Let’s Make the Walls Come Tumbling Down

We live in a society that places a huge amount of importance on the appearance of happiness. We are expected to seem happy all the time. For anyone who is living with any kind of mental illness, or any long term physical illness or disability, people seem to care more about whether you look happy, or whether you are making an effort to be happy, than walking alongside you in what might be a difficult journey.

We also live in a world where people behave as though mental and physical illness might be catching. Don’t go on about your difficulties. People don’t want to know. Don’t talk about the hard thing that happened to you, you’ll upset people.

Most people who get pregnant for the first time are advised not to tell most people in their lives until after the twelve week scan. The horrendously misleading phrase that is often used is that it will be “safe” after that. This contains within it the assumption that miscarriage should be a secret. It’s also completely misleading. The reality is that babies, and mothers too, can and do die after multiple successful scans. Pregnancy and childbirth are not safe for the child or for the mother. The UK is a comparatively safe place to be pregnant and give birth, and to gestate and be born. And still, mothers and babies die every day.

Losing Gracie Wren made me into a different person, but because talking about miscarriage is taboo, I hid it as well as I could. With my husband’s agreement I posted during Baby Loss Awareness Week that year, and I selected the people who saw that post very carefully.

Losing the twins changed the way I talk about grief and loss and changed the way I behave. I began to question why something as common as miscarriage is such a taboo. A lot of people are deeply shocked when I mention that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. So many families feel they have to wall up their grief to protect society. And society encourages that. Many people who experience miscarriage report feeling very bleak and alone, and it takes a great deal of courage to open up to even one person.

Our world pathologises grief. Grief is something to “get over”. We’re supposed to “move on”. People say this to people who have lost parents and spouses and adult children, let alone to parents who have lost babies, either before or after birth.

But grief is a permanent change.

Of course I’m not saying that people who live with grief will never be happy again. It’s possible to live with grief and embrace joy (I try to do it every day). But it’s impossible to know when grief will hit. The waves might get less frequent, they might get smaller – although neither of these will necessarily happen. The only thing that is more or less predictable about grief is its utter unpredictability.

Do you live with grief?

Have you experienced miscarriage or baby loss?

If you have, you might feel as though you are supposed to keep all your feelings, all your sadness, all your fears about the future, behind a wall. You might even be encouraged by others to make sure the wall is firm and solid. People can say well intentioned things that sound more like, “Please be quiet about the things that make you sad.” Has anyone ever said, “Be thankful for what you have,” or, “Lots of people are going through much worse things than you are.” I always take statements like this as a not very subtle request to shut up. It’s possible that this is not what’s intended by people who say such things, but it is what it sounds like from this side of the wall.

It’s been a slow process, but during the weeks and months after losing the twins, I began to take down the wall.

I can’t even say it’s as fast as brick by brick. Sometimes I just scrape away a tiny piece of mortar. Sometimes I lean on the wall, too exhausted to move, and when I finally stand up I find that two or three bricks have fallen out.

I don’t want anyone to feel they have to hide their real life behind a wall. I am only one person, but this is how it starts. One conversation at a time. One Facebook post, one blog post at a time.

Of course, for some people the wall represents safety. The last thing I want is to take down walls that people want or need.

But some of us feel stuck behind a wall that society built in front of us. I am trying to change the nature of the walls so that nobody will need to keep their miscarriage, the loss of their beloved child, a secret in order to protect other people from their sadness. At present, for most people, the choice is between keeping quiet or being quite loud.

Let’s make the walls come tumbling down. Let those who wish, be quiet. Let those who need, shout it out. Let those who need something between the two extremes find their safe place. But let it be of our choosing.