What You Don't Know...

What you don’t know is that is still hurts.

Even after 4 years I can still feel the deafening silence in the room after those awful words were spoken into the universe. It was almost as if I was present but somehow detached from my body. The doctor was speaking and I was nodding but I couldn’t understand.

What you don’t know is after hearing those tragic words, we were led out of the back door of the doctor’s office—as if we were being forced to make the “walk of shame.” God forbid any of the glowing, naïve patients, holding their beautiful swollen bellies in the waiting room see my husband’s blood shot eyes and my smeared mascara.

What doesn’t show is that sometimes it feels like just yesterday.

What you don’t know is I have played that scene out in my head a thousand times. What doesn’t show is that I still want to talk about it.

What you don’t know is I want you to ask me about it. Ask me about my pain, my loss, my grief. I put on a mask, but who is it for? Is it to protect me or you? Are you uncomfortable with my grief?

What does not show is that everything is not always OK. What you don’t see are the tears that come while sitting alone in my closet, softly sobbed tears on my pillow. What you don’t know is that a cuddly blue blanket with a smiling monkey and my first ultrasound with two perfectly formed little peanuts are all the tangible memories I have of their existence.

What doesn’t show is the mask I wear at every kid birthday party, new birth, graduation, mother’s day, father’s day, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. When does it end? There is no end.

What you don’t know is that grief like this, love like this, doesn’t have an end date. I carry it with me each day, smiling, laughing, working, shopping. There is so much that does not show, tightly packed inside, hidden out of view from the world, from you.

This post is part of our Voices campaign to raise awareness about miscarriage, stillbirth and infertility. Share your story with us and add your Voice to the movement to #ShatterTheStigma.

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