📿 Losing a pregnancy, finding the basics

Sometimes the remedy isn’t specific, even if the pain is.

Hello you, Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

In the days that followed my first miscarriage, I found myself staring blankly at supplement bottles in Whole Foods. The aisle seemed to stretch on to infinity: tablet bottle after tablet bottle sporting labels in cheerful colors.

I stared down the expanse of shelves and formulated a plan. Start at one end of the aisle. Go shelf by shelf. Work my way down to the end. I was in a state of mind where I needed a plan, a simple plan, a way to cope with moving through the world like a regular human. I avoided making eye contact with other people pushing carts down the aisles so that they couldn’t see that I was faking it.

I had what the doctors called a “missed miscarriage,” which meant that my body was still holding the fetus in my womb even though it would never have a heartbeat. I knew that pregnancy loss was something that happened. I even knew TWO people who’d had the experience. Still, knowing two people made me think that it was incredibly rare (it’s not) and so I never fathomed it would happen to me. Even at nine weeks pregnant, when the ultrasound wand searched my pelvis in silence, I couldn’t fathom it would happen.

My body had somehow “missed” the signs that this baby wasn’t viable. My guess is that my body was just clinging to hope that it was — because I had tried for so long, and the names were picked out, and this baby was going to be a Sagittarius just like my husband, and I already loved whomever they were destined to be. Except that they weren’t destined to be. This was a false start. And if my body didn’t get on board and release the dream of this baby, a medical intervention would have to do the releasing for me. Thankfully I live in a state where that choice is legal, as waiting any longer was to put my own safety at risk. Holding on any longer meant the possibility of septic infection.

Which is how I found myself staring glassy eyed at labels in the supplement aisle, looking for something that would… help. An employee with a kind face asked if I needed assistance. As if I was a regular human doing regular shopping that day.

“Yes,” I told her. “I just had a miscarriage. I’m looking for something that will help heal my uterus.” I bit back the swell of tears in my throat and the impulse to apologize for making things awkward. “Ummm…I don’t think we have supplements for a miscarriage…” She whispered “miscarriage” like one might whisper “cancer.” In my most gracious assumptions she was just trying to be discreet. “I can show you where we keep the pregnancy supplements, though, which are good for supporting the uterus.”

I wanted to burst into flames because I AM NOT FUCKING PREGNANT! and then disintegrate into the floor. Instead, I politely said “No thanks,” and continued to stare at the rows of Zinc and Magnesium.

All I wanted was something specifically formulated to address the specific pain I was in. I wanted a cheerful label to shout from the expanse that it would help heal me from my miscarriage - not just physically, but emotionally too. I wanted to take two tablets with water, twice a day, until the medicine that was designed to alleviate my specific grief worked it’s magic on me. I left the aisle with a tube of lip balm and avoided eye contact on my way to self checkout. I remember thinking that if grief was to make a ghost of me, the least it could have done was also make me invisible.

I never found the specific “something”  that was made to heal my specific pain. Instead I found myself returning to the simple basics that had helped me heal in the past. There were no colorful labels on this protocol, just the repetition of turning towards basic actions every day.

I slept, a lot. With the windows open and no alarm clock when I could. I spent my days mostly outdoors: gardening and taking long walks. In Victorian times, doctors would prescribe a sabbatical in the countryside as a way to treat all manner of mental and physical illness. This was nicknamed “the cowboy cure.” Now, I know that Victorian medicine was questionable at best (leeches, bloodletting, etc.) but it doesn’t get more simple and reliable than this: if you’re feeling mentally or physically “off” just get some fresh air in your lungs, some sun on your face, and stick your feet in the grass.

I cried, a lot. I ate 90% well, 10% onion rings, and kept myself fully hydrated. I connected with friends and people who had also experienced pregnancy loss. It turns out that upward of 20% of pregnancies are lost; it’s not a unique occurrence at all.

In the Therigatha, a book of poetry by and about the first Buddhist nuns, there is a classic story about Kisa Gotami who visits the Buddha after losing her child. A promise is made to her: if she can obtain a single mustard seed from a single household that hasn’t experienced the loss of a loved one, then the Buddha would restore her child’s life.

Of course, the Buddha wasn’t magic and could do no such things. But then, there’s also no such household. There is only the slow tide of acceptance that develops from zooming out to find one’s self in the universality of an experience. We might find ourselves feeling connