It's been the hardest year of my life (#understatement) even though the pelvic pain has gotten miraculously better with the help of my new medicine. It sort of feels like God gave me a reprieve from the chronic physical pain so I would have the energy and strength to tackle the emotional upheaval to come. And tackle it I did, haha.
I really want to get on with blogging about the here and now and sharing what's happening in my life with you all, but it feels inauthentic because I really feel like before I do, I need to share the most vulnerable and painful experience of this last year. It's changed me, and it's important to me that I don't pretend that it didn't.
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We only knew I was pregnant for a couple of days before I went and had a blood test done to make sure everything was alright. As I'm sure you can guess, everything was not alright. My numbers were incredibly low--too low to really hope that this would be a viable pregnancy. But we just watched and waited for almost 10 days because they were slowly rising. Dave and I were on the biggest emotional roller coaster we'd ever been on (which is saying something after the last couple of years we've had) alternating between feeble hope that everything might be okay, and suffocating fear that I might be miscarrying. Once the numbers seemed to plateau (still in a nonviable range), my doctor did an incredibly painful ultrasound to make sure it wasn't ectopic and finally ordered a D&C. This all happened within the span of about two weeks, but felt like a lifetime for us.
After the D&C, it was impossible to ignore the intense feeling of loss and I didn't know what to do. I wasn't that far along because I'd found out pretty early that I was pregnant, so I felt dumb feeling the grief so intensely. Was this even considered a baby this early? My best friend had just had a miscarriage a few weeks earlier and she'd been MUCH further along and I didn't want to add to her pain, so I didn't tell her. I've hated myself ever since for not telling more people. I needed support, but there was a strong feeling of, "It wasn't that big of a deal, you were only so many weeks along, and you don't want to make it uncomfortable for everyone around you."
So I pulled back. I told my family, one of my professors, one other friend and then I shut off my emotions so I wouldn't burst into random tears throughout the day. I completely lost all motivation to go to class, to be present when I actually made it to class, to be present with my clients, to emotionally engage in their pain, to attend choir rehearsals which I usually LOVE, etc. It wasn't until about 2 weeks after the procedure that I fully let myself grieve the loss. It was one of the most painful, yet bonding experiences Dave and I have ever had as a couple. We had so many questions: Was this considered a baby yet? Will this baby be part of our family in the eternities? Does this mean miscarriage is going to plague our childbearing years? Was this because of the endometriosis? Is it normal to feel this much pain and feel it so intensely about this? And there were so many feelings: Sadness mixed with peace, relief mixed with guilt, fear mixed with love, anger mixed with hurt and confusion, and the list goes on.
I just sort of channeled my pain into really really working hard on my thesis so I could graduate in April and have a break as soon as possible. It worked. I got my thesis done, and it was a miracle, but I was broken. I was so broken when I graduated. I felt like a champion that day. Like I had overcome so much and grown and changed as a person like I never believed I could, but I was hurting inside, and I was still healing.
When Mother's Day came around, I couldn't do it. I really thought I'd be fine, but just an hour before I was supposed to run a choir practice, I fell apart--I couldn't stop sobbing. I felt the loss so intensely--all day at church I was weepy and sad and confused about still feeling pain about this 3 months later. Luckily Dave is super tuned in to my emotions and was able to just hold me and remind me that it's okay that I was still hurting and I didn't have to go to church if it was going to be too painful, and that there's no time limit on grief.
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It's been 6 months now since the miscarriage and I regret every day that I didn't tell more people when it was happening. Even before I was pregnant, I was personally against waiting to tell people until your 2nd trimester because it doesn't make sense to me. Don't we need support the most in the first trimester when we're vomiting all over ourselves and can't keep saltines down? And don't we absolutely need support if we're in the process of losing a baby? Anytime I've shared that I had a miscarriage since then, most women have responded with their own stories of miscarriage and how it was difficult for them too and how they understand the pain and grief. It's SO comforting to not feel alone in this, so why did I keep it to myself for so long?
I said that this has changed me and I believe it has. I think I'm exponentially more empathetic--meaning I understand better what it means to hold someone's pain with them and show them that they aren't alone in it. I'm more sensitive to infertility and issues surrounding motherhood in a religious culture that celebrates motherhood. I also took the time for myself to heal, which required some intense therapy and soul searching about how I want to be as a mother and how I can love fearlessly in this terrifying world. I worked to surround myself with people I knew I could be vulnerable with because I trust that they love me and will support me. I feel like I'm in a good place right now thanks to Dave, Heavenly Father, and other people who have loved me through this, as well as reading a WHOLE bunch of Brene Brown :). But I still struggle to understand what exactly has kept me from telling my closest friends about the miscarriage until I felt like I could present it all tied up in a neat little bow through a blog post. Any thoughts on what holds us back from being vulnerable with those we love even when we know they'll be there for us?
