One of my top three most clicked on posts is my love & loss post where I wrote about the story of my miscarriage.  I followed up a bit here and there as I healed from that loss, but I felt inspired to write a few things down of how I’m (honestly) feeling after having 2 years of perspective.

I was really surprised by how much hurt I felt when I had a miscarriage.  I have seen many mothers walk through it and seem almost unscathed. I think that’s what made me want to write about it, because I didn’t feel unscathed.  I felt wounded deeply, and I felt alone.  I receive so many emails of mothers walking through their own loss who have found my posts to be a help and I am so grateful for that.  I am so grateful that through this space, we can be connected as sisters of loss.  I pray for each person who writes me and shares their stories of loss with me.  It truly touches my heart and I am so glad we have each other to heal together.

The pain of my loss, in it’s entirety, didn’t last forever.  Those first days waking up seemed to hurt so much.  The weight of it was so heavy I could barely breathe.  One thing that astounded me then and continues to do so is that I had never felt more peace than through that pain.  I felt so close to heaven.. I mean, I felt heaven almost tangible.  It was breathtaking.  I have never felt so close to God before as I did in those days and weeks following losing my baby.  (Which when I type comes with a sting – even now.)  I had never experienced that Grace before and I am so happy to know it – to have lived through it.  God is with us in our times of need.  For me, it was as if He was sitting right beside me as I wept through my disappointment.

The sting slowly faded.  At first my mornings were filled with the that sharp sting – wake up and sting.  Then my mornings got easier, but when I would walk past the nursery, sting.  Sometimes a few days would go by before I would feel that familiar sting.  Soon weeks were going by with more hope than pain, but certain dates would stick out with a sting.  Even my next pregnancy came with a side of sting.  Then even months would go by and I would notice that I hadn’t felt that familiar sting for a while.  My heart was healing.  Sometimes, I have friends and follower-friends who share their losses with me, and I feel that sting for them.  This kind of sting comes with a huge pouring of love.  I’m glad I can feel what they’re feeling, even if just a little bit.  I am glad I can help carry the burden – because I felt others help carry mine.  I still get that familiar sting every once in a while, but I take it as a good little reminder from what I’ve overcome, what I have waiting for me, and what I have here on this beautiful earth.  Where the sting used to accompany pain, it now accompanies peace, acceptance, happiness.

One thing I haven’t shared here is the day I actually passed my miscarriage.  It was a hard, long, emotional day and much too personal and sacred (and painful) to recount, but one of the harder moments of my life.  It was March 26th – after weeks of my body holding on since the whole process had started.  I didn’t know how I would heal from that day, but God did.  It took us some time both emotionally and physically, but I found out I was expecting later that Summer.  I was due none other than March 25th that next year.  When the clock struck midnight on March 26th, my labor started.  I thought about the year before when I was deep in labor to deliver a disappointing loss, and now I was handed my sweet baby from heaven, a year later, on March 26th.  A year to the day.  What a sweet tender mercy, and one that still gives me chills as I write it.

I do hope to have more children, and that fear of loss is still very much there.  I have felt it, and know how real it is.  That fear plagued me in my pregnancy after loss.  Each midwife appointment, each ultrasound, each trimester turning came with anxiety and fear. But God heard me in my prayers and carried me through until the end.  He still carries me.  While I hope I never have to experience that type of loss again, loss in some form will come.  And I will understand it just a bit better the next time I think.  I will trust in a God who carries me through, even when I feel like I can’t go on.  I will not live in fear, and I will hope for more healthy pregnancies, and sweet smelling newborns, and children to fill my home.

 (ashley flowers photography)
Because life after loss still goes on, and life is still just as sweet.