Dear Sugar,
About eighteen months ago, I got pregnant. In a move that surprised both my boyfriend and me, we decided we wanted to keep the baby. Though the pregnancy was unplanned, we were really excited to become parents and the child was very much loved and wanted. When I was six and a half months pregnant, I miscarried. Since then, I’ve struggled to get out of bed.
Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about who that child would have been. It was a girl. She had a name. Everyday I wake up and think, “My daughter would be six months old,” or “My daughter would maybe have started crawling today.” Sometimes, all I can think is the word daughter over and over and over.
Of course, it seems that everyone around me is having a baby and everywhere I go all I see are babies, so I have to force myself to be happy for them and swallow how empty I feel. The truth is, I don’t feel much of anything anymore and yet, everything hurts. Most of the people in my life expect me to be over my sorrow by now. As one person pointed out, “It was only a miscarriage.” So I also feel guilty about being so stuck, grieving for a child that never was when I should just walk it off or something.
I don’t talk very much about it. I pretend it never happened. I go to work and hang out and smile and act like everything is fine. My boyfriend has been fantastic and supportive, though I don’t think he understands how badly I’m actually doing. He wants us to get married and try for another child. He thinks this should cheer me up. It doesn’t. It makes me want to punch him in the head for not feeling the way I do.
Then there is the reason I lost the baby. In the hospital, my doctor said he wasn’t surprised I lost the baby because my pregnancy was high risk because I was overweight. It was not an easy thing to hear that the miscarriage was my fault. Part of me thinks the doctor was a real asshole but another part of me thinks, “Maybe he was right.” It kills me to think that this was my fault, that I brought the miscarriage on myself. I can’t even breathe sometimes, I feel so guilty. When I got out of the hospital, I got a personal trainer and went on a diet and started losing weight but I’m totally out of control now. Sometimes, I don’t eat for days and then sometimes, I eat everything in sight and throw it all up. I spend hours at the gym, walking on the treadmill until I can’t lift my legs.
My friends and family think I’m doing just fine, Sugar, but nothing could be further from the truth. All I can think about is how I fucked up. Everything feels like it is more than I can handle. The rational part of me understands that if I don’t pull myself out of this, I’ll do serious damage to myself. I know this, and yet I just don’t care.
I want to know how to care again. I want to know how to not feel so guilty, how to not feel like I killed my baby.
My daughter, she had a name. She was loved. I feel like the only one who cares. Then I feel like shit for mourning “just a miscarriage” after nearly a year. I’m stuck.
Best,
Stuck
Dear Stuck,
I’m so sorry that your baby girl died, sweet pea. So terribly sorry. I can feel your suffering vibrating right through my computer screen. This is to be expected. It is as it should be. Though we live in a time and place and culture that tries to tell us otherwise, suffering is what happens when truly horrible things happen to us.
Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be “over” your daughter’s death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost never had to get over any thing. Or at least not any thing that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of those people believe they’re being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it comes to healing the pain of your daughter’s death.
They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died.
It seems to me that you feel like you’re all alone there. You aren’t. There are women reading this right now who have tears in their eyes. There are women who have spent their days chanting daughter, daughter or son, son silently to themselves. Women who have been privately tormented about the things they did or didn’t do that they fear caused the deaths of their babies. You need to find those women, darling. They’re your tribe.
I know because I’ve lived on a few planets that aren’t Planet Earth myself.
The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you’re talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be over-estimated. Call your local hospitals and birth centers and inquire about support groups for people who’ve lost babies at or before or shortly after birth. Read Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. Find online communities where you can have conversations with people during which you don’t have to pretend a thing.
And stop pretending with your sweet boyfriend too. Tell him you’d like to punch him in the head and explain to him precisely why. Ask him what he has to say about the death of your daughter and do your very best to listen to his experience without comparing it to your own. I think you should see a therapist—both alone and with your boyfriend—and I strongly encourage you to call and make an appointment today. A therapist will help you air and examine the complex grief you’re holding so tightly inside of you and he or she will also help you manage your (probably situational) depression.
This is how you get unstuck, Stuck. You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours—the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her. That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really fucking hard to get there, but you can do it, honey. You’re a woman who can travel that far. I know it. Your ability to get there is evident to me in every word of your bright shining grief star of a letter.
To be Sugar is at times a haunting thing. It’s fun and it’s funny; it’s intriguing and interesting, but every now and then one of the questions I get seeps its way into my mind in the same way characters or scenes or situations in the other sorts of writing I do seep into my mind and I am haunted by it. I can’t let it go. I answer the question, but there is something else and I know it and I can’t finish my reply until I figure out what it is. I can feel it there the way the princess can feel the pea under her twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds. Until it’s removed, I simply cannot rest. This is the case when it comes to your question, my dear. And so while it’s true that you should find your tribe and talk to your boyfriend and make an appointment with a therapist, there is something truer that I have to tell you and it is this.
Several years ago I worked with barely teenage girls in a middle school. Most of them were poor white kids in seventh and eighth grade. Not one of them had a decent father. Their dads were in prison or unknown to them or roving the streets of our city strung out on drugs or fucking them. Their moms were young used and abused drug-and-alcohol addled women who were often abusive themselves. The twenty some girls who were assigned to meet with me as a group and also individually were deemed “at highest risk” by the faculty at the school.
My job title was youth advocate. My approach was unconditional positive regard. My mission was to help the girl youth succeed in spite of the unspeakably harrowing crap stew they’d been simmering in all of their lives. Succeeding in this context meant getting neither pregnant nor locked up before graduating high school. It meant eventually holding down a job at Taco Bell or Wal-Mart. It was only that! It was such a small thing and yet it was enormous. It was like trying to push an eighteen wheeler with your pinkie finger.
I was not technically qualified to be a youth advocate. I’d never worked with youth or counseled anyone. I had degrees in neither education nor psychology. I’d been a waitress who wrote stories every chance I got for most of the preceding years. But for some reason, I wanted this job and so I talked my way into it.
I wasn’t meant to let the girls know I was trying to help them succeed. I was meant to silently, secretly, covertly empower them by taking them to do things they’d never done at places they’d never been. I took them to a rock-climbing gym and to the ballet and to a poetry reading at an independent bookstore. The theory was that if they liked to pull the weight of their blossoming girl bodies up a faux boulder with little pebble-esque plastic hand-and-foot-holds then perhaps they would not get knocked up. If they glommed on to the beauty of art witnessed live—made before their very eyes—they would not become tweakers and steal someone’s wallet and go to jail at the age of fifteen.
