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How does someone move past it? Just like with other kinds of loss, there is a grieving process. Not all women get the chance to grieve, they might not have the support or they might just want to move on and forgot that it happened.
This loss is a really common loss, but we don’t talk about it enough.
Losing a child, an unborn child that you have carried, even if it was for a moment, is a process and it’s not easy and we have the right to grieve.
I am at the moment going through my second miscarriage, this time it was a so-called chemical pregnancy loss (they also call it chemical abortion) when the embryo dies right around implantation. So I was around three weeks this time.
By telling this story I will go back to the first miscarriage, that happened last year in October 2019. Truth is, I knew something was wrong, I had an underlying fear, but I did not show it. I found out that I was pregnant really early because I am lucky enough to be really connected to my body — I am even sure I know when I got pregnant.
It was our first try, and I was ecstatic, I had even written on my 2019 intentions that I would get pregnant in August and I did. Life seemed to be perfect.
“There is no heartbeat”
During the first ultrasound at 8 weeks, something was off. My OB-GYN said that I must have got my days wrong because the baby seemed to be more in week 6, but she could see that heartbeat. I knew it, I knew something was wrong — but I stayed positive.
We came back a week later to hear the words “there is no heartbeat”.
Wow. It’s crazy how all a sudden everything crashes, or at least that’s what it felt like. I started to think about all the women around the world that have gone through this, and my heart was with them.
We build up all of these expectations of a reality that wasn’t even real, but we make plans so we fall so hard because we don’t expect things like this to happen — or we do, and when we live in a world of fear we bring in more fear.
My story is longer, but this post is about how I have got through it — now twice, and I am positive that I will get pregnant again and give birth to a healthy baby one day.
What I have realized is that there is no clear path with grief, so I will not call them steps, because they can be in different orders and sometimes you fall back into all of the feels and it feels like you are back on square one.
12 things that have helped me along the journey to healing after a pregnancy loss/miscarriage (they are not in a specific order since the healing journey is not a straight line):
1. Journal. Get yourself a journal that is for this journey, where you can write down thoughts about how you and your body is doing. It’s been really healing to get my words out, even when they don’t make sense.
2. Let yourself be sad. Yes, this is really important. Let yourself feel all the feelings, the sadness, the anger, the fear, the guilt. Move through it all, don’t let these emotions get stuck in your body. Journal about it! I wrote so many poems and even questions. I kept on going back to the “why?”, but the truth is you will not find the why, just the fact that something was wrong and your body did what it should, and released it. I blamed myself, “maybe it was the coffee I drank that day, maybe the stress, maybe work, maybe because I had that thought….”
We all get on that loop of blaming ourselves, but don’t get stuck there. Know that you did nothing wrong and that it’s nothing wrong with you (keep reading if you still feel like there is something wrong with you).
3. Talk about it, share your story and your pain with others. Maybe you don’t feel safe and heard by the people around you, but find others. I started to connect to women on Instagram after I posted my story, it felt good to know that we are not alone. When we share we learn that this is really common, 1 out of 4 pregnancies. We just don’t talk about it enough, and it’s important that we do for the ones that can’t talk about it.
4. Don’t get stuck in the victim mentality (only for a little bit). I know, this is really hard because it’s easy to blame the world, people, ourselves, situations, and even God. Slowly start realizing that these things happen, and our bodies work so hard every day to keep us alive, our bodies know when something is wrong.
5. Reprogram the way we think, and start feeling gratitude for our bodies rather than being mad at our bodies. I read somewhere that women think today that something is wrong with them because we can detect pregnancies so early, and when we have a miscarriage we think that there is something wrong with our bodies, when in fact our bodies just knew that there was a chromosomal issue or something else and it did what our body does best.
When I read that I felt just so much gratitude for my body because when we think that there is something wrong with us, we send that signal to our bodies. Most women spend their whole life trying not to be pregnant and suppress the body's natural instinct to bleed, then one day we wake up and want a child and want our bodies to work right away. Maybe you are holding on to past trauma, maybe there is forgiveness that needs to be made?