Erin, you're amazing. Something like this is so hard and I can't imagine the pain and sadness you have endured. I know that angels are watching out for you, Dave, and the little spirits that are part of your eternal family.
ReplyDeleteAlicia! I miss you! You are SO right. I didn't write much about it here, but "concourses of angels" has never felt so real to me as it has this year. It's been an incredible spiritual journey. Hope things are going well with the new school year! Love your blog! Thanks for the support <3
DeleteErin, first off I love love love this post. Thank you for sharing your story in such a real, honest, and beautifully-worded way. I think that's really brave, and I admire you for it :)
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, I think part of the reason we don't readily share our pain and vulnerabilities is because, on some level, it feels selfish. We know how deeply these things hurt, and we know that sharing them, asking for a bit of empathy, means putting some of that burden on someone else. It means hurting them, asking them to voluntarily feel pain on our behalf. For most of us, that's hard, it feels selfish--it almost hurts to ask someone else to hurt with us! And as women (perhaps especially as Mormon women), we are programmed to not be selfish; we are taught to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, but not how to ask people to mourn with or comfort us. However, I truly believe that that's one of the most important things we can learn in this life, and one of the most beautiful aspects of our trials. If we're meant to become a Zion people, that means being of one heart and one mind. I think some portion of that means understanding and empathizing with each other, and trusting each other with our battle scars. I also think it is a beautiful shadow of the Atonement--we are offering others the chance to become more like the Savior as they voluntarily suffer our pains with us. It's hard to see it that way sometimes, for sure. But few things have the way to bind us to God and to each other the way that shared burdens do. Kind of a bittersweet truth, but one I'm particularly grateful for in my own life. :) Anyways, that's my $0.02 on the subject. Thank you again for sharing! :)
Kayla, this is perfect. SO beautifully written and SO accurate for describing the feeling of asking for empathy! I think you might be spot on for why I didn't want to share it with my closest friends. We were all in an emotionally taxing program and we all had our own battles to deal with, I didn't want to add to it. And then time passed and it just felt weird, probably. I love your comparison to the atonement. For some reason I've made that connection in the therapy room as a therapist holding people's pain, but haven't thought about it in my normal relationships. Thank you thank you for your comment! Hope you are doing well! And thank you for the support!
DeleteI had an awesome comment but my phone deleted it. So you'll have to settle for this mediocre one. ;)
ReplyDeleteErin, thank you so much for sharing. It's such a deeply personal and painful thing to share but I think will help so many who read it. Thank you for your strength and friendship! Please don't hate yourself for not telling people, it's such a hard/lonely/scary thing to go through and you did what you needed to do at the time to survive. And now that you're opening up I hope so much that people will be so loving and supportive. I hope I can be. I think people value "moving on" too much and don't value the ability to feel and be open to whatever is happening at the moment. Feel free to talk to me whenever about this or anything! I'm all about sharing pain and feeling alone together. Shared pain is no longer paralyzingly but mobilizing. (From the Wounded Healer... Thanks Jonathan!)
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for your beautiful post. I think that people process pain differently - some externally and some internally. Some need to process their feelings out loud with others so they can come to an understanding of their pain. I am like you and prefer to process it internally and then when I really feel like I have a handle on the pain and how/what/why I am feeling it, then I am open to share it. While I was going through 8 years of infertility, I rarely talked about. I did acknowledge that's what we were experiencing, but didn't go into detail about how I was feeling. My sister told me that she thought I didn't really care about it because I didn't talk or cry about it with her and others. But, that wasn't really fair to me because the way she deals with pain is different then the way I do. I think both ways are fine as long as we can get the healing we need. So don't beat yourself up about how you dealt with your pain. It was yours to deal with and you have the right to deal with it in the way that feels right to you.
ReplyDeleteErin, thanks for sharing. It's a very real example and reminder to me of what pain means and how important it is to simply hold and be held. You and Dave will be in my thoughts and prayers.
ReplyDeleteAs for my two cents worth, I think that sometimes we hold back from being vulnerable because secrecy and isolation are the very nature of shame, and it seems that vulnerability always manages to access our shame in one way or another. It takes a lot of courage (and sometimes a lot of time and deliberation) to break out of the isolating nature of shame and reach out to those who love us and will take care of our pain.