Why I Share So Much
As a personal brand and Maternal Mental Health figure, I make it my mission daily, to share the untold stories of Motherhood. To help more Mothers feel less alone in their struggles. I share my own challenges in Motherhood in real-time, and my periodic journey, from challenge to growth. A journey that is ever-evolving because we will always face challenges in Motherhood. My journey of how Motherhood, has and continues to be the making of me, to show you, it can be for you too.
I do all of this because I see it as a gift I can share with the world. I also find it hugely cathartic and healing myself.
Stories are what connect us and whilst there was a time when my sharing led to huge vulnerability hangovers, this occurs no more. Because I have overcome my own fear of sharing, by seeing the power and impact. On myself and so many others.
An Untold Story of My Loss, Until Now
One story, however, I have not shared much on so far, is the loss of my baby. I still struggle to connect myself to that experience and question, did I lose a baby? It was so early in pregnancy. But this is what I am calling it, and I am learning to be comfortable with that still.
During Baby Loss Awareness Week 2024, I feel ready to share my story. As with all of my stories, I hope some part of it goes some way to supporting you. To feel less alone. To know that there is a silent struggle in most people you see daily. To recognise that from challenge, can come growth.
My Story of Miscarriage
My husband and I conceived a baby in beautiful Puglia in 2020. Having conceived my son Owen, also in Italy, a few years earlier, it felt like it was ‘meant to be’.
But of course, it wasn’t.
On finding out I was pregnant, I spent the entire time worrying that I would lose my baby.
Physically checking, each time I went to the bathroom, for any sign that something was wrong. Internally checking my body, for anything that did not ‘feel right’.
The thing was it didn’t feel right. It felt so different to my first pregnancy. That overwhelming sickness, exhaustion, the headaches…I had none of it. My midwife reassured me that this was also normal too. But it was like I knew.
I spent the whole of my pregnancy anxious. Fearful of loss. Feeling this internal sense of dread that something bad was about to happen.
Then it did.
One day I went to the bathroom and finally saw confirmation of exactly what I had spent weeks worrying about. At week 11, just before our first official scan.
There are so many things that rarely see the light of day when it comes to sharing these experiences.
That when you call the ‘early pregnancy unit’ to explain the devastating news that no one wants to share, you sometimes must wait days before you get an appointment, to confirm what you likely know already. An excruciating wait.
That appointment, during covid times, had to be attended on my own. To receive the news no pregnant mother wants to hear… alone.
No one talks about how some hospital staff show kindness…like the sonographer who likely should not have touched my arm out of love and care, because of covid, and yet she did. Yet for some staff, it was just another day at work. We may as well have been in an office block. They were probably overwhelmed and exhausted themselves from compassion fatigue, and learning to live in a time that none of us knew how to. A complete lack of compassion displayed for the news that surrounded them daily. I still struggle to understand how when you choose to work with human beings, how people cannot be a human being. People can be cold. This is one thing, I never, ever want to be.
I am crying as I write this because it really is true that you never forget how people made you feel.
Something else that is never talked about in relation to miscarriage…is the physical toll it takes on your body. Yes, you expect to feel emotional. Drained. But wow, the physical effects were something I was not prepared for.
It felt like I had given birth and had no beautiful baby to show for it. I think I felt more physically depleted from my miscarriage than the birth of my son in 2019.
On reflection, my worrying beforehand was an attempt to prepare me for the eventuality of how awful it would feel if I lost. It did not by the way! No amount of worrying can ever make an experience so huge, feel any better.
The Catalyst I Needed to Grieve
The main reason for writing this was to tell my story of miscarriage, yes, but mainly, to share how this loss, was the catalyst I needed to show me how much unprocessed grief I had been carrying around for so long. My loss in 2020, was my catalyst for healing all of that.
I honestly had no idea how much I was and had been grieving for so very long.
Losing my parents at 18 years old, 15 years earlier, was a traumatic loss like no other. But what 18-year-old knows how to grieve the loss of both parents?
Also, the coping strategy I had always been taught, was that when tough things happen, we just “crack on”. I come from a long line of strong independent women, and this is a motto we can all relate to.
To our strength and our detriment.
Losing my baby made me realise that grief for me was there all that time and I had no idea.
I assumed grief was seen in sadness. In tears.
Mine showed up as anger. Anger at what the world took from me and my younger brother too soon.
It showed up as anxiety and intense fear of further significant loss. Of my husband. Of my son. Of my unborn baby. Experiencing distressing intrusive thoughts of losing more people that I loved. Feeling like there was no way me or my body could take more loss.
Grief is one of the most complex human experiences I believe we go through AND we all go through it.
Because grief is so much more than the loss of a person.
