Yesterday I read an article about child loss, written by a psychologist. It was important that she wrote about the topic, yet, when I finished reading it I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Among other things she mentioned that if you get support from your family and if you don’t feel ashamed that it happened, that it was not your failure, nor your bodies failure, you successfully overcome your loss and everything can be OK and you won’t have any problems later. Nothing else, as simply put as this, as if it were in a cookbook, a recipe, a recipe for child loss.
I read it more times, but somehow I just didn’t like it. What did she want to say? What will be, can be OK? Your life? Your relationship with your family after such a tragedy? Your image of yourself? Your relationship with the father of your child? Your image of your future? What?
Well, I am pretty sure if she has children, she has never lost any of them, never experienced this kind of loss. Because then she would know that all this that you call your life will never ever be OK. Even the ‘experts’ don’t understand until they too have known this loss.
You may find that your family and friends are not listening to you, or respecting your feelings. Maybe they have no courage to even just have a look into the depth you experience, yet, you are left alone.
Your friends happily or annoyedly talk about their children, and you don’t want to be envious, so you feel bad, and you also feel bad, because you would gladly have the most annoying situations as well, if you could have them with your own child.
What you have now has almost nothing to do with your pre-loss life or pre-loss self. So not OK. From the fragments, when you have the strengths, you will try to reconstruct something that may be called your life, or you, your self. And all along this process you will be aching because you just want that old one, knowing that it may not have been perfect, but it had your so much loved child in it, as a part of your life, as a part of your self.
And, tell me, is it so easy to exempt yourself from responsibility? Don’t you ever blame yourself? I still keep doing that, even if I know very well I can’t change anything.
Once you become pregnant everybody expects you to experience it happily, to the greatest extent. You are expected go to yoga classes, have several sonogram tests, you see you baby’s 4D image, you have special bonding sessions to communicate with your uterus and the baby with the help of your psychologist, but when the unimaginable and dreaded loss happens everybody expects you to overcome it in the blink of an eye. They will give you clear guidelines for that, just like the author of this article did.
And after that everything will be A-OK in no time. What’s more, she even wrote that during the next pregnancy you won’t have any fears, difficulties, etc. Hahhaha … Really?
What I feel that I have learnt to live with this immense loss, but somehow there is a huge black hole in my heart, in my soul, vacuum, wrapped in some kind of special material, but every now and then the packaging loosens and I get consumed by the pain and feelings I have hidden inside it. I have lost friends, my family relationships had been re-written, and not for the better, in most cases. I had to re-evaluate my whole life. And the pieces still do not fit. So it is OK? No, it’s not.
- What Child is This? - December 24, 2016
- A New Schoolbag - September 5, 2016
- No Simple Path to Okay - August 19, 2016
There is no guide or step by step or recipe to managing such loss. Those that have not experienced it don’t grasp the reality that your child – the one that you lost – is a part of you. He or She is woven into who you once were – and much like a piece of knitted clothing – once a single piece of thread is cut loose, the rest of the threads within that knitted piece will unravel. And sure – you can patch and mend it, but the original woven, integrated pattern will never be the same. Thank you for sharing your perspective- sending you love to you and thinking of your sweet Peter?
“successfully overcome your loss”???? Is that a joke? Eva, everything you wrote, about life pre-loss and post-loss is what I have experienced. Trying to put the pieces together again is impossible. My life was shattered. I changed irrevocably. My relationships with friends and family changed irrevocably and became irreparable. I still struggle every day to live with the reality of my life post-losses. I know and accept that I will never “overcome” those losses. ((hugs)) to you.
Dearest Mirne, I am so very sorry for your loss. I wish it could be different. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Lots of love and hugs to you, too,
e