Instead, they’d grow up and get a job at Wal-Mart. That was the hope, the goal, the reason I was being paid a salary. And while we did those empowering things, I was meant to talk to them about sex and drugs and boys and mothers and relationships and healthy homework habits and the importance of self-esteem and answer every question they had with honesty and affirm every story they told with unconditional positive regard.
I was scared of them at first. Intimidated. They were thirteen and I was twenty-eight. Almost all of them had one of three names: Crystal, Brittany or Desire. They were distant and scoffing, self-conscious and surly. They were varnished in layers upon layers of girl lotions and potions and hair products that all smelled faintly like watermelon gum. They hated everything and everything was boring and stupid and either totally cool or totally gay and I had to forbid them from using the word gay in that context and explain to them why they shouldn’t say the word gay to mean stupid and they thought I was a total fag for thinking by gay they actually meant gay and then I had to tell them not to say fag and we laughed and after a while I passed around journals I’d purchased for them.
“Do we get to keep these? Do we get to keep these?” they clamored in a great, desperate joyous girl chorus.
“Yes,” I said. “Open them.”
I asked them each to write down three true things about themselves and one lie and then we read them out loud, going around in the circle, guessing which one was the lie, and by the time we were about halfway around the room they all loved me intensely.
Not me. But who I was. Not who I was, but how I held them: with unconditional positive regard.
I had never been the recipient of so much desire. If I had a flower clip in my hair, they wanted to remove the flower clip and put it in their own hair. If I had a pen, they asked if I would give it to them. If I had a sandwich, they wondered if they could have a bite. If I had a purse, they wanted to see what was inside. And most of all they wanted to tell me everything. Everything. Every last thing about their lives. And they did.
Ghastly, horrible, shocking, sad, merciless things. Things that would compel me to squint my eyes as I listened, as if by squinting I could protect myself by hearing it less distinctly. Things that would make me close the door of my office after they left and cry my heart out. Endless stories of abuse and betrayal and absence and devastation and the sort of sorrow that spirals so tightly into an impossible clusterfuck of eternal despair that it doesn’t even look like a spiral anymore.
One of the girls was truly beautiful. She resembled a young Elizabeth Taylor without the curvy hips. Flawlessly luminescent skin. Water blue eyes. Long shimmering black hair. A D-cup rack and the rest of her model thin. She’d just turned 13 when I met her. She’d already fucked five guys and blown ten. She’d lost her virginity at eleven to her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who was now in jail for stealing a TV. Her current lover was thirty-two. He picked her up most days on the edge of the school parking lot. I convinced her to let me take her to Planned Parenthood so she could get a Depo-Provera shot, but when we got there, she did not get the shot. She refused to let the female doctor give her a pelvic exam and the doctor would not give her the shot without one. She cried and cried and cried. She cried with such sharp fear and pain that it was like someone had walked into the room and pressed a hot iron against her gorgeous ass. I said a million consoling, inspiring, empowering things. The female doctor spoke in comforting yet commanding tones. But that girl who had fucked five guys and blown ten by the time she turned thirteen would not recline for three minutes on the examining table in a well-lit room in the company of two women with good intentions.
One girl wore an enormous hooded sweatshirt that went down to her knees with the hood pulled up over her head no matter the temperature. Across her face hung a dense curtain of punk-rock colored hair. It looked like she had two backs of her head and no face. To get around, she tilted her head discreetly in various ways and peeked out the bottom of her hair curtain. She refused to speak for weeks. She was the last person who asked if she could have my pen. Getting to know her was like trying to ingratiate oneself to a feral cat. Nearly impossible. One step forward and a thousand steps back. But when I did—when I tamed her, when she parted her hair and I saw her pale and fragile and acne-covered face—she told me that she slept most nights in a falling down wooden shed near the alley behind the apartment building where she lived with her mom. She did this because she couldn’t take staying inside, where her mother ranted and raved, alcoholic and mentally ill and off her meds and occasionally physically violent. She pulled the sleeves of her hoodie up and showed me the slashes on her arms where she’d repeatedly cut herself with a razor blade because it felt so good.
One girl told me that when her mom’s boyfriend got mad he dragged her into the back yard and turned on the hose and held her face up to the ice cold running water until she almost drowned and then he locked her outside for two hours. It was November. Fortysome degrees. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Or the last.
I told the girls that these sorts of things were not okay. That they were unacceptable. Illegal. That I would call someone and that someone would intervene and this would stop. I called the police. I called the state’s child protection services. I called them every day and no one did one thing. Not one person. Not one thing. Ever. No matter how many times that man almost drowned that little girl with a garden hose in the back yard or how many times the thirty-two year old picked up the thirteen-year old with the great rack in the school parking lot or how many times the hooded girl with no face slept in the falling down wood shed in the alley while her mother raged.
I had not lived a sheltered life. I’d had my share of hardships and sorrows. I thought I knew how the world worked, but this I could not believe. I thought that if it was known that bad things were happening to children, those bad things would be stopped. But that is not the sort of society we live in, I realized. There is no such society.
One day when I called child protective services I asked the woman who answered the phone to explain to me exactly why no one was protecting the children and she told me that there was no funding for teenagers who were not in imminent danger because the state was broke and so the thing the child protective services did was make priorities. They intervened quickly with kids under the age of twelve, but for those over twelve they wrote reports when people called and put the reports in a file and put the child’s name on a long list of children who someone would someday perhaps check up on when there was time and money, if there ever was time and money. The good thing about teens, she told me confidentially, was that if it got bad enough at home they usually ran away and there was more funding for runaways.
I hung up the phone feeling like my sternum had cracked open. Before I could even take a breath, in walked the girl whose mother’s boyfriend repeatedly almost drowned her with the garden hose in the back yard. She sat down in the chair near my desk where all the girls sat narrating their horrible stories and she told me another horrible story and I told her something different this time.
I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.
She seemed to listen, in that desultory and dismissive way that teens do. I said it to every girl who came into my office and sat in the horrible story chair. It became my gospel. It became the thing I said most because it was the thing that was most true.
It is also the most true for you, Stuck, and for any one who has ever had any thing truly horrible happen to them.
You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing—the genuine healing, the actual real deal down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you.
