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This is awesome, thank you!! Can’t wait to start going through everything here. (Good timing, too, because I’m pretty sure I just finished everything miscarriage-related from the shelves at the library, lol)

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Oh you are so welcome! I too went through the entire miscarriage collection at my library 😂 Just subscribed to your newsletter 🫶🏼

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haha I love it! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one! And thanks for subscribing! That's partly why I started the newsletter...I just can't get enough of it 🤣

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Wow, thank you for this incredible resource. Like a lot of people, when in the thick of it, I devoured other people’s experiences and accounts to try to understand the contours of my own. In 2016, I had a surprise pregnancy (with an IUD that hadn’t failed!) that started as a “pregnancy of unknown location” and ended up being an ectopic on of all places, my spleen. I didn’t think I could be pregnant since odds are low with an IUD so I was already at the end of the first trimester when the baby was found. It was the mindfuck of my life and destroyed my already tenuous relationship with my body. Shortly after it happened, I randomly happened upon this essay and returned to it again and again like a prayer, and shared it with everyone who told me they were experiencing a loss.

https://www.thestranger.com/features/2016/04/27/24011632/what-i-gained-from-having-a-miscarriage

Angela Garbes is a treasure (her books are spectacular also). There is much I needed to hear in this essay, but one thing helped more than I expected. After her miscarriage, she goes on a spontaneous trip with her husband and after reading this idea decided to do something similar. We deeply grieved and also felt joy on a last-minute trip to New Orleans over Thanksgiving and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done, though I realize not everyone has this ability or that it’s right for everyone. I needed to be away. I needed a glimpse that the outside world was out there and that I might find my way back someday.

There also is a letter about miscarriage in Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things that was a balm for the complicated feelings about my body that at the time no one in my immediate circle seemed to understand. She recommends Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir, which while a very different experience, gave voice to some of what I hadn’t been able to articulate. I am glad to see it is on the google doc for stillbirths.

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