Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything,” wrote C. S. Lewis after the death of his wife.1
I felt that absence too. It hung over everything, especially after my initiation into grief when we lost Scarlett. The ache persisted, shape-shifting its form but constantly present.
My grief would not, could not be contained within anything resembling tidy. Up and down and round and round—it was wild, untamable, confusing.
I wonder if you can see yourself in any of these journal entries?
Day 4: Holy Ground
We are talking of the future, my love and I, and recounting our short days with her and celebrating her and sharing her brief life with those we love and those we’ve never met. It all feels so bright—so hopeful—and I wonder if I should feel this measure of joy so soon.
Can I grieve and give thanks in one breath? Can I both cry and laugh? Feel pain unspeakably and joy unashamedly? Because I am.
There are moments of quiet when I remember the unexpected emptiness of my belly and I reach and rub and whisper I miss you while the tears come flooding again. And then I turn and see images of newborn treasures in the arms of dear friends and I feel yes. Yes, it is good—show me more, let me see.
I give thanks in my sadness and it feels right.
This ground is holy and I dare not put my shoes on for fear of marring it. I want to stay here forever and I want to run and never look back. (Can I do both?)
Day 6: The Pull
Today I’m feeling the pull between wanting to slip into denial—pretending that nothing ever happened and busying myself to help me forget—and wanting to listen to sad songs and watch sad movies and read sad stories and just cry and cry and cry and be sad, sad, sad. (Can feeling sad feel good?)
I’m tired of bleeding, cramping, hurting. Since my body no longer belongs to her, I want to take it back. Even my own flesh is caught in the murkiness of this grief. The pull is confusing.
My world feels quiet today. It’s harder to hear comfort. I can’t sleep at night. Or maybe I don’t want to? I’m not sure. The darkness brings sadness but also covers and comforts me. The hush soothes my soul.
To miss someone so badly whom we knew so briefly—the cruelty of it all feels heavy tonight.
Come, Jesus. I know you’re here. But come nearer.
I’ve felt a lot of anger these past few days. Anger and a vague, flat sadness intermixed.
It’s not the anger I assumed would come with this sort of grieving: anger at God or at myself or at anyone in particular. It’s just anger.
I’m angry because friends haven’t responded the way I thought they would or should. I’m angry that life goes on and people move on, even when I’m hurting and drowning. I’m angry hearing about politicians and celebrities and this and that related to work or ministry or culture and I just think Who cares?! Why does any of it matter when my child is dead?! And what on earth is Twitter for, anyway?! It makes me angry—all of it.
But under my anger is pain. The sadness hurts. I’m dreading so many things right now: my first period, the lab results, her due date, Mother’s Day, Tuesday. That thin place I spoke of last week—it’s wearing off. Was there a “high” that came with the sudden influx of emotions? It’s harder for me to feel God now. It’s harder for me to hear.
Day 11: More Than Her
I don’t feel as angry today. But I know it comes in waves.
Yesterday I had so many moments of calm followed closely by rage. I’d look at my boys and want to cover them with kisses—do they know how much I love them? I need them to know. But then would come intense moments of anger. Stop fighting. Stop whining. Stop spilling. Stop yelling. Stop needing me. Please. Just. STOP.
I desperately want them to need me and want me and desire to be close to me. And yet I also want them far away so I can think and pray and hear the stillness. I want my house clean and my world quiet. But I never want to let them go.
I’ve been “angry at the world,” I tell Ryan. Angry at anything even remotely “worthy” of getting angry about. It’s like my subconscious is just waiting for something to pounce on—something to blame for making life so hard.
I can’t blame God. I just can’t. He’s too good to me. I don’t want to blame myself. I’m already hurting too much. So I just want to blame everyone and everything else for the pain.
Then my logic kicks in and I realize I’m grieving and my emotions—though real—can’t be trusted. There’s no one to be angry at. No one to shoulder the blame. I’m just angry, and it’s okay. It will pass. Or maybe I’ll pass through it. Even there, he will be with me.
But today—this moment—I don’t feel angry. I feel calm. I feel sad. I feel hopeful. The sun will shine again. (It’s already trying.)
My world hasn’t changed—purpose is still there—but I’ve changed and that’s a good thing. I’m still changing.