That job at the middle school was the best job I ever had, but I only stayed for a year. It was a heavy gig and I was a writer and so I left it for less emotionally taxing forms of employment so I could write. One day seven years after I quit, I ate lunch at a Taco Bell not far from the school where I’d worked with the girls. Just as I was gathering my things to leave, a woman in a Taco Bell uniform approached and said my name. It was the faceless girl who’d lived in the falling down shed. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail now. She was grown up. She was twenty and I was thirty-five.
“Is that you?” I exclaimed and we embraced.
We talked about how she was soon to be promoted to assistant manager at the Taco Bell, about which of the girls from our group she was still in touch with and what they were doing, about how I’d taken her rock climbing and to the ballet and to a poetry reading at an independent bookstore and how she hadn’t done any of those things again.
“I never forgot you, even after all these years,” she told me.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.
“I made it,” she said. “Didn’t I?”
“You did,” I said. “You absolutely did.”
I never forgot her either. Her name was Desire.
Yours,
Sugar
95 responses
thank you sugar. this was absolutely beautiful and true.
Such a very timely subject for me. I just had a miscarriage two weeks ago. Thankfully, aside from friends and family, we have the Internet tribe now as well. I’m not sure I could have survived without the thousand faceless women who have been there to hurt and morn with me- as well as the countless others who have been here, transcended and survived.
Thank you Sugar, for making me cry at work…again. That was unbelievably beautiful. 🙂
Stunning.
One of the best, most amazing things I’ve read in a long time. There’s so much about so much in here. Thanks.
Just can’t get over how glorious, tragic, wise, and true your writing is. See? You just made me end my sentence with a verb. And I’m an English teacher.
Great job, Sugar. And I’m glad you mentioned Elizabeth McCracken’s book. It seems like exactly the book you might want to read if you were going through what Stuck’s going through.
SO GOOD. in so many ways.
“This is how you get unstuck, Stuck. You reach.”
Sugar, absolutely fucking beautiful!!!
Stuck, I am so sorry you lost your daughter. Please don’t blame yourself — I have played that game and you will never win. Please follow Sugar’s advice on getting help. You CAN heal, you WILL go on. You can actually still have a beautiful and meaningful life without forgetting about your precious daughter. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you ‘get over’ this tragedy, it will in someway diminish your daughter. That simply is NOT true. The heart is an amazing organ that somehow still beats when it is broken and has an unlimited capacity for love. Have a beautiful life in honor of her. You are not alone.
Dear Stuck, you are already a mother. Your daughter was here in your life for only six and a half months, but none-the-less, you are her mom, always. I have lived through four miscarriages, I believe that Sugar has the recipe right, you reach and stretch and somehow find ways to dance with the glory of being a mom to that special spirit, while learning to endure the gnawing ache of loss. When I was sixteen, my grandma, my dad’s mom, told me she’d had two miscarriages, and that she’d had a baby who had been born six months into the pregnancy, and had died soon after birth. She had named her Mary Ann. I found out years later that my father and his brother never knew this, never knew they had a sister. She told me across all those years, so that many years later, long after her death, when I was suffering through my losses, I could remember how I had seen the love for her daughter in her 75 year-old eyes. There were tears in her eyes, almost 50 years afterward, she’d never forgotten her daughter, or the other two babies she’d lost earlier. In the midst of my repeated attempts to get pregnant, and searching for ways to live through the losses, her words reached out to comfort me. I think it was as if she’d known, all that time ago, that someday I would need to know I was not alone. And that she, too, had found a way to live through losses as devastating to her, as mine was to me. I wrote a long letter to each child after each miscarriage, and planted trees for each, with each letter under its tree. It helped. I went to a support group, I got massages (a way to move emotion out of the body), I wrote in journals, I cried rivers. About five years later, I ended up fostering several babies through the county, until I got to the point where we’d adopted one, and I finally felt like I’d mothered enough newborns to fill the gaping hole inside me. They all did well and went to loving homes, that helped too. Everyone does it differently, everyone has her own path, just know that there are so many of us out here, sending you love. That, and my heartfelt wish for you to find peace for yourself in this. No blame, just some peace and more love.
I keep getting this message. But yours is the most powerful, soulful message I have ever heard! You reached deep into my soul.
Thank you!
I’m completely awestruck by the absolute truth, the beauty, the raw pain and the real-ness of everything you wrote. I want to print this out and refer back to it every time I’m feeling down. And remind myself I have so little to feel down about.
If I could reach through the computer and wrap my arms around Stuck, I absolutely would. I’ll whisper my prayers to the stars for you instead.
tears are running down my face, and the world is so hard, miscarriages are, it’s true, things that deserve our full and most desperate grief. but the beauty is still worth reaching for, and this column is just one example
i love you so much, sugar. thank you, again.
What I most love about your column is how you always bring things down to the level of “all suffering is suffering”. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lost child or an absent parent or something else entirely – our grief is both uniquely ours yet absolutely universal. In doing this, you touch so many more people than the ones in the same situation as the letter writer. You remind us all of what is true, the one true thing that doesn’t change no matter what vantage point we see it from. Blessed be. Thank you.
Thank you. Tears in my eyes.
This was beautiful.
My boyfriend got a new doctor this week, and he was telling him about all the old crappy doctors he’s had, like the doctor who told him he’d gotten the flu because he was fat. And the new doctor replied “Well of course, thin people never get the flu.”
Women of all shapes sizes ages behaviors and planning levels have miscarriages. Nature is sometimes very very cruel to women who want to be mothers. But nothing is as cruel as a doctor telling you that this was in any way your fault. While I guess it is sometimes helpful for us as humans to think that if we just do X Yand Z perfectly everything will work out in our favor it simply isn’t true.
The idea that if you control your weight you will be able to control and future pregnancies or future health problems or even your own feelings is just an illusion. Please take care of your body, even if you feel like it has betrayed you, it didn’t, your doctor did.
My mother miscarried the first time. She was thin.
My first wife miscarried the first time. She was thin.
My second wife miscarried the first time. She was thin.
God is shaping your perfect baby a little bit at a time. Make more. Spread the emotional investment before it buries you.
“Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”
We never recover from anything. Embrace your baggage. Confront life. Master it. Or it will master you. There is no 3rd way.
There’s nothing wrong with working at WalMart.
Thanks for writing this column, Sugar. It’s important.
All my love to Stuck.
Just… yes.
Yes.
Thank you, Sugar. An amazing response.
Sometimes, miscarriages aren’t because of anything the mother did or was. Turning a single pieced-together cell into a fully-formed human baby is COMPLICATED! All the little molecules need to fit together just right and do their jobs just right and millions and billions of times without grievous error.
