Liberation from "Having it All"
A newsletter without any takeaways but a deep desire for shared grappling with grief.
A few weeks ago I had a miscarriage. This was my fifth miscarriage with no surviving births, a history I have had to recount over the past few months to nurses, to doctors and surgeons and anesthesiologists, a history I have documented carefully on forms. A history that feels blurry at the edges because it has been years since I have had prenatal appointments or been in a maternity hospital. At first I tell nearly no one that I am pregnant or my feelings about it because the pregnancy is difficult from the start and because I am scared of breaking relationships with my spouse, my friends, anyone of significance if they say the wrong thing. I am tired after a summer of moving and bronchitis and COVID and I do not know what to ask for when people ask me what I need.
I am telling you about this loss now dear reader, because I saw this clip (below) in which comedian Sashi Perera talks about why she has shared her miscarriages before knowing what her story is exactly. Most people she explains, write about miscarriages after they have children, but she has written about the experience while she is in the midst of it because that perspective is a rarely heard one. Conventional writing advice will tell you that waiting can be good, that there needs to be some level of distance before you can share, but often what we share in the after times is coloured by what the ending of the story is.
I too am writing because similar to Perera I don’t have processed thoughts, but there is value in postcards along the journey, and there is a dearth of stories from people whose journey has not resulted in a child. Outside of Elizabeth Day’s lovely book Friendaholic which actually is about friendship, I have not read any others, and yet I crave to hear from more couples, more racialized women in particular. If this is you, googling for others, this post is for you .
Despite doctors and hospital staff and other health care providers emphasizing that this is not the time for big decisions, this is not the time to follow your feelings, I find myself trying to preserve how I feel in this liminal space. I write myself a letter before I am admitted to hospital to remind future me of what it feels like to teeter between loss and life, and to encourage myself to choose life. In the waiting room of the hospital, I record a video message to greet myself after surgery. These are messages for me alone to comfort me in my grief and remind myself that repeated miscarriages are hard but I have a good life and that there is more I want to do and experience. The rest of the time, it feels vitally important to reassure everyone through phone calls and messages that I am upright, not collapsed, alive. I text my obgyn pictures of us smiling outside the surgical suites and on our way home outside of the hospital. Once home, I get up to greet loved ones who come to see me the day of the miscarriage, finding enough energy to show them around our new apartment. My own grief is interspersed with watching stories of parents in Gaza collecting their children’s body parts in bags and though I know that there is no hierarchy of grief, it seems wrong somehow to feel sadness in big ways.
Two weeks after the loss I see a friend immediately after I have a bodywork session, and we sit in the sunshine overlooking the water and I share my admiration for their life and we share tentative dreams and visions and hopes. We speak about grief and disappointment and striving and letting go, and the conversation feels bigger than miscarriages, because every life holds unexpected gaps between what we imagine and what comes to pass, and it is up to each of us to hold that truth as we move through our lives. The conversation avoids platitudes and pity and is tender, mutually vulnerable and joy-filled and cheerful.
We speak about detaching from the idea of maximizing life or “having it all” - that there is no such thing, that life inevitably involves making choices. We speak about what it might mean to choose self, to choose joy, to choose pleasure, to do the disciplined work of practising hope. To choose a different path and “give up”, even if technically there might still be more to try. We speak about turning inward, centering oneself and listening closely to what emerges, rather than automatically prioritizing the voice inside of me or externally that says grit is important, that values hard things, that shouts out that to know love, to know joy, to have good elder years, family must look a particular way and therefore, I should persist. We remind oneself repeatedly that outcomes and effort are not linked variables and there are multiple forms and shapes a good life can take.
I speak about how hardship and ease go together, and that seeking to pay attention to the mercies and ease that have flowed through these difficult months and weeks has kept me upright.
This ease and mercy has looked like a long-term organizational client understanding when I explain that I am on a medical and mental health leave and need space away before I trust myself to be with others again. It has looked like family members bringing food, sharing stories and regularly checking in at a time when I desperately need to talk about other things. It has looked like my siblings texting a regular stream of stories and anecdotes and videos because I cannot and do not want to speak on the phone. I have felt it at a wedding officiated by my husband where our dear friends held space for me at their reception and made accommodations to ensure I can participate as well. I have felt it in my mothers’ steady words enough, said over and over again in the weeks that follow. Find a different path. I have felt it family putting aside their own work to sit with us and listen to our half articulated, piece-meal thoughts, in text messages filled with love.
It is the countless acts of care by my spouse despite being affected by this loss themselves and in the mutual care that flows between us. In the trips to the ocean and water when contractions are bad and in the aftermath of the loss. It is in vulnerable conversations with aunts and uncles, elders and parents. I am grateful for every single person who has been able to sit with discomfort without asking much of me. I am grateful for being resourced with more somatic awareness and knowledge so that I can be self responsive and release grief. I am grateful for my somatic teacher who offers a 1-1 session that allows me to open up. I am grateful and proud of myself.
It takes weeks before I can read anything outside of poetry or listen to podcasts again, but when I finally return to words, it feels like a homecoming. Here are some of the inputs that have guided me over the past several weeks.