Maybe It Was for the Best: A Memoir
Loneliness magnifies the despair of miscarriage. Shame festers in silence and isolation. Standing in the canyon, I released cries for help, only returned by echoes of my voice, screams in my mind’s chasms. I was paralyzed, ashamed of my body, needing mental health treatment but unable to ask for help. My urgent desire to be pregnant was at odds with my need to grieve as if I were laying fresh lumber on ashes still smoldering from a recent house fire.
I lost my innocence; my reproductive story was fiction, after all.
My memoir project has been germinating for years. Left with the echoes of the losses endured through years of miscarriage and infertility, I am one of many women reconnecting and restoring worthiness. Today, I face a steep climb of repair due to unresolved grief and lack of mental health care. It has been almost 18 years since I lost my first baby to miscarriage. In therapy, I work to soften two decades of psychological scar tissue.
Maybe It Was for the Best is the working title for my book in progress. Despite intention, this phrase is one of many with painful implications for those suffering from a loss. When we treat miscarriage and infertility as mainly physical conditions, we undercut the emotional attachments to our bodies, our culture, and our expectations. As such, we stigmatize the psychological response and disenfranchise grief.
Over the years, I became a prisoner to the mounting anxiety and depression, surrounded by bars welded from casualties: friends, the richness of relationships, my feminine birthright, trust in medicine, my faith, a sense of belonging to the female community, a desire to make eye contact, my self-worth, a sense of purpose, my internal compass.
Understanding the losses associated with infertility demands a whole-person perspective. Medical and social support systems for pregnancy loss and infertility, at-large, need revision. Women manage various levels of grief throughout and require individualized treatment that reaches beyond the physical body.
For many, conception begins long before we understand the mechanics—before the birds and the bees. Often, we begin to write our reproductive story as school-age children. Infertility strips the centrality of gestation, labor, and delivery from that plot. An inherent hush belies the trauma of miscarriage.
“Trapped in an Air Pocket” houses honest and intimate writing. The Echoes thread includes essays and posts related to my memoir. In sharing my journey, I hope to raise awareness of infertility’s mental health impact. My voice is powerful in therapy and beyond. No longer silent, I am healing. My story is significant. What’s more, I am not alone. While our stories may not mirror each other, we find connections in our experiences.
I lost two babies to miscarriage. I have unexplained infertility. I have PTSD. As a result, I am not the mother that I would have been to that first child. That realization is a gut punch and a call to action. I don’t like myself, but I am working on it. I am ready to tackle the work of recovery. Eventually, I hope to recover the echoes of worthiness.
Trapped in an Air Pocket 