Sometimes, something just doesn’t go right. The little pieces (genes, proteins) don’t match up right or do their job right, and there’s a mistake. We all have about 7 on average. We’re lucky they probably aren’t anywhere important on the genome.
But sometimes by chance it’s somewhere important. It’s the spot that tells the lungs to breathe or the hear to beat or how many arms to have or where the brain should go.
Sometimes, Mother Nature (God, Fate, whatever you believe in) lays to rest your baby before it can be borne to suffer. You still had that baby. You had her for six months and kept her safe from harm. You were an excellent mother. Some day, if you want, you can be an excellent mother to your second child.
“They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died.” – yes, yes exactly.
Thank you, Sugar. I’m sobbing. This happened to me a month ago. I just lost my son five months, three weeks into the pregnancy.
Stuck, please know you are not alone.
I spent 4 hours this morning as a CASA volunteer for a medically fragile child who was nearly starved to death by his mother. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the pain and tragedy of relationships. I want to quit, walk away, let somebody else do it. Then something like this happens, and I get back on the horse, remembering that I am not alone.
You are really something, Sugar. Great piece.
Thank you Sugar. This was powerful, I had a miscarriage years ago and still wonder what might have been.
Your words are very meaningful.
Great job again, sugar.
I was put to work at age 5 and had dark circles under my eyes at 13.
My first wife died young and my children suffered, breaking my heart.
I worked like a dog all my life, then became a cripple full of pain who can barely walk. I’ve been beaten up with clubs, known pain like childbirth and crucifixion. I’ve begged to be killed twice.
You only miscarried someone you never knew? Sounds easy.
Be grateful for what you get in this miserable fucking world. We’re on this cold ball in space with a thin layer of atmosphere that we’re lucky doesn’t blow away. Our parents abuse and let us down. As do our friends and children. We do jobs we hate that suck our lives away because we need the money. Eventually our health really fucks up and we’re full of pain and discomfort. And then, after being cheated on, lied to, stolen from, punished gratuitousy, and overworked, all of our lives, we die miserably.
“If you’re not depressed, you don’t understand the situation!”
Thank you for this. It turned my heart inside out because I can relate to it on so many levels.I lost my baby girl 16 months ago at 16 weeks and believe me, I know what its like to wade through that darkness, especially when no one around you wants to talk about it.My last pregnancy was also unplanned.
Stuck,You are a mom, she was real, and she will always be with you on some level. Always.
There are some very good and free support groups for miscarriage/ baby loss.I truly understand the pain and guilt that you feel. I terminated the last pregnancy because my daughter was sick and wasn’t going to be compatible with life or live the quality of life that I felt was acceptable for her.She would’ve suffered like crazy,if she lived beyond birth.It was especially hard because like you, I was showing and so many people knew I was pregnant, and even now I still run into people who think I had the baby and I have to explain and re-live losing her. It never goes away.It felt like such a cruel twist to have to make that decision myself,when in fact it wasn’t really a choice.
I have also had a miscarriage which happened 8 months prior to this last loss, and an abortion when I was young. I think about what may have been often, but I am coming to a place of peace.Sometimes, though the grief unbearable and it feels like it hits me out of nowhere.I feel a million miles away from my husband and loved ones and that is when I need to speak to other women who have gone through pregnancy/ baby loss. You are not alone. I found some beautiful affirmations for women who have suffered miscarriage online and changed the wording for myself. I found that very healing.Everyone’s journey toward healing is different. Please be kind to yourself.I still eat and drink too much,and I know that I need to find healthier ways to cope with my grief, but it is long and arduous process and it takes alot of wokTherapy has made a huge difference in my well-being, too.I am sending you empathy and strength.
Sugar, I am also a youth advocate and social worker and the way you expressed the vulnerability of the middle school girls and their deep longing for recognition, love, and acceptance struck a very powerful chord in me. I know exactly what you are describing but would never have been able to write it so eloquently. I am so deeply moved.Thank you.
Sugar, I wish I had women who see the world as you do in my life. No one needs to be lied to, for the sake of false comfort. It’s awe inspiring how you realized that the truth – telling those girls that the power lies in them, and in noone else – was the key to their growth. Bravo.
BRILLIANT f*cking advice. You’d make one helluva chaplain. Bless you!
Thank you Sugar! This was beautiful and inspirational.
Thanks, Sugar,
That was the best thing I ever read. I hope you can hold up your head, Stuck, and I wish you only the best.
This may be the most brutally beautiful thing I have ever read.
Though it makes me sound like a woo-woo flake, I believe that we are all called to something, for a purpose that is rarely clear at the time, and sometimes, never revealed. As I share this piece with everyone I can think of who can possibly benefit from its wisdom, it’s abundantly clear to me that you, Sugar, were called to that job to serve more than just that handful of girls in that window of time. I think these words of yours will carry far.
Dear Sugar,
I entered foster care when I was 13. My first group home had head-sized blood stains on the sheets, girls cut themselves with staples in the corners, I was forced to say the Serenity Prayer with a fifi (something guys use to masturbate with in jail, a working man’s pocket pussy) in my mouth. I got used to showering and talking on the phone beside an egg timer. I got used to sharing, cooking, cleaning. My days were broken up into fragments. When I entered foster care is when I first developed an ache. The don’tgettooattachedcan’tfuckeatspendyourwayoutofit ache. I’ve dedicated my whole life to remedying this ache. Like you I’ve worked in social services. I had a very hard time drawing a distinction between myself and my clients. One benefit of the ache is always feeling entitled to being the theâ€third world other†in the room. I find the only thing that helps soothe the ache is creating new memories with good people. People who are sensitive and honest like your column. Your column helps my ache. xo
Consider these words a warm hug, Stuck.
Welcome to the sisterhood that none of us ever wanted to be a member.
Sugar gives you all the tools you need.
Peace
thanks again, sugar. and stephen too, for picking this one out in a rumpus daily email and adding some more to the story. and thank you also, stuck, for communicating your grief so vividly and with so much heart. it seems like, just by doing that, you have already started reaching. may you find a way through this. a big hug to you – you’ve brought tears to my eyes, and opened my heart this tuesday london morning. courage to you on your way.
Thanks, Sugar!
I love you!
Beautiful. Thank you both for this.
I dont know that there’s anything I can add that hasn’t already been said. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to write a response to such a strong letter. And Sugar nailed it. Beautiful and heart breaking and true. Good work, Sugar.
I feel your pain, Stuck, because I went through the same thing. For some reason, guys want to fix the situation when it is really unfixable.
