Grieving Loss While Celebrating Life

A light in the darkness

After the miscarriage, I took the week off from work. I was still bleeding, still crying, and only beginning to grieve a new kind of loss. Infertility was familiar, a shadowy companion I’d learned to live with and carry with me, at times concealed and at others unveiled to friends and family. I’d faced the fact that my body had a hard time getting pregnant. I never imagined it would fail at pregnancy, too.

Questions without answers haunted my days and especially my nights. What if it takes another four years to get pregnant again? What if that was my last pregnancy? What does it mean to grieve a life that was heartbeat and toenails, but never held in my arms?

And then the most crushing question, echoing the sorrow of generations—Would my husband have married me if he’d known I could only have one baby? Could he still want me now? The curses of infertility and insecurity have always been paired, I suppose. Sunday school classes are filled with the stories of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, Hannah and Elisabeth. Of course, they all had a divine covenant or holy prophesy on their side. I did not.