and the beautiful truth is that the sooner we can each just come to an understanding of this, we will all emerge out the other side feeling a little more normal, and a lot less alone.