October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day
It was raining and everyone was desperately wringing off tiny coats before we sent our kids into the preschool classroom. There were exclamations about the weather and talks of changing plans.
I saw a mom that I hadn’t seen in a few weeks, and ran to catch up with her. She’d told me before, in excited and hushed tones, that they were expecting, so I knew she should be entering her second month about now.
“Marissa, how are you doing! How are you feeling? That morning sickness keeping you down?”
Her eyes filled up with tears and she gave me a closed smile and shook her head. Without saying a word, she’d let me know that she’d had a miscarriage.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed her tears and said, “It’s okay, you know. It is what it is, right?”
Marissa was saying what she thought she was supposed to say. I could tell in her eyes that her pain was raw and close to the surface, but somewhere along the line, she’d learned the same thing that most of us learn: we keep our dirty feelings out of the public realm.
We keep our lost pregnancies and our lost babies out of polite conversation. Even amongst friends, the “appropriate” thing to do is confirm the loss, and quickly move onto something else.
Most of us have reached this point in a conversation, if we know someone who has had a recent loss. Most of us get to this moment, where we can decide to let our friend know that it’s okay to talk about this, or we can decide to talk about Halloween cupcakes for the class.
October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. It’s a time where men and women who are tired of leaving this important topic in the shadows, decide to pull back the curtains and let a little light into this incredibly common experience.
Some people post pictures with candles, and share their baby’s name. Some people post links to articles, or pictures with infographics. Some people even record videos to share their stories with the world, in an effort to shatter the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss, and let other people know they’re not alone in their pain.
Awareness is amazing and incredible and sorely needed in this movement to destigmatize loss, but at some point we need to take a step forward and bring awareness into our everyday lives.
We need to be willing to step into a socially uncomfortable situation and have difficult conversations with the people we love. If we continue to maintain the status quo, and gloss over these painful, but critical parts of our lives, are we really doing our best to spread awareness?
When you reach this point in the conversation with a friend, that’s when you make your decision. Are you a social media warrior, or are you literally talking the talk to bring loss out of the shadows?
“Marissa, what happened to you is terrible. I know you must be going through such a hard time right now. What can I do for you? Do you want to talk about what happened?”
She took a deep breath and told me her story, about the first ultrasound showing a baby that was too small, and her second ultrasound showing no heartbeat. The blood tests showing declining hormone levels, and finally the miscarriage.
It’s an incredibly common story, but it was her story to tell, and I could tell she needed to tell it. So many of us need the chance to tell our story, to say the words out loud and know that the Earth won’t fracture open in response to the pain we just unleashed.
Sometimes, a person needs permission to share their pain, and know that it will be met with acceptance and love.
Raising awareness means providing that space to the people around us. It means having the tough conversations that bring relief and liberation to those we know.
This month, I hope you share your candles and photos and videos online. Those are an important piece to the social puzzle that will inevitably bring an end to the silence surrounding loss. But I also encourage you to make a committment to have those conversations.
When someone opens up to you, and shares their personal loss, I hope you decide to meet their bravery with your own, and keep talking as long as they want to. Because words and stories and love are the way out of these stifling shadows.
Keep talking. Together, we’re going to shatter the stigma.
Ann Zamudio is the Director of Don’t Talk About the Baby, the first documentary to explore the cultural stigmas surrounding pregnancy loss and infertility.