Jesus, I need you to know: I love you even more than I loved her.
Day 14: Stormy
It’s stormy here today. I adjust my sails and attempt to work within the waves. But it’s hard. It’s really hard.
Jesus, it’s so damn hard.
Day 15: Oceans
I feel so vague, so remiss, so lost.
Where do I live again? What’s the teacher’s name at Levi’s preschool? Did I push start on the fully loaded dishwasher?
I can’t explain why the furniture needs rearranging and the garage needs cleaning.
I can’t explain why I need to browse the baby aisles, touching onesies and searching for God-knows-what.
I can’t explain why simple household tasks make me cry or why I’m so tired, so fragile, so quiet.
I can’t explain how out of sorts I feel in my own body.
I’m still in the ocean. Waves and waves and riptides and calm and more waves. I feel like I’m drowning but I’m not. Salt water is good for wounds, you know. But I don’t feel healed yet; it all just stings.
Day 18: Go Deep
Today I wondered about that milestone day sometime in the future when I don’t cry about losing her. When will it be? Is it close? Distant?
I don’t want to rush this time. As much as I want to fast-forward or rewind or somehow find an easier place, I sense deep calling to deep. Is this some sort of awakening?
Oh, baby girl, we miss you. We love you.
Day 40: Mother’s Day
I’ve felt thin today—fragile, vulnerable, a little bit weepy. I’ve been hurt by small things and let down by things said and unsaid.
I’m struggling with walking in rejection—feeling forgotten and hurt. But I know it’s the state of my own heart, not the fault of others. This, too, is grief.
There’s an ache in my soul, a longing for more. I keep giving names to it, but really . . . it’s heaven. I’m aching and longing for heaven. This isn’t my home.
Mother’s Day, I see you. Do you see me too?
Grief Cannot Be Conquered—It Must Be Lived
Sometimes grief feels like rain. You can’t stop it, but you learn to manage in the midst of it. When the storm clouds break overhead, it’s not enough for someone to acknowledge you’re wet. That’s a good start, but what you actually need is an umbrella. Empathy is when someone steps into the rain with you and hands you an umbrella; it’s a willingness to make your pain their own and share the load. Empathy says, “I see you and I’m with you in this,” and then demonstrates what that looks like in actual practice. My friend Greg calls this “sideways living.”2
After losing Scarlett, Levi taught me the power of sideways living best.
Sometimes “Yeah” Is Exactly Right
It was an impossibly spectacular day—the kind you’d be crazy not to take your kids to the park for—and it was there I saw her.
She had cut my hair nearly a year before at the drop-in salon I ducked into at the mall (because I’m fancy like that). I remembered liking her and having easy conversation about her family in Sri Lanka and her husband working his way through university here in Australia.
Now, at the neighborhood park, we watched our boys bonding over the pirate ship play structure, delighting in the way children become such fast friends.
“Do you have other kids?” I asked, initiating small talk.
“Just my son,” she paused, patting her belly, “and a baby on the way.”
I smiled.
“Due October 12,” she added.
My eyes welled with tears under my sunglasses. She had just named Scarlett’s due date. Even though my heart was breaking all over again, I kept smiling and told her, “Congratulations, that’s wonderful,” because it was.
Boom. Downpour. I didn’t see it coming on that gorgeous, sunny day.
While driving home from the park I cried in silence behind my dark glasses, hoping the boys couldn’t see my wet cheeks from the backseat. (I didn’t want to hide my grief from them, but I didn’t want to burden them either.)
“Why are you sad, Mommy?” three-year-old Levi asked. (I’m still not sure how he knew.) “Because you want the baby to come home?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “Yes.” I paused to catch my breath. “I just want the baby to come home. I miss her.”
“Yeah,” he said tenderly before going quiet again.
Sometimes the best thing for a grieving heart is for someone to say yeah and validate how hard it all is. We don’t need to be fixed; we just need to be accepted in our brokenness. My three-year-old taught me that—he handed me an umbrella while I drove home in the rain on that sunny day.
Sideways living is all about embodying Jesus to the people around us. It means entering into their world—their hardships, their challenges, their victories, their grief, their joy, all of it—and letting them enter into ours.
