You know what annoying things I’m referring to:
- “At least you could get pregnant”
- “There will be another one”
- “You can always adopt”
- “Maybe it’s for the best”
- “It’s SO common”
- “At least it happened early”
- “It’ll happen with the time is right”
When people said things like this to me, I was hurt and angry. I resented any implication that I shouldn’t be sad, that I should move on. I wanted to be sad. My grief was honoring the love for my babies. When people dismissed my right to sadness, it felt like they were dismissing me, and my babies.
You may have felt this way or are feeling this right now.
Matthew Thorburn, author of the beautiful book Dear Almost, said of his loss, “When we gradually started sharing our sad news, friends and family urged us in different well-meaning ways not to dwell on it. ‘Keep trying. You’ll get pregnant again,’ they’d say, as if then this loss wouldn’t matter. But it did matter. It still does.”
Yes, exactly.
Now, with some distance from my own losses, I can see that people try to usher you toward a future happy outcome because it’s so uncomfortable for them to sit with grief. People say things like “everything happens for a reason” because they want to believe that for their own lives. Coming to terms with the randomness of tragedy and pain is…hard.
What I wish is that people would resist the urge to “fix” the grief of pregnancy loss. What I wish is that they would see grief as necessary, as a reflection of the love that exists for the baby who died.
There are a few things people said to me that I thought were helpful:
- “That really sucks”
- “I hate that you have to go through this”
- “I’m here for you if you want to talk, and if you don’t, that’s cool too”
Often, the simplest things are the most meaningful.
This post was written by Kim Hooper, with content excerpted from All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss.
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