An Overdue Permission To Grieve

How many times can someone write about loss for it to no longer matter? I found myself thinking and saying that quite a bit over these past few months, as loss stretched its thick skin across too many bodies and families to count. Loss permeated through the concrete and my words always fell on them. I thought that I sounded too melancholy or depressive. But I was neither for far too long. I am, most of all, a realist. And the loss was too tangible to ignore, and my words had space and so I wrote them. And I’m not sure if they did much of anything. 

But the second book came, and all I could and can think about is first homes. The first home we all know, and the complexity of it. How we come to be, just because of the wombs that chose to feed and hold us first. And with it, naturally, how the complexities only expand and twist as loss within the womb in any way shape or form become habitable in normality and loneliness at once. One and four women experience a miscarriage, and I don’t know the specifics for late-term loss, because they veer far too deep into still birth, and that is where I hit my emotional axsis. But the numbers and experience tell me, that many years ago I was one of many who lost a baby at 20 something weeks, and not a month goes by where I don’t feel it somewhere too deep to weave words into. But I did once before, I attempted to once before. As I do now. 

I don’t share for pity, or to announce a long-standing struggle amongst the palpable struggles of 2020. But when Chrissy and John, announced their pain and let us into their grief, they allowed for women like me and maybe like you, to honor whatever it is and was whenever and however we feel called to at this very moment. And this morning, as my partner very gently told me of the news before I could be slammed with it on social media (not because it was his baby or ours) I thought about the depth of letting someone in. Anyone in. And reciprocity of that.

Ashly C. Ford tweeted, “Chrissy and John have given a lot of people permission not to grieve alone. In the midst of their own deep and enduring pain, they offered a gift to those who know this particular form of heartbreak. Whew. That takes a lot of strength.” October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month, and I am thinking of me, I am thinking of them, and I am thinking of you. 

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