by Jennifer Wells

Created on: November 11, 2008

Five years ago if you had asked, I would have told you that there is no life after miscarriage, only pain. Ask me today, however, and my answer reads more like this: life after miscarriage is exactly what you make of it.

I learned about miscarriage almost as soon as I learned about sex. Confused and in anguish, I stumbled about emotionally, not quite sure how to handle myself. I felt so vulnerable and shaken, so completely visible to the entire world; and yet it seemed that nobody really saw me at all. It was so real, so terribly real, and I cloaked myself in secrecy and hid.

The second miscarriage was completely different. This time I was not quite sure, save that the symptoms of pregnancy disappeared, as it were, with that shapeless pink and grayish bit of tissue. I scoured the internet for proof to the opposite, only to find one glaring confirmation after another. I then spent the days lapsing in and out of crying jags and hours of staring blankly at the wall, lost in a wrenching sense of emptiness.

I had already come to dread missed periods. I dreaded even more that white porcelain mocker we call by so many names. Soon I was refraining from using the restroom far past physical comfort because to me that gleaming bowl was the stealer of children, the soulless demon of unrealized dreams, and an ever-present reminder of my vulnerability.

The hollow feeling, the slow spinning of the entire world would not let me forget and it did not matter; I was already dead inside. I hid inside my home and inside myself. When my presence was required elsewhere I pasted on my best attempt at a sincere smile. I would listen to my sister chatter about her toddler or trying for a baby and rush home to hide again, tears splashing onto my blouse and blurring the road all the way. So many times after church we barely made it to the car and out of sight before the sobs would overtake me and my husband would pull over to comfort me. How very little everyone else really knew.

How could anybody know unless they had been there? How could they know that talking about 'it' was not okay, that ignoring 'it' was not okay, that absolutely every conversation on any topic felt piercing? Members of my husband's first church would occasionally spot me in the store and say things like "Oh, I heard you lost a baby... I am just so sorry for you... tell Chris we said hi!"

These women always seemed to pause and really try to gauge my reaction right after that first declaration, looking perhaps for the tell-tale

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