I recently connected with the wife of Richard’s climbing partners, Michelle, when we discovered that we both suffered recent loss. She recommended this book to me as one that helped her immensely on her journey. While the book echoed some of my recent thoughts and validated my tempestuous feelings, I don’t think this is exactly the book for me. I did enjoy reading the stories of the brave, brave couples who shared their experiences in the book.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“When you slipped away, a piece of my heart shouted, ‘Stop! Wait! I’m coming with you…’”
“The world hasn’t changed. But your world has. And that is challenging to process because you are thinking, ‘This is the worst thing that has ever, ever happened to me and the world hasn’t even noticed!”
“The hardest part of miscarriage for me is the fact that I feel left behind in my sadness […] I understand that people move on, I get it. But for me, it’s slow and it’s painful and I just want everyone to understand that when I’m down. It’s still because my baby died and that is legitimate and fine and valid and normal. Because there is no expiration date on grief.”
“It’s so painful to watch your dreams play out in the lives of others.”
“this is grief after baby loss. It’s a grief for future hopes and dreams that you never had the chance to make.”
“We create a space in our hearts, minds, families and households for this little life before he or she is conceived, so when we see that positive result on a pregnancy test, the reality of what we’ve imagined before just falls into place. Everything we have imagined for such a long time becomes our reality.”
“Soul
Who visited so briefly,
My heart beat beside you
And we were one.
Now… now my body is alone, and weeps.”
“We might feel that society has written off our baby because he or she was an early loss, and this might make us feel like our grief and devastation is disproportionate to our experience and that our baby wasn’t valid. Isolation comes from feeling that we have no platform from which to speak our experiences as we feel them. No understanding audience to share them with. No space in which to openly grieve.”
“Tell your beautiful, brave body it’s OK to let go now.’
From that moment, I was able to reframe the entire experience. My body hadn’t let me down – in fact, my body was so desperate to be a mummy that she just held on.”
“It’s hard to explain to people how you feel when you get pregnant after a loss. Of course, you feel grateful that you’re even pregnant, but the trauma and fear are overwhelming, and the terror of not bringing another child home is often too much to bear.”
“For so many of us, the fear of the positive pregnancy test is huge. In fact, the fear and apprehension surrounding ‘trying again’ after loss is huge. Who knew that trying for a baby in the future might potentially involve trauma and anxiety rather than desire and passion? Who knew that periods would be triggering; that sex would be pressured; that our behaviour would become obsessive, erratic, emotional? This crock of shit is what TTC (trying to conceive) after loss looks like for so many of us. A frightening void of uncertainty.”