50 Ways I tried to heal after a miscarriage

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It’s never easy to admit to something difficult and painful in a public way but, here I am, admitting that I recently had a miscarriage. In fact, I wrote about it on Instagram (and my other social media channels) earlier this week, just after my doctor confirmed what I already knew to be true. During my anniversary trip last weekend, I had the best of time and the worst of time, quite literally.

While having tons of fun with my husband, celebrating three years since our first date, I was also bleeding and losing my first pregnancy. It came as quite a blow since we had been excited for a couple of weeks and had been trying for a few months… But, as with many things, I decided that the best course of action for me would be to open up about what I was going through. I know that the general thinking about pregnancy is that you shouldn’t tell anyone for three months (for fear that this exact outcome would happen) but that’s just not me.

It was hard enough keeping things hidden for the past few weeks and I am more sure than ever that the hiding and the stigma surrounding early pregnancy, and certainly the pain of a miscarriage, is simply stupid. So I chose, as usual, to air my pain out in hopes that I would find comfort in others — and that they, in turn, might find some comfort in me.

And guess what? IT WORKED!

By sharing my own story of miscarriage, many, many friends and acquaintances came out of the woods to share their own stories of misfortune (and hope) and to offer me lots of virtual hugs and support. It helped. It truly, truly did. And although my husband and I are still recovering emotionally from the miscarriage, I’m happy that, for now, I am physically okay (per my doctor). And I am even happier that, even in today’s often negative and painful world, we can still band together and support one another.

In an effort to continue to process my own grief and heal from this whole ordeal, I asked some writer friends to share their writings on miscarriage and they did NOT disappoint. Below are 33 articles that are helping me to heal from my own miscarriage — written by some of my very talented friends. I hope, if you’re reading this, you’re only doing so out of curiosity and not because you’re “in the club.” But if you are, I just want to say: You’re not alone. And I hope that these pieces will help you as much as they have helped me.

• My nightmare didn’t end after I lost my child 8 hours after birth. The PTSD carried over to a new pregnancy.
• This is Why I Always Share My Story of Child Loss
• Surviving a tiny tragedy
• After Having 4 Miscarriages, This Is What I’ve Learned About Grieving
• I’m Not Done Talking About My Miscarriage And Here’s Why
• Non-Mother’s Day: How My Miscarriage Delivered Me From Secrecy
• We Exist: On Resilience, Rainbow Babies, and La Raza
• Every May, While Children Celebrate Their Moms, I Commemorate Paloma, The First Daughter I Lost By Miscarriage
• Thanksgiving in Mongolia
• What to Expect When You’re taking Misoprostol for a Miscarriage
• This Is How I Cope With Recurrent Miscarriage
• Carried Away
• I Had A Miscarriage On Vacation — & Yes, It Ruined Everything
• There Is A Sad Rivalry In Child Loss, And This Is It
• Lost
• Preparing To Conceive After A Miscarriage
• Late Start
• An early miscarriage and other misadventures
• Social Media Saved Me After My Miscarriage
• Schrödinger’s Box
• Just an Ordinary Miscarriage
• Losing the Baby
• Facing my fear: becoming pregnant again after a miscarriage
• Digital Reminders of a Lost Pregnancy
• Christianity and depression: It’s complicated
• There’s no host for an ectopic pregnancy
• I Told My 4-Year-Old Daughter I Was Pregnant—and Then I Miscarried
• Everything I Thought I Knew About Miscarriages Changed When I Had Two ‘Silent’ Ones
• Getting Pregnant the First Time Was Easy — So Why Has It Been So Hard the Second Time?
• How a third child allowed me to become me, through heartache
• When Mother’s Day Hurts: Life After Pregnancy Loss
• I didn’t want to become a mom — until I did
• Saying it Loudly: I Had a Miscarriage
• My Miscarriage Was Hard—But So Was Feeling Joy Once I Got Pregnant Again
• Why We Need Rites & Rituals Around Miscarriage
• The Grief of Miscarriage
• How to Talk About Miscarriage, According to a Psychologist
• How to Talk to Your Friend After She Has a Miscarriage
• The ‘I Had a Miscarriage’ Instagram Account Is Breaking the Silence Around Pregnancy Loss
• Hilaria Baldwin: Why I Shared My Miscarriage in Real Time
• Things you shouldn’t say to someone going through a miscarriage
• What No One Ever Tells You About Losing Your Baby
• I Carried My Dead Baby For 4 Weeks Before Finding Out She Was Gone: What It’s Like to Miscarry + Not Know it
• My baby was never born. But I was a mom, too.
• I Terminated My Much-Wanted Pregnancy
• How to Support a Woman After a Pregnancy Loss
• An Emoji For Miscarriage
• Giving Up the Ghost Baby
• Why We Need Pregnancy Loss Greeting Cards
• There Will be Blood: What Nobody Told Me About Miscarriage

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