Not Alone

It's been almost a week since my miscarriage.  I'm not really sure how I'm feeling right now, actually.  Grief is a funny thing, and it's completely unpredictable.  Some days I go almost the entire day feeling ok, then one word will trigger these crazy emotions, and I lose it.  Other days are just a full day of sadness.  Thankfully I have a really great support system of friends and family that have been checking up on me, encouraging me, and praying for me.  I feel really grateful for that.

Actually, one thing I did not expect were the stories and encouragement from so many friends who have also lost babies.  I mean, I knew of a handful of friends who'd miscarried, but the sheer number... besides being completely heart breaking to see how many friends have gone through this, it also made me wonder...

How many women go through this silently without much support?  Because sharing is scary, really.  I happen to be a person with no filters, who would over-share even if the internet and social media weren't a thing, and I'm not really good with secrets (at least my own.  Don't worry, yours are probably safe with me), and I felt like I just had to let it out.  BUT not everyone feels like they can share, or open up about something like this.  Which is totally ok, but it's so hard to feel alone in something so devastating and life altering and isolating.  I mean, I had absolutely no idea that so many women I know and love have been through this too.

I'm not sure what I'm proposing here.  I'm not sure what the solution is.  I'm just saying that when we feel alone, in whatever situation or hardship we go through, we aren't.  We're never alone.  We're never the first to go through something, and we won't be the last.  I guess I just feel like when you go through something like this, at some point, eventually you have wisdom and insight to offer to someone else.  And that is an amazingly important thing.  Something that shouldn't be kept quiet and secret and locked away.  It is something to be shared and passed on.  I fear that we, as a society, are losing the passing on of wisdom and knowledge, especially about primal, spiritual, and biological things.  Mothering, birth, loss... these are universal experiences that so very many women go through, and yet they are things we feel so alone in.

Like I said; I have absolutely no idea what I am proposing here outside of this; if we don't let these experiences be so taboo, then we won't feel quite so alone.  If we share (at least what we feel comfortable sharing) our experiences, maybe we can all heal a little faster.  I can't tell you why it helped to hear that so many of my friends had survived this loss, but it did.  It was so sad to see how many in number we were of course, but it wasn't just a "me" anymore, it was "we".  There's something powerful to be said for that.

So.  I'm still sad.  It's still a deep ocean, this grief, but now I'm not swimming it alone.  There are so many of you keeping me afloat with your prayers, your encouragement, and your simple yet profound "I've been there"s.  Somehow not being alone is really helping me.

If you feel alone, if you feel like you are drowning in your grief, your anger, your struggles... just know you're not.  You're not alone.  You're never, ever alone.

Thank God for that.