Turning Pain into Prose

I began this blog almost three years ago exactly, in the fall of 2017.

I had a miscarriage three months before that, in the summer of 2017.

The relative timing of these two events is no coincidence. In the aftermath of my miscarriage, I felt bereft, empty, and adrift. I went to France for work and cried at night while the sounds of my clients singing karaoke at our corporate castle retreat wafted in through my open attic window. I flew to Budapest alone and wandered unfamiliar streets, hating every mother and child I laid eyes on. I came home and my despair turned even sourer, to something like depression.

I started blogging to feel something good again.

To feel like I was accomplishing something.

To create something, even if that something wasn’t a baby.

I wrote about prose and place publicly and it was a long time before I was ready to write about my loss, even privately. 

But, eventually, I did. And today, an essay I wrote about that miscarriage is in Slate.

It’s wonderful. I’ve been reading Slate articles and listening to Slate podcasts for years and years and years. It is humbling and surreal to see my name there.

It’s also complicated. Three years is a long time – long enough for what was once searing pain to fade into something more muted – but any calculation that goes something like, ‘If that terrible thing hadn’t happened, then that wonderful thing wouldn’t be possible’ feels icky. I’d still rather have that baby than the silver lining. But, of course, none of us get that choice. 

Please read it. 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, and yet shame and pain stop so many of us from telling our stories. It was years before I told my own father about it. My in-laws found out from a Huffington Post article. I haven’t been immune from the forces that keep women quiet about these things. But I’m proud to be loud about it now.