I lost three babies, and really lost it after baby #2. After going to work and putting on the happy face, I’d come home and not leave the bed. My husband forced me to talk to a counselor, and I have to say it was the single best thing he ever made me do. I went to a support group, too, where I realized I wasn’t alone.
And as far as your doctor goes, FUCK HIM. I say get a new doctor immediately. 1 in 5 pregnancies results in a miscarriage, so for him to assume it was because of your weight is unfair. Find a wonderful, compassionate doctor (you might have to search) and know that some day, when you’re ready to try and be parents again, you will be parents.
I won’t ever forget the losses I’ve had, but when I look at my son I know that he wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have all the experiences in my life – good and bad – that I’ve lived through. With my last two miscarriages I would’ve actually still been pregnant or would’ve just have given birth around the time that my son was conceived. So I would never have known his beautiful smile and his hilarious laugh. You can’t see the beauty and hilarity that are waiting for you in the future, and that’s the worst part when you’re in the middle of being stuck. You don’t know how absolutely better-than-you-even-imagined-in-your-best-dreams your future will be.
I didn’t. It took a long time for me to get unstuck. But I’m on the other side to tell you that it’s beautiful, and you’ll get through this, and you’ll still cry when you read someone’s letter that talks about their loss, but it will get better. Go talk to someone and know that someday it will be okay again.
Beautiful, powerful piece. My heart aches for the young people out there who don’t have such people in their lives or families they can trust and love.
Aloha,
I taught anger management to violent juvenile offenders for many years. I heard the same stories, had the same frustration getting help. One day,while getting gas, a motorcycle gang drove in. I knew how they felt about child abuse as most of them were abused. I asked one of them if they would straighten someone out for me so a girl would be left alone. Their reply was, anytime for any kid. I only went back to them once. They did the job.
I see many of the kids I worked with 10 years ago. There is no greater feeling then when someone walks up and says you saved my life. Well, there is one, when they tell you all the different ways their children are being treated. When you see the well loved and cared for child of someone who saved themselves with your help.
Joe
I live on Planet Dead Baby. I lost my daughter at 38 weeks. For no reason. She just died. In Me. I have read thousands of things about pregnancy loss from people outside of the circle of pregnancy loss. You just really nailed it. You told our story without having to live it. How rare. Thank you. Thank you for explaining what so many of us go through. And what amazing advice. Someone sent your article to me, and I will go back and catch up. I have some online resources for Stuck, if she is interested, or if you are.
Has anyone mentioned how much that doctor needs to be castrated or have his medical license revoked?
Lovely work Sugar and big empathic, unconditionally loving hugs to Stuck!
This is one of the most painful and beautiful things I have ever read. My God.
Stuck? You need a new OB. Better yet, find a midwife. Fuck a bunch of telling you you lost the baby because you’re fat. There’s no pathology lab in the world that would confirm that as true. Fire that jerk.
Stuck’s story hits pretty close to home for me. This is, hands down, the best advice I’ve received. Thank you.
Sugar, this ripped my heart out and I’m sitting at my desk crying. I have two jobs that work me minimally 65 hours a week. In one, I’m administrative support for an agency that prevents child abuse because we believe that once the state’s office of Child Protective Services has to get involved, we’ve already failed to protect the child. How ’bout we prevent it to begin with? Good idea, eh?
The other job is with an emergency shelter for teenagers. This is for the kids who get removed from their home or who run away. Not only do I work with the same girls you describe, I also get to work with the boys. (And often their stories are even worse.)
I’ve been burnt out.
I remember now why I do what I do.
Thank you.
*dearest stuck – my heart breaks for you and my arms ache to hold you and tell you i’ve been there and i will help you through. sugar’s advice was very wise and you have already began the reaching process as you reached out to someone to share your pain. i wish you healing and peace as you cope with the loss of your baby. i’m sending a smack upside the head to your “doctor” <–i use that title very loosely. when my MIL offered to have a mother ring made for me, i insisted the 2 babies i lost be included on the ring to signify their lives mattered to me as much as the 4 children i've been blessed with. they are named simply, "baby 2" and "baby 4" on my ring with a birthstone for the month they'd have born in. i didn't carry them long enough to even know their sex but their short existence mattered. i wish you only the best dear girl and i hope you find healing in our shared experiences.
*sugar – thank you for sharing your pain. i believe our main purpose in life is to share our ugly, heartbreaking, funny and blessed to help others find their way through it. you did well lil grasshopper. i'm so grateful to the fb friend who led me to your page. i am now a fan. i wish you peace and i wish the girls who were fortunate enough to be in your heart to always remember the one person, you, who loved them unconditionally which is the greatest gift we can give another soul.
*gladiator – surely there is some joy in your life? something that makes you happy? warm sunshine on your face? a good meal? a great movie, book or music? sure, there is more suffering in the world than not, but there must be good times for you as well? in any case, i'm sending you a warm and sappy hug even if you hate hugs. and i'm hoping you can find something to make life worthwhile.
mamakat
Link: Helping After Neo-Natal Death (H.A.N.D)
I lost a baby in a similar manner last year. One online resource that was amazing for me was http://www.handonline.org/. The website has a section for the parents, for friends of the parents, and for professionals.
I continue to refer to it as it has a section on what people might say to you to be “helpful” where they don’t mean harm but in reality they are incredibliy insensitive and what they say can be crushing. This section has helped me to not take it to heart and to understand that as Sugar points out they’re very likely uncomfortable and don’t know how to maneuver the intense feelings. Incidently, a loss at 26 weeks is a still birth NOT a miscarriage. The website also has a section where it is very clear that the grieving process of the mother and the grieving process of the father will be very different. This helped me to allow for my partner to have his process and also for him to allow me to have mine (which has been more intense, drawn-out, and still affects me today over a year later).
In my hospital, fortunately the doctors seem to have been trained in the psychology behind this kind of loss. Even though they constantly told me it wasn’t my fault and these things just happen, I picked my brain for weeks on what I did wrong and what I could’ve done that was different. I still tried to blame myself even though they told me not to…it’s a normal reaction. After I had a medical diagnosis (we had our little one and the placenta autopsied so that we could know if what happened might happen again), I blamed myself for the diagnosis…ultimately it feels like MY fault that my cervix failed and she (healthy but too young to survive) was expelled. I try not to live there in those thoughts.
