On Loss and Light
5 minute read
Ambiguous loss is still a loss, a heartbreak, a crack that may never be filled in. Or as someone is may say, well dear, that’s how the light gets in. Of course, I know this. Deep down, I know. Yet because I have this knowing, this won’t happen just yet, not at first. I have weathered enough cracks to know, that the light takes time to peep through. At this moment, I am in the shadows.
I am sat here, miscarrying.
My body contracts and aches yet all that is laboured is failure. Something that was fleeting, the pure joy seeping out of me, clot by clot. Each one passing through me, a little reminder of what almost could have been and what will never be.
Emptiness, disappointment, guilt; could I have done something differently? My mind is racing through, anger, sadness, wanting to tell the world yet feeling like it’s something to keep quiet about. Yet there is no shame in this.
It’s making me deeply sit with the sensation of grief once more. The contemplation that there are societal gatekeepers to our feelings, as to what we can and can’t talk about. I am thinking about how many of us have faced this sensation. Why don’t we share openly with each other, the mixed emotions of conceiving? Why does this feel so isolating and lonely? When telling some dear friends today, every single one has said, I feel you, I’ve been there too, but I never knew.
That’s where sharing unifies us. Sharing what hurts us, connects us. This is where the little bits of light start to come through. Vulnerability and staying open, choosing life, is to have the confidence to speak when it hurts, knowing that everyone else has at some point felt the same way. There’s no human experience of emotion that someone else hasn’t had. This takes vulnerability, it takes courage. This is the light of which they speak.
It also takes time.
Yet part of the process and the sheer fact of biology means as midlife women, we are up against time.
How many of us, have felt that time is not on our side, still eager to become mothers attempting to defy our eternal fate. That our bodies are receiving mixed messages, having been contorted and twisted to avoid pregnancy most of our lives to now be aching and eager. Our wombs keening for our chance to create. Being a mother is not a sensation that ever had me pining in my youth, in fact, I never thought I would get to this point of yearning. Yet here I am. Feeling wretched for wanting one more child.
Feeling wretched due to the attitudes of the health care professionals, who dismissed my loss “well it’s your age” as if my experience was lesser somehow; like I know the risks, so what did I expect?
I expected fairness, at the least, compassion. How do we address the stigma toward women in midlife experiencing miscarriage? Our age doesn’t make us less human, we are not weathered so hardened by life that we do not feel. The judgement still weighs heavy too, which in a world where we are all finding our paths different, it’s not uncommon to be trying for a child over 40.
All women must be treated with compassion, basic dignity, care, and respect, regardless of age or colour.
Hence why the insensitivity of the services around me has floored me. The recent documentary by Myleene Klass highlighted some of the huge disparity and gaps in the system, but also offered some comfort, in ‘Miscarriage & Me” Myleene shares her story alongside others’ experiences. During the one-off episode, Myleene shared the trauma of her miscarriages, with the aim of breaking the taboo which surrounds pregnancy loss. What was encouraging in this hour, was meeting women from across the country who share their experiences of baby loss, including close friends and family. Not an easy watch at all, yet what matters, what will instigate change, rarely is.
However what struck me is the taboo still around this and the fact we have to campaign for women’s bodies once more, urging the Government to change the care system so that more families can get the help they need following a miscarriage. That women’s bodies are up for such scrutiny on the surface and face value, when the physicality of womanhood is dismissed.
Emotionally, this process of loss can give rise to all the unfinished emotional business of life too: kicking yourself for spending years with the wrong partner? If only you had met your partner earlier if only hadn't put your career before childbearing? If only you realised that time was ticking.
Being brutally honest, what I am grieving is the loss of what could have been but also the procrastination. Kicking myself, as this isn’t just about being a mum. It's where I have been waiting for things to happen, doors to open, opportunities to knock, life to come to me.
My work serves me well here; I have had to catch myself, handle these powerful emotions gently, go gently. That this is all part of my life, my experiences as a human, shaping me more powerfully and thank goodness I can lean into the tools I already have to get through.
If you have read my pieces here before, you’ll know I’ve lived what feels like a thousand lives. Cerebrally knowing, physically knowing grief is at times a gift as well as a curse. It’s allowing me to reframe my expectation is part of this pain and aching too. A time to refocus, and shift from expectation to appreciation. To gratitude. To try and see this as bigger than myself. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not dismissing my hurt and sadness here, yet to make it through this, I have to find a way.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it”. So here I am sharing openly, boldly, writing about my miscarriage, to make a future where someone else hurting and going through this can feel ok to share too.
To know it’s tough, it’s traumatic. It’s physical. It’s emotional, angry and sad. It’s the rawest time.
It’s hard to articulate, as I continue to process this, as the cramps twist and turn, my body sheds, I am shedding a piece of me too. Like a snake shedding its skin. It’s writhing, it’s messy. When we shift, even when it still hurts or feels heavy, we can start to feel lighter. The shedding a trade of sorrows, to see all the beauty and newness we have before us. At this moment though, I’ll stay with the shedding, I want to feel it all, process what all this means. It’s loaded. It feels like a window of time, of youth is coming to a close.
A moment that has shifted and shaped me once more. That life lived IS the process, not part of the process. We choose to see the light. This is where if we allow it. the light fills the cracks and makes us shine. And as painful as it can be, isn’t being human beautiful.
Syreeta Challinger, May 2022
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