It is the loss of a hoped-for and expected reality that never was.
It surfaces at the most unexpected moments and in the most unexpected ways.
We can feel like we are ‘over it’, be able to talk about it freely, then at other times be completely overcome by emotion.
There is much uncertainty in grief and so many of us do not like living in the unknown.
Losing my baby was finally the catalyst I needed to find someone to help me heal and oh how I did.
Overcoming my Grief
I found a counsellor who, on reflection was very maternal, and in many ways reminded me and still reminds me of my mum. It was unintentional that I found someone like this, but I truly believe she was meant to be the one to support me to heal, and oh how she did.
Becoming a Mother for me was hard. As it is for us all. One of the hardest parts? Becoming a Mother, without my own Mother.
Being unable to ask all the questions, you would never think to ask, until you become a Mother yourself. I can see so much of my own struggle as a Mother, in my Mother. I could see the impact of our “crack on” mentality in her maternal rage, an experience I also had. I am sad for my mum that at the time there was not the mental health support and awareness like there is now. That I have been able to heal what she was unable to. I know how hard this must have been for her.
Yet part of my grieving was also to feel all the things I felt as a child experiencing that rage from my mum. Because whilst I, as a Mother, and adult, could understand the reasons for it, there was also a little person inside of me still holding onto the fear and anger at how she could do that when she was meant to love and support me unconditionally. Of course, adult me KNOWS; it is not as simple as that. Yet the little person inside of me didn’t know that and why should she?
Part of my grieving and what kept my grief alive for so long was not allowing myself to be mad at my parents for the things I experienced as a child that were not ok. Whilst I loved and missed them dearly, and would do anything to have them back, I was still holding onto hurt and old wounds from my childhood. Allowing myself to feel all of this and process this was necessary to grieve.
So Where Am I Now?
Honestly, as weird as it sounds. With all this processing and reflection, I feel closer to my parents than I did whilst they were alive. I realise that sounds bizarre, but it is true. I have now lived more life without them physically around, than with them.
I think of them as often as any other important person to me. Daily. Multiple times per day. They are the team of light I carry around with me whenever I am doing something new or want to share with them how proud I am of myself.
Also, you never get over losing any parent, just like you never get over losing a child. You always need them. No matter how old you are. Significant loss, means grief, becomes part of your life. But that does not need to be a scary prospect. It is part of mine, and I have the most beautiful life I could ever wish for!
My fear of loss? Gone. Well, don’t get me wrong, of course I would never want anything to take the people I love away from me. But I am also very accepting that we all die at some point, and I have no control over how or when. So why get lost in the fear of it when there is so much life to live and enjoy with those people now?
I am no longer so fearful of loss that I feel completely dependent on my husband. This, to so many of you reading who have known me for so long, will feel bizarre. ‘But you have always been such an independent person, Laura?’ To the outside looking in, yes. But there was a time when I did not feel my mind or body could handle another loss like that. That my life depended, on having my husband around. Now, whilst I know further loss would be hard. I know I can get through it. I trust in myself, my mind, body and soul that I can handle whatever life throws at me.
Normalising Death, Dying, Loss & Grief to My Son
Something else I have learned about my own experience. The importance of normalising death as much as life to my son. Loss has been as much a part of his life since he was born, as living is. We talk frequently about my parents and my husband’s mum who we also lost in 2016. Owen, without prompting, openly asks about our parents, death, dying, and loss, and we answer his curious questions as and when they arise.
He has become much more aware recently that when you die you do not physically come back as that person. This has led him to wonder, what this means. It has led him to become upset and this has been hard to see, yet I have moved through it with him, and he HAS moved through it. Beautifully. Seeing him both co-regulate his emotions with me and learn to self-regulate has been astounding, at age 5, and it shows me how incredible children are when we allow them in age-appropriate ways to learn, grow, to feel.
Death is inevitable. It is time we stopped pretending as a society that it is not.
Children are way more capable of coming to terms with it than we give them credit for. The problem comes when we shy away from the discussion, making it feel scarier than it needs to be.
As a child, my experience of losing the people I loved and cared for deeply, meant that one day they were here, the next gone, and their death never talked about. I never attended a funeral as a child and whilst I can understand why this choice was made at the time, I personally disagree with it as an adult. My family did their best I am sure to protect me. I believe it led to me not knowing how to process loss. It led me to fear loss. I am determined that this not be the same story my son grows up with. Can I guarantee that? No. But I am learning from my own story, what did not help me. So that I may do things differently for my family.
We do the best we can, with the information and resources we have. It is all we have lovelies. Believe me, it is enough.
I hope that you find value in reading my story. As always, I love to share them. To help you, if even in the smallest of ways.
All my love,
Laura x