Furthermore, I hate to say this, but if you do decide to get pregnant again, the fear of losing the new pregnancy is all-encompassing (at least it has been for me). Today in our new pregnancy, we are nine days beyond where we lost our little girl last year. It has been a mind-fuck of a pregnancy…every little twitch, every little movement…it has been far from enjoyable…we had a surgical procedure to help with the cervical insufficiency a month ago which I found scary. HOWEVER, in passing the date of our last loss I have had several moments where I have forgotten I was pregnant….this has been a relief and I am thankful for some peace. Fortunately (if you do get pregnant at any time in the future), part of your tribe (as Sugar so wonderfully describes it) is online at http://www.babycenter.com in the groups regarding: loss, rainbow babies (a baby after a loss), pregnancy after miscarriage, and more. My saving grace has been in the cervical incompetence groups where moms will post the most intense fears, concerns, and feelings and I feel NORMAL because I am having the same feelings. I am so grateful for them! I think you could even join the loss groups now and talk about your process and ask how others coped and are coping. Stay far FAR away from gathering support from women who have not had losses…they mean well, but they DO NOT UNDERSTAND and hopefully they never will. My friend put it this way: it’s a special club you hope none of your friends ever have to join.
A good friend recently told me “just be happy you’re pregnant” and I wanted to punch her, but I know she loves me and meant well. She just won’t really ever understand and I truly in my hopes she never does.
Wishing you the best.
Magnificent, both of you.
I’m at work, thus am not able to read this as in-depth as I’d like (I will once I’m home, though). But I just feel the need to say this: What kind of FUCKTARD would say to this woman, “It was only a miscarriage.” ?? I want to punch THEM in the face for being so cold and inconsiderate.
My heart goes out to you, Stuck.
I’m so sorry, Stuck. Just know there’s no way it was your fault. Your daughter is lucky to have had a mother like you.
stuck: i’m so sorry you’ve had to hit this place. and yet i’m grateful you reached out to sugar and, by extension, to all of us, and wrote about it in an achingly beautiful way many of us can relate to, even if ours are different griefs.
sugar: you are an amazing writer. thank you.
WOW.Wow. wow. wow. wow.
I had just stumbled upon your advice column today and have been reading a few posts, greatly intrigued by your ability to write with such wit and how able you are to give fantastic,remarkably useful,touching advice. I truly hope you’ll continue sharing your pearls of wisdom with us until the day your spirit rises up to the heavens (which is where you’ll keep writing amazing tales)
Sugar, I’m sitting here with tears streaming down my face. I moved to Planet My Babies Died a long while ago… it’ll be 5 years next month. Mine were twins (though I didn’t know it until I started bleeding and went to the hospital…my midwife had just made an appointment for an ultrasound, and I never had a chance to make it to that appointment). Twin girls. They were 4 months premature, and just too little to make it, though they tried real hard. Sophia was 13 days old, and Mira was 44 days, when they died. The really awful part was having to make the decision to take them off life support, each in their turn. The really horrifying part was dealing with people who told me that I had no right to “kill” my children, that I should have let Sophie be a vegetable because her lungs were too undeveloped, and that I should have just let Mira’s abdomen rupture after her kidneys failed. It took a while, but I eventually understood that those people who think I’m a murderer can just eat shit and die. They will never understand that I did the only thing I could to protect my children from suffering, and for that, for the two brief moments when I made my decisions, I was the best Mother on Planet Earth.
Stuck, mine have names too, and their tiny little urns are on a little shrine in my home office. The pain never really goes away, and you need to know that. But it does get easier, in a way. Planet My Babies Died is just another planet in my personal solar system now. I’ll admit that I visit it every now and then (like now!), but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a part of who I am. And I like who I am.
Stuck, I know it sounds like bullshit, but really and truly, things happen for a reason. For me, my children died to keep them safe from their sperm donor (and I won’t even go into that clusterfuck). You have to find your “reason” and you need to realize that the reason is not YOU. I won’t guess at it because only you can find it. While you look for it, seek out things that give you joy. Find reasons to smile every day. And, silly it may be, write them all down so that when you have days that you just can’t find joy or smiles (and they will happen), you can open up your Things That Made Me Smile Today Journal and at least remember what it is to smile. You’ll get there. I promise. I did.
I lost a daughter when I was 17..I delivered her when I was 8 months and she lived 8 hours…that was 21 years ago and not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. She had a name..she had a funeral..I miss her all the time..even as I type this tears are rolling down my face.
My heart goes out to you and I know the pain that you feel. Thank you for sharing your story..I hope it gets easier for you.
I lost a daughter at 27 weeks too. Yes, Planet My Baby Died is a real place. Hopefully my words will help you to see that it’s OK to be only human.
http://besquirrely.com/2010/08/31/sad-tears-happy-tears/
“They will never understand that I did the only thing I could to protect my children from suffering, and for that, for the two brief moments when I made my decisions, I was the best Mother on Planet Earth.”
I love you. Thank you so much for having this kind of courage.
Thank you, for asking this question. I had the same thing happen, picking out names and everything. After I lost my baby I spent two months on my couch wondering what I did wrong. My boyfriend left me because of it. My sister-in-law got pregnant at the same time and I had to throw the shower and be happy for her when her baby came. I don’t know if it gets better, but it gets “different.” I feel that now I know there are others like me.
Sugar, I think you held my heart in your hands for a few minutes there. Wow, wow, wow. You are tremendous.
Stuck honey, you’ll get where you need to be but boy does it take a long time to get there. Keep loving yourself, keep letting yourself be loved and talk to that guy of yours.
Love to both of you.
This is beautiful. I’ve posted, sent and reposted this. Thank you.
Thank you all for the amazing comments. ox Sugar
Wow. Amen. Right on. Sugar, you rock.
I am crying and crying. Thank you, Sugar. My twin girls were born 4 months early 5 years ago. Freya died after 12 days, and I can’t seem to look at twins even now without crying. But Rachel, now 5 1/2, sits beside me and asks what words I am writing here. I got to keep one, and am forever grateful, but won’t ever get over losing the other. I hope Stuck has gained some comfort in knowing she is not alone, and those of us living on that her planet send love and hope to her.
I lost my unborn son 12 years ago. In many ways, I died the day he did. It took 10 years for me to understand just how devastating losing him was. I’ve spent the last 2 years learning to accept that that will never change.
I’m glad Stuck reached out to you, Sugar. Your answer was a gift to her. I hope it helped anchor her to something good.
Love and hugs,
Thank you, Sugar, for telling the hard truth. And with it, offering hope. Love. Lots of Love.