6. Connect to your body. The next step after we have felt all the feels, out it down on paper, talked about it, listen to our thoughts, now it’s time to connect to our bodies. Our womb.
Place your hands on your womb, connect to HER, to yourself. If you were on birth control for a while, maybe you can ask her how she felt about that, maybe ask her for forgiveness, maybe tell her that you are sorry for the pain she has been through. Your body remembers the pain and goes through it as well — so it’s really important that we let our body, especially our wombs to heal. Maybe you are carrying old pain that needs to be healed. For me I had a lot of forgiveness to do, once I started to connect to my womb, I learned that I wanted to apologize to her about certain choices I had made. The more I connected, the more things came up and I cried a lot. Honestly the first miscarriage I moved through it really fast and now with the second one it has truly shown me to slow down even more.
7. Evaluate your life and your health routines. I am a really healthy person, and I take care of myself. I was preparing my body with the right food and supplements before I got pregnant, and somehow everything would have just been too perfect if I would have got pregnant on the first try. To connect to yourself, have you healed from past trauma? Is there anything in your energy system that might be blocked. During the second miscarriage, I realized that I was still carrying shame and guilt from past mistakes and choices. It was some deep things, and I have been on a healing journey for the last 8 years but this was a whole new level. I have forgiven others but not myself.
I know it might feel hard to do this while you are grieving, so this would not be the first step. For me, this step has been huge and I have realized that all of this is happening for me, not to me. I can learn so much from this, and I am writing this so you can see that there are so many layers to our grieving and even though I read different books, I had to go inwards and learn that there was so much underneath to discover.
8. Your body needs to grieve. I learned, from listening to my body, that my body still thought I was pregnant even though the pregnancy wasn’t viable. So it was not until I passed the tissue that my body started grieving. Which was like another layer, and by learning this I felt so much compassion for my body and my womb. Our womb wants our babies to be safe just as much as we do, so connect to her. Honor her and let her grief, give her your love.
9. Move your body. Start small, some simple yoga at home. Move your body, to release energy, and to create endorphins. Add some kind of light movement every day, a walk, yoga, stretches at home… whatever calls you. It’s OK to lay in bed and cry for a few days, but let yourself get out of it and move slowly.
10. Healing music. I listened to a lot of healing music that helped me thought this time if you want specific songs tips send me an email hello@thelightmystic.com. Otherwise, I truly recommend searching for high-frequency music on Youtube, you can search for Hz music for loss and grieving and there are many options. These sounds help your body to heal, the vibrations of the sounds can assist you with the releasing.
11. Dare to believe again. I know this is hard but truly connect to yourself and your body in a loving way. When we start thinking something is wrong with us, we start sending those signals to the body. Start loving and nurturing yourself and I also suggest going to a functional doctor and to talk to your OB-GYN that you might want to look into different blood test (check thyroid for example. I am on my way to start doing lots of acupuncture and I will share my experience with all the different things I try with you all in other blog posts.)
12. Be patient. Your body will take some time to adjust, and remember that there is a lot of hormones that will affect you. Take naps, learn to say no. Take time for you, no need to push yourself. Like I mentioned above, our body has it’s own grieving time, and adjusting back to normal hormone levels is a part of it.
I hope this helps you along your way, and maybe this is something you can share with someone that is going through it.
Let yourself go over some steps many times. Especially feeling everything. There is nothing wrong, and you are allowed to process this in your own time.
I think we just all have to know that this pain is ours, and even though people might not understand. We felt it all, so let yourself move through it at your own pace.
Be patient with yourself and your healing, sometimes things from our past comes up through all of this so let yourself ask for help if needed.
I would love to hear from you, feel free to email me with questions or other advice you have found along the way hello@thelightmystic.com
Let’s connect on Instagram @thelightmystic
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