The Grief Will Be So Real
The amount of grief a miscarriage can bring us is no joke. Trying to knock it all out at once might seem like a great idea, at least on the surface. Like we’re always told to just rip off that Band-Aid, right? Nope. Taking on all the stages of grief at once is an overwhelming challenge, one that I don’t think humans are typically wired to tackle. Instead, taking on each stage one at a time tends to work much better. While it may feel like it takes longer to deal with it this way, it’s really not. This is because it is far more reasonable to handle, so in the long run it is most likely to take less time to overcome by moving from one stage and through the others. So yes, the grief will be real. But we are all capable of dealing with it, one stage at a time. In the next several weeks, I’ll explain how.
Based off of my personal experiences, having a miscarriage will kick off a round of the grief cycle that is often said to be eerily similar to the loss of any loved one. Medically, it leads the woman into a complicated grief cycle (CG). Many people have already heard about and/or experienced the five stages of grief known as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Some sources cite seven stages, but for the purposes of this blog I will focus upon the five I just mentioned. Now, I remember in acute detail my process of journeying through each of these stages. Honestly, for a while I was stranded at “struggle-bus central”, maybe not externally, but most certainly internally. It was not easy and it took time, but eventually I was able to leave that behind me, and once I was able to fully leave it behind, I’ve never looked back. And I don’t intend to.
I’ll be diving into each of these sections in greater detail, but first, I’ll give you a one-sentence overview of how I’d describe each stage. Think of these as my simplified stroll through the various stages of grief, which I like to call “Five-Sentences to Acceptance”:
1. Denial: Nope, that type of thing would never happen to me.
2. Anger: This is complete and utter crap!!
3. Bargaining: I will literally do anything to stop this from happening again.
4. Depression: What is even the point of anything anymore…?
5. Acceptance: OK, this is my life now, so I will figure out my best way to move forward from here.
Each stage will bring on its own unique challenges to every person who encounters them. The time it takes to get through stages vary by the person experiencing them and by the situation. Also, people don’t necessarily experience each of these stages in this particular order or the same way for each grief cycle. The exception is that I’d imagine acceptance always occurs at the end, when true healing and a healthy pattern of moving forward can truly begin.
It is important to remember that grief has no set timetable. One person may have worked through the grief in six months, while another took six weeks. This is your journey. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re taking too long (or not long enough) or that you should be “over it” by now. Often that is said by people out of concern, but it isn’t helpful or productive to the person dealing with it. People are imperfect, and we won’t always say the right things to the right people or at the right time. I know I’ve accidentally said a lot of wrong things to people I care about too, despite my best intentions. Unfortunately, it’s simply a fact of life.
Something that I didn’t realize was the absolute importance of working through all the grief stages before trying for another baby. At times I would get into a rush and only be to stage 3 or 4 of the grief cycle before trying for another baby. Big mistake. Huge. Don’t be like I was with that, because the outcome is not pleasant. Essentially, I ended up being stuck in an on-going grief cycle from the last one and trying to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the next one. It resulted in me flip-flopping amongst the stages, with them at times co-mingling. As you may imagine, that meant I was a mess on the inside, no matter how put-together I still appeared on the outside.
Regarding my “mess”, I had a penchant to tie everything up in a pretty little bow and say it’s ok. I’ve mentioned this before, because I’m not proud of it. Hardly anyone even knew I was going through any of this. I would try to push it down and pretend everything was normal and ok. Sometimes all that pent-up emotion and grief came flooding to the surface. I was extremely lucky it didn’t have any lasting implications on my personal or professional life, because I know there are others who weren’t so lucky when they experienced similar types of losses. I’m no stronger than anyone else, so I guess it must have been God for helping me through the worst of it. A good song to check out is “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” by Hillsong.
To be honest, at first, I didn’t know that the grief stages were even a thing for miscarriages. As I mentioned, my tendency historically had been to minimize things whenever they applied to myself – the ole’ “everything is fine” bit. I didn’t even entertain the concept that perhaps that was a very realistic (and normal) experience after a pregnancy loss. It was not until after I conducted research and got some wise insight from a counselor that I understood my reactions were a very normal (and necessary) movement through the stages of grief from loss. And that it was ok for me to feel all that I was deeply feeling. I don’t know why I’m always so much harder on myself than I am on others, but that’s something I still struggle with, to this day.
Understanding all this made a big difference though, because I finally felt like I wasn’t unreasonable or weak in my struggling. I can’t stand to feel any facet of weakness. In fact, my feelings were very normal and even to be expected. For some reason humans biologically function better when they can anticipate what is coming. Therefore, understanding and expecting each of these five stages made it more efficient to work through. Easier? Heck no. But more bearable and quicker to move through? Oh definitely, yes.
Things will be good some days, bad other days, but mostly - they just fall somewhere in between. Such is the plight of life. What is important is to determine an appropriate amount of time to sit within each stage – not too long that you get trapped in it, but not too short that you don’t completely deal with it. That amount of time will be decided by you and it will most likely vary with each grief cycle. Only you’ll know when you’re done and ready to move on, and it’s actually quite a powerful feeling, once you start to figure that out.
The grief process will be your personal journey to travel along. People will have a lot of opinions and good intensions, but this is not something that can be magically fixed by a snap of the finger or an optimistic quote. That’s precisely why it is called a process. In my experience, when you feel like you’re about at your breaking point is when you’re actually closing in on a massive breakthrough. That means don’t give up. You’re almost there.
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Cheers until next time,
Crystal
