Love Letters to Miscarried Moms

Preface I’m sorry, friend, I truly am. There aren’t words to describe the unfathomable pain, and yet for your sake, and for mine, I have to try. You see, just like you, I am a miscarried mother. The child was my first. And though I have no birth certificate, no war stories of labor and nothing left to show of my pregnancy, I know by the loss that I feel from last Sunday that I am a mother. I have memories of the first time I felt light-headed and the first time I noticed soreness under my ribs from the rearranging that my body was doing. I printed out all the first and second day congratulations that I received on facebook. I have memories of the first person who prayed for my baby and the best congratulatory responses I received. The giddy ones were my favorite. There is the journal that I began writing to my unborn child and pictures…pictures of my pregnancy test and progress pictures from when I was convinced I was getting bigger but no one else could tell. Surreal. Devastating. How can I describe a pain that turned my heart inside out? I can’t manage. There are not enough syllables or expletives in the English language, or in any language, for that matter. And so I am left with nothing more than I am sorry, so, so sorry. I needed to know I wasn’t alone. For two days I only wanted to speak to women who had miscarried. I am angry, still, at unfit mothers who get pregnant accidentally and then wish that their children hadn’t been born. I can hardly speak to women who have not miscarried because their good fortune pulls me into tears, as if it took any prompting. The day after I miscarried I was journaling (very therapeutic) and God laid the phrase “Love Letters to Miscarried Moms” on my heart. Immediately I knew that it was the title of a book. I didn’t decide to write the book myself. I said to myself, well, I guess I’m writing a book. Which is somewhat ironic because the night that I miscarried, which you’ll hear more about later, I was screaming and crying and yelling, “I don’t want to help other people who have gone through this! I don’t want to have compassion on miscarried moms! I don’t want this!” I know you understand my grief. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have empathy for miscarried mothers. I didn’t want to be a miscarried mom at all. But, I think that even in the midst of my grief I knew that God would use this for His glory—to try to touch your heart. He loves you so much. He wants you to know that, and He does truly want what is best for you. And so I set out to write this book, to interview others I knew who had gone through miscarriages as well. Each woman said the same thing, “Allow yourself to grieve the loss.” This book is my love letter to you. This book is the stories of women who have been where you are and know how you feel without you requiring the words to describe it. I hope this helps you cope with your grief the way that writing it has helped me cope with mine. Let’s find our way out of this darkness together. Know that you are normal. You are one out of four pregnancies. You are not alone. You are loved. Thursday, October 01, 2009