October 1st, 2016

The day I lost you.

I found I was pregnant in the same breath that I discovered I was no longer pregnant. We never got to hear your heartbeat. Never got to experience the pure bliss of sharing about you with our friends and family. Never got to rejoice in your existence before you were gone.

All I had to prove your existence was flushed away. 

A graphic image burned into my brain for months on end. I couldn’t unsee it. Some things you can’t unsee. A frantic call to my OBGYN. A faint second line on a pregnancy test.

My womb emptied.

No days off work. Jumped right back into teaching Kindergarten. The sing-song cadence of my bubbly teacher voice masked the knot in my throat. The emotional whiplash of walking around, pouring out what was left of my heart while the rest of the world goes on, business as usual. 

A lifelong dream of becoming a mom, squashed. I felt defeated.Like it was over before it started.I felt empty, lost, broken, alone, and confused. With a newfound distrust in my body, I felt like it had failed me. 

I've heard it said that a mother's grief is as timeless as her love.

To be honest, recounting these memories feels like re-opening a wound that has required healing over and over again. I am currently typing this sitting in a coffee shop with mascara down my face. What’s wild about grief is it demands to be felt. There’s no shortcut, you cannot Pass Go and collect $200. No cheat codes. No skipping ahead to the easy breezy part of healing.

It’s an ongoing healing process. There’s no set timeline (even though society may have other opinions on that). Grief has no expiration date. I experienced this loss six years ago, and on significant dates like today, I lean in and let myself remember.

Grief evolves and softens over time, but will never vanish entirely. Once I realized that I couldn’t simply ignore or shove my feelings down because I didn’t want to sit in the discomfort or experience more pain, I realized that working THROUGH grief was the only way I could process in a healthy way.

There are sooo many ways I have learned to process through grief. From creative outlets, music, activities and more, I have so much to say about finding practical and therapeutic ways to work through your grief. I will be sharing lots more on that soon on my blog and on my Instagram the whole month of October. (@duetojoyrainbowco)

As painful as it feels to recall my miscarriage, it is incredibly therapeutic to allow myself to feel the feelings that come, to remember the impact that this sweet little one has made in my life.

To say words out loud, even if they're hard. Gut-wrenchingly hard. If these words can make one loss mama feel less alone, then it's entirely worth recounting my sorrow.

If you're reading this and you have walked a similar path of loss, or maybe our stories are vastly different, please know that we were never meant to grieve alone. I am honored to hold your hand through it.

Your baby matters.

Your story matters.

God sees you, intimately knows you, and is the only one who can fully understand the depth of all you have experienced. I pray that our grief would be an invitation to run to God in the midst of our brokenness.

He will meet us there.