“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
• Many parents talk about having “bad” days more often than not after a miscarriage. What they mean is that they have spent a majority of the day crying, feeling extremely sad, or unable to really engage in anything productive. These are days that you likely dread and that make you feel as if you are not making progress toward integrating this loss.
• Yet these “bad” days are actually days when your body and mind have insisted that you mourn. What would happen if you were able to perceive them as “necessary” instead of bad?
• It may be difficult to give yourself permission to just embrace these days. Because they surface without warning, embracing them may seem impossible. If you could plan for them, that would make it easier. Over time your grief will not shanghai you like this. It will not take over your life so thoroughly, from hour to hour, and day to day.
• If the tears and sorrow still enter your days and engulf you for hours, give yourself permission to fully relinquish your day to your grief. Think of it as a mental health day and give yourself the day to sit with and befriend your grief. It may not be the way you would like to spend a day off of work, but befriending your grief and giving it attention is the only way it will stop demanding to be heard.
• So often our grief lingers because we are fighting it every step of the way. We are telling ourselves what we “should not” do—we should not still be crying or we should not still be so debilitated—rather than allowing ourselves to cry deeply, without pause.
CARPE DIEM
What does surrendering fully to your grief mean to you? Describe to your partner or a companion in grief what the moment that you fully surrender to a wave of grief is like.