Anyone who knits or crochet's or even just sews knows about that big knotted ball of colourful thread that you keep hanging on to because it has some pretty useful pieces in it if only you had the time to untangle them. It moves from drawer to closet. Closet to garage. Garage to craft stash. Until eventually you decide that today is the day you are going to try to unravel it. You sit down in your favourite and most comfortable chair, put something good on tv and set to work. You slowly free one colour. Than another. Some are tangled so tightly you take sizzors to the ends. Eventualy you are left with a lot of long kinked threads, and a much smaller ball of tangled string that you just give up on and throw out.
To me my brain right now is like that ball of knotted yarn. This blog allows me to take one piece at a time and slowly unravel it from the rest until I have a complete thought- written out in a format that I can make sense of. I can then set that particular thought aside and either finish with it for good or decide to come back and reexamine it later.
I need to make sense of everything going through my head right now or it just might explode. If this is the way that lets me do it best, that lets me take one thought and unravel it to it's conclusion, than why should a try finding a way that does not work for me as well?
There are those who think I should not be writing here. That I am airing dirty laundry in public. No matter how hard I try to explain myself, those people will just never get me. Writing clears my head. It helps me clarify the tohu va'vohu of thoughts swirling around in my brain. It allows me to be sure I am using precisely the right word to express what I am trying to say- and if I get it wrong I can backspace and try again. I can put a post on hold until I figure out what I am trying to say. I can go back in time and change things if I realize I was wrong.
"But why does it need to be in public?" they ask me. "By all means, keep a journal, but why put it on the internet where everyone can see it?"
To those questions I have a few answers. First and foremost, why not? I haven't done anything wrong. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am dealing with walking through the darkest time of my life the best way that I can, and if I want to document my journey why the hell shouldn't I? I am doing everything everyone is telling me and if writing it out in a public forum makes me feel better who in the world is anyone else to tell me not to do so?
But it is more than that. Just like infertility, eating disorders, spousal abuse and so many other "unpleasant" topics, miscarriages and still births are swept under the rug and hidden from view. Women dealing with the pain of losing a child feel isolated and alone. Often we are told it "was not a real child" and we should not be so upset. about losing the fetus. The self help section of the internet on the topic is pitifully bare. If my putting my thoughts out there can help even one woman to feel less alone, then I will write every single thing that goes through my brain no matter what anyone else thinks.
In the time this blog has been online (it went live about 3 weeks ago) it has received almost 4000 hits. Of those about 75% are from sites I don't recognize. Search terms including "devastating stillbirth" and "post miscarriage depressions" are bringing in readers from Russia, France and Argentina. I have received dozens of emails thanking me for being so open an honest and making people feel like they are not freaks of nature going through hell on their own.
This is happening everyday to regular women in countries around the world. It is not a secret. It is not our fault. And we have nothing to be ashamed of. I have returned, at least in part, to the belief that God runs the world and is in control of every baby born and every baby that isn't. If he decides my little girl fulfilled her purpose before she even opened her eyes than who am I to argue? I can be and am sad. I can be angry that he chose to do this to me. I can be depressed. But I have nothing to be ashamed of.
It is time to bring this pain out of the shadows- and if people don't like it they don't need to read it. I just only hope they never need support and find it lacking as the topic is one that should not be talked about in public.