Dear Sugar,
I’m a new reader of The Rumpus and your column. Your words, in the few issues I’ve read, have already brought such tremendous healing to my heart that I wish I could knight you, declare you a saint or make you the next winner of the lottery. How to say Thank You for such balm, such grace?
Dear Stuck,
There is much I want to tell you, but coherent prose is failing me right now because your letter and Sugar’s response have overwhelmed me. Please accept this poem as my way of reaching out to you, because when I was finally able to reach – up from the sucking whirlpools of grief that randomly alternated with rushing boulder-filled rivers of ice cold nothing-numbness – there were women who took the time to stretch their arms toward me, bridging the distance with understanding and compassion and comfort.
I share this not because I imagine it to be some stellar piece of poetic achievement, but because I hope you’ll find a glimmer, something, anything, to grab onto and help light your journey back. Something in which you might see your experience reflected and know you are not alone on Planet My Baby Died. I made it back to Planet Earth; you will too.
Dear Stephen Elliott,
thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU, for The Rumpus – for crafting a place for Sugar and Stuck and all the rest of us to come together, for providing and nurturing this community – this word and light filled sanctuary where all we have to do is stretch a hand out into the seeming-darkness and others – so many others – will raise hands and voices and torches to bridge the distance.
R E Q U I E M
~ for Elena Grace
We sit together, strangers in a circle
The ones who have lost babies
Mothers of the dead
We share the suffering of miscarriage
Stillbirth
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
They lump us in a stark room
Just down the hall
From the nursery filled with newborns
What are they thinking?
Some of us wear our grief
Broken purple hearts
Victims of the same war
Markers of personal disgrace
A peculiar brand of survivor’s guilt
We have no name for
Confessing to wishing
Our breath had slipped away
With our child’s heartbeat
Who could blame us?
The SIDS mothers think
They’ve cornered the market
On culpability
Mothers of stillbirths seem to carry
The invisible weight of their lifeless
Children in their empty arms
Those who lost their unborn early
Keep cradling their middles, wondering
If they are truly welcome to mourn here
How much of a pregnancy equals a child?
A couple of women, girls really
Offer up their stories of alcohol or drugs
How sorry they feel, how if they only knew
Those who read all the books
Took the vitamins, tried to do everything right
Bite back the tongue’s urge to reproach
Especially when we call to mind
That single cup of hazelnut or glass of merlot
We just couldn’t resist
Is that what did it?
I envy the women who saw their babies
Who got to hold them, even once
A hello, a goodbye—however brief
There is a void in my memory
Where my daughter’s face belongs
I ache for the vision of her
Then the mother rocking back and forth in her chair
Tells of how she sees her child looking back
From every baby carriage that passes
Comparing loss is futile, isn’t it?
My friend visits the tiny grave
Of her son, Michael, who died
At three days old
A neighbor wears a gold chain
With two silver baby shoes—one pink, one blue
To remember her twins
But I have not yet found a way
To honor my lost child
To lay claim to the name
Mother
Tears in my eyes because I belong to this tribe. I had two full term still births. One in 2006 and one in January 2011. This is a private pain that takes time to ease. It shatters your faith and erodes your self-esteem. I constantly feel like I’m watching someone in pain because its just to painful to be that person. They say time heals, I still have that hope, its the only thing that keeps me from being stuck.
You are not alone
Dearest Stuck,
There is a place called glowinthewoods.com where babylost parents abide with each other. They will understand in ways no one else around you is understanding right now.
Much love to you.
that is heart-breakingly beautiful. I did youth street outreach for 3 years when I was still a teenager myself and I can see that kind real in this writing, both the letter and the narrative. That experience informed so much of the life that has followed. Thank you for posting this. (I just read this thanks to a friend posting in facebook)
Stuck: My heart goes out to you. I have no better advice to offer than you have already beeen given but know that you are not alone and that there are many many people on Planet My Baby Died.
Sugar: I creid when I read this. Thank you for such a moving and beautifully written piece and more importantly, thank you for being so compassionate in a world that rarely supports being so.
I can’t honestly believe that someone would say ‘it was only a miscarriage’ to someone.
I have never been pregnant so I have never been through this but I would never say something like that to a woman who had loat her baby.
And clearly that doctor has no idea how to handle such situations.
Stuck – this may sound corny but remember you are not alone… there are others out there who are or have been in the same situation.
Her name was Desire.
Stuck, there’s not a lot you can do to change other people’s attitudes. Just remember, what is “only a miscarriage” to them is a precious life to you. You are grieving. There is nothing to feel guilty about.
My wife & I lost our first daughter, stillborn at full term. It was difficult, grieving for someone who’d never seen the light of day, because many people just don’t understand it. The experience changed both of us. We were lucky to go on to have two wonderful children, but even now it is difficult to know how to answer the question “How many children do you have?” We have two, but we’ve had three.
Your child will always be a part of your life.
Dear Stuck: Go upside your boyfriend’s head. Tell him what you need and how you feel. You may discover just how much hurt he has in his soul over the loss of the baby and over seeing your pain. He may think he is offering all he perceives he has to give – the chance at another child. He lives on Planet My Baby Died as well, but may not know how to express it.
As for the asshats, when someone says “oh, it was just a miscarriage, you’ll have more” stomp on their foot and say, “oh, it was just a toe, you have nine more.” They may not get the point, but they’ll never say it again.
Take care sweetie and be the best you there is. Her memory deserves it and so do you.
When I lost her, the baby in between, I was over five months along. A minister came to pray with me in the hospital, and he asked what we needed to pray for. I thought about my mom, who’d lost 2 babies, and said, pray I can talk about it.
And I did. If someone asked how I was, I told them. Over and over, friends, acquaintances, strangers. And something amazing happened: in return, people told me their stories. Some of them hadn’t mentioned what happened for 40 years, and some had never talked about it to anyone, but they still remembered what the doctors said (that never goes away). Someone said, “it’s like belonging to the biggest club in the world, and not knowing any other member.” We told each other our stories, and we held each other, and we cried. Over, and over, and over.
The day came when, asked, I smiled and said, “I’m fine”, and it was true. I realized, thinking about it later, that you hope your kid will make a difference in the world, and she did. Even though she never drew a breath.
Your kid made a difference. You made a difference, talking. Keep talking. You will get there when it’s time for you.
Oh. My. God.
I am in awe of both of you.
Thank you for so beautifully articulating these experiences.
Human beings have a remarkable ability to survive ridiculous amounts of pain, sorrow, and despair
if they do not feel alone in it.
