The miscarriage misconception: Suffering in (less) silence
Ten years ago, I had a miscarriage. It was highly unexpected and heavily traumatic. My husband was out of town, leaving me on my own to deal with the loss of a very wanted pregnancy, while caring for our active 17-month-old. I knew very few people who had gone through something like it, and was under a false impression that the “protocol” was to keep quiet about it. On top of my confusion, panic, and devastation, I felt totally and utterly alone.
Though the past decade has involved a fair amount of global turmoil, much has changed for the better for me personally. I still grieve the loss of the child who was not born, but I have since been blessed with two more healthy babies. I also have connected with hundreds of others — women and men — who have suffered various experiences of pregnancy and infant loss, and been moved to my core by each of their stories. Far from keeping quiet about my miscarriage, I have turned my experience into a successful series of comics and animated shorts about pregnancy loss that I hope can comfort and inspire others to break the silence too.
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month — and on the heels of the first anniversary of October 7th, my miscarriage feels hard to talk about all over again. With so many nightmares coming true on the news every day, including many that none of us in the post-Holocaust generation ever expected to face in our lifetimes, our individual struggles can pale in comparison.
In the Jewish tradition, though, we teach that every person is a whole world. Which is why, despite the challenges, I am here to say: there so, so many more people than you might think who are needlessly suffering through pregnancy loss in silence. And that needs to change.
As Jewish women — and men, who are almost always neglected in these discussions — we are born into this world preloaded with guilt. When something like a miscarriage, infertility, stillbirth, or SIDS happens, we automatically blame ourselves. How could we fail at the mitzvah of pru u’rvu (to be fruitful and multiply)? How can we grasp that our carefully laid plans and dreams have shattered? How could this happen to us? It can be challenging to put our frustrations and anger into words, let alone speak them out loud.
With my miscarriage, I was “lucky., in that I didn’t have to make any hard decisions. My body “took care” of my fetus with its missing brain on its own. But if I had had to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy I very much desired… I would have had nobody I knew to turn to. At the time, I did not know anyone who had undergone an abortion. I would have found the guilt and shame and, most of all, isolation unbearable.
This past year — presumably the worst in recent Jewish history — I have been fortunate to participate in the Jewish Writers’ Initiative Digital Storytellers’ Lab Fellowship. With this support, I have been able to share the stories of other men and women dealing with unexpected pregnancy journeys through comics and animated shorts. I’m proud to release the newest installation, “Determination,” about one woman’s IVF journey with a twin pregnancy that left her with an impossible choice: should she abort one of her twin fetuses, or risk them both, as well as her own life?
These are the stories we need to be talking about more — even in the most difficult year of a difficult decade — openly and without judgment. Because it is only by giving voice to these stories that we enable the people living them to find support.
When I started talking about my miscarriage, I found out that not only did my own mother suspect that she had miscarried, but so did one of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. The prevalence of these stories is one of the best-kept secrets, in my experience. Why? How are we supporting each other by shielding those we love from help and community? We have enough on our plates; there is no need to hide the emotional guilt that may accompany pregnancy or infant loss. That is especially true for men, who often experience the same devastating grief and loss as their partners, with even less acknowledgment.
We are living in historically terrible times as a Jewish community, and there’s much that is out of our control. But even now, at the end of this Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, we can make a difference by raising our voices for those who are not ready to tell their stories themselves. You have the power to let those in your network who might be suffering silently know that you are there for them, whether by posting on social media or talking to your friends and family about this topic. You can shine the light that helps someone begin to heal. Whether global or individual, we cannot stop suffering from happening. But we can make sure no one suffers alone.