I reread emails from a few weeks ago when tears came easily and chocolate was necessary, from a friend who has lost two unborn children. Her words of encouragement and understanding in those early hard days is what is saving me right now.
I have a snatched conversation with another friend in the garden. She tells me the story of the child she miscarried at eleven weeks, while she bounces the son that came after on her hip, soothing his grumbles and cries with one hand under him, the other protectively across his back. She shares some of what came next, what lead finally to this treasured son. And it is saving me right now, her story, her shared concerns and losses and hope.
I perch on the toilet while another friend changes her young daughter next to the sink and blows raspberries on her fat cheeks and she laughs back. I sent your post about your miscarriage to another friend who’d also just lost a baby, she says as she wrestles wriggly feet back into trouser legs. She called me later in tears, saying it was exactly what she was feeling, what she was struggling through, you put words to her experience.
And I want to cry right there in the bathroom with the sound of children playing in the garden filling our ears and the smell of barbecue drifting back through the house. Because they are saving me right now. These women who share my story, share my loss, share my uncertainty as I figure out the way forward. They understand and they know and they keep going too.
And they are what is saving me right now.
Last week Sarah Bessey wrote a post entitled “In which this is saving my life right now” and turned it into a spontaneous synchroblog when so many others were inspired to write their own outworking.
This is my contribution.
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Found your post through Sarah’s synchroblog. What a touching, honest piece! How wonderful that, even in the midst of sorrow, writing about it helped another woman when you were able to “put words to her experience.”
Beautiful and so sad but hopeful, Fiona. I’ve walked this road, too.
Sarah, your posts on your losses have been such a comfort to me these last few weeks. Your shared story makes me braver.
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