Find your tribe.
Be vulnerable so they can accompany you.
Trauma recovery is an oxymoron.
We never recover.
But we do learn to bear it, with support from others,
and we do go on to love again.
Befriend all of your feelings.
What feels like being stuck sometimes turns out to be long gestation
of something new that is worth living for.
All love from The Tribe.
The last few lines gave me goosebumps. I live on planet My Baby Died as well. Sugar, I am weeping as I type this. You are an incredibly talented writer. Thank you for this.
As some writer once wrote (paraphrased, of course):
Writing is easy; you just open a vein and let it bleed onto the page.
Hah, I guess I wrote my own quote because I just found the two quotes I thought I was paraphrasing:
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.”
~ Hemingway
and
“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
~ Gene Fowler
Either way, Sugar, you sure know how to bleed and make us all feel it. I think Spirit for people like you.
Sherrie Miranda
I have no words for this post. It’s… amazing.
Gladiator: One person’s suffering does not make another person’s suffering less valid, less important, or less painful. Think about your own children. Would you tell them that their pain of losing their mother young wasn’t as important because you had it worse?
Try this: I’m sorry. I had a horrific childhood and great losses. I emphasize with you.
thank you for this piece stuck and sugar..i have been living on planet my baby died for the past 4 months (my baby boy passed at 16wks on 4/16/11). it has been incredibly difficult for me, especially since i am an ob/gyn and am surrounded by pregnancy on a daily basis- counseling on pregnancy loss has become so personal for me, i can’t help but cry after each patient i have to share bad news with..seeing the pain in their eyes feels like it is a reflection of my own pain- it has been so difficult that at times i have felt like quitting. some days, my heart can’t take it. i’m starting to see a therapist for my PTSD..it truly is crippling.
dear stuck- your miscarriage was NOT your fault- it angers and embarrasses me that someone in my profession would even suggest that to you. i wonder how you are doing now, a year later after writing this letter, and hoping that you have been able to heal and find some peace. as many of the responses reflected, you are already a mother, your daughter is truly lucky to have had that much love in her short time on this earth..
dear sugar- you are an amazing writer and i became an instant fan after a dear friend of mine sent me a link to your column during a low point in my grief a couple months ago. i find it interesting that you have written to women struggling with their decision of abortion but chose not to post it…i wish you would because i know so many women would benefit from reading your work. abortion and pregnancy loss are so stigmatized in our society– they are both sisterhoods that at many points overlap. thank you also for suggesting McCracken’s memoir- another close friend of mine who had a pregnancy loss suggested it to me and i read it in one sitting days after my loss..
a new sugar fan here, reading the archives, soaking up the compassion.
and to echo kris, it was a stillbirth, not a miscarriage, for stuck. within the whole continuum of prenatal loss, even if common usage makes the distinction differently, it can perhaps be of some help to know that not only was it not “just” a miscarriage, there is actually a different word that technically applies.
It’s been 21 years since my middle daughter, Amethyst Rose, was stillborn. Most of those years I’ve written something on her birthday.
Grieving isn’t about “getting over” your loss, but about coming to terms with it; not about forgetting, but about learning to live with the memory, and with the hollow place next to your heart that never goes away, but that eventually stops hurting all the time. Just a few times a year.
Yes, our little girls have names, and stories, and talking about them helps. Will always help.
February 2, 1986 I had my first son, Michael. He died inside of me January 20, 1986 and I carried his little body until he delivered. He will never be forgotten and always be loved. During that horrible time of my life I saw mothers with 2, 3 and 4 kids and my heart broke because my husband and I could have given Michael such a great life. Since then I have four beautiful,smart and wonderfully kind kids and now I am a grandmother of a red-haired little wonder. Time stops for no one. Life is precious and will go on. You are a mother and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Your boyfriend is a father and don’t let anyone push him aside. He is going through his own grief.You will survive and your daughter will always live on in your heart just as my son lives in mine. All the best to the both of you.
That was one good advice Sugar. I don’t know what I’d say if somebody comes to me with a problem like that.
Thank you for this post (a year and a half later). As someone said above, you have a gift for making grief feel universal. I am grieving the loss of a relationship that I thought would be my forever — not the same as a baby at all, of course, but I am also stuck and unsure how to believe that my future will still be good without him in it. I found some comfort in your answer, Sugar, and in everyone’s comments.
Oh thank you Dearest Sugar. I wish I could hug you. Meek still words will have to suffice. Thank you making me believe I am strong enough to reach.
Wow!
Thank you for that. I “stumbled” on your column and out of all the ones, I clicked on this one. I lost a daughter at 5 1/2 months and even a year later my “Stuck girl” is still here. Ugh.
I needed to hear exactly what you wrote today. Thank you so much, I am so grateful for your gift of words.
That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read. I just applied for a job as a juvenile justice coordinator and am severely nervous that it will ruin my emotional health. I know that most of them have had horrible lives and experienced trauma beyond my comprehension… that’s why they are there. This has helped me to realize that my goal is to tell them the truth… the way you did and then maybe, just maybe, one of them will end up like Desire. I hope your words will help “Stuck” reach for the light that is her life after such sorrow.
I know 2 years have gone by since you posted this. But thank you for posting it. Thank you, Stuck, and thank you, Sugar.
I just had a miscarriage, and luckily, the one friend I told referred me to this post. It’s helping me.
OMG!! A close friend just sent me this article(better 2 years later than never) and it moved me beyond words as the healing effect “the Truth” can have on us and empower us as perfect human beings in an imperfect world. I am a recovering alocholic/attic of 10 years now and I work in this world with others in assisting other addicted women to find their own power thru their challenges or as you say..”Fucking Nightmares!!” This article moved me to a new level of hope and peace for the suffering….Thank you Sugar, I will use this to pay it forward…..In sincere gratitude, Sally W.
I’ve never been through anything like any of the people in this column, but I cried the whole way through.
Wow – your article is a little old now but still incredibly relevant. I googled about being afraid to fall pregnant after a miscarriage and found this. I already have a baby, he’s 3 yrs old now but I lost a pregnancy at 8 wks – I was 38, have been trying for just over a year to fall pregnant and at 40 yrs now I’m terrified I’m getting too old. But thanks for reminding me we’ve just got to keep on moving on, cling and ‘reach’ for our dreams and who knows what will happen. I hope Stuck found a way to become unstuck and is now a mum again herself. Beautiful piece – honesty from the heart.
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