I still find it hard to understand how you can feel so lonely while also feeling the comforting presence of Jesus, but my grief experience showed me it’s possible. Even now as I write, I try to imagine myself entering into your own wild up-and-down, round-and-round grief experience, handing you an umbrella and saying “I’m with you, sister.” I hope you have people in your life saying something similar. But if you don’t, let me say it for them: Miscarriage is painful and your grief is warranted. You loved hard, so you’ll grieve hard too. And that’s okay. Consider this your permission to feel what you feel without trying to run away.
The Nature of Grief Is Not Linear
A hundred years ago I learned about the stages of grief in an entry-level psychology class. I vaguely remember the stages: shock and denial, anger and blame, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The problem with calling these “stages”—I was later to learn—is that it implies a linear process to work through in order to come out the other side “all better.” No grief expert would ever tell you this is how it works, but I wonder how many of us “regular” people have misunderstood these stages.
Having no experiential framework to understand these concepts, I imagined grief to be a straightforward line of steps to be worked through—a trajectory to take one back to his or her “normal” self. The quicker one came to acceptance, the sooner the pain would be “dealt with” and life could go on. This explanation resonated with my problem-solving, fix-it sensibilities, and I went years as an adult without these ideas being challenged.
It made no sense, then, that the day following my D&C with Scarlett I was on the beach eating ice cream with my family, hearts full as we reflected on the many blessings in our lives despite our loss. We felt so normal, happy even. Could it be that we had already reached the acceptance stage? Or did this mean we were in denial of what just happened? I remember trying to psychoanalyze my own grief so I could figure out where I was on the trajectory and when I might be finished. (Whomp whomp.)
The most dangerous myth about grief is that it’s linear and ordered and predictable—that it can be confined and conquered. The problem with this line of thinking is that when you stray from the supposed order of operations, you’re immediately tempted to assume you’re not “doing it right.” (Aaaand . . . let the berating and self-loathing commence. Ugh.)
Ryan and I experienced a feeling of tangible grace for the first several days after each of our miscarriages. We’re convinced it had to do with the many people holding our hearts in prayer before the Lord. (Note: Homemade chocolate chip cookies also help. Amen.) The presence of Jesus was breathtaking during those precious, excruciating days. His nearness in our brokenness was as real as the emptiness of my womb.
Perhaps that’s why it shocked me so much that soon after those first tender days I would find myself struggling with despair one day, waking up with rage the next, and feeling mostly indifferent the day after that. I mean, couldn’t Jesus fix this? Why didn’t I always feel that sweet, steadying presence? Why did I feel so knocked around?
No doubt this is why the metaphor “waves of grief” is such common language among the grief community. You never really know how or when grief is going to hit you with the force of a tsunami or lap against your ankles quietly. It’s disorienting and engulfing and surprising. Even the apostle Peter described “sorrow upon sorrow” (Phil. 2:27 ESV), hinting at the wave imagery when describing his own heartache.
Grief as a Story
Because grief is not linear, you can’t work your way through the stages, crossing them off a list as you go. In my experience, it feels more circular, like going around and around the same mountain. Didn’t I already deal with my anger? Didn’t I already go through depression? I’ve been here before, right? But since grief is not linear, we don’t have to be panicked by the seeming repetition. A better question to ask, then, would be Am I spiraling up or down as I go round this mountain again?
Psychotherapist Patrick O’Malley says the assumption that grief is linear can hinder the healing process and suggests thinking of your loss as a story instead.
When loss is a story, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no pressure to move on. There is no shame in intensity or duration. Sadness, regret, confusion, yearning and all the experiences of grief become part of the narrative of love for the one who died.3
After experiencing multiple miscarriages, I found this way of explaining grief resonates with me so much and helps me understand why each of my miscarriages caused such different grief responses. I hope it helps you understand your grief, too, because when you know you’re normal, it’s much easier to give yourself grace for the process.
As I’ve met and corresponded with thousands of parents who’ve experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, abortion, and other types of loss, I’ve been simultaneously astonished and relieved to hear the many shapes and forms their grief has taken. Although there are certainly common threads, there is also not a single story that fits every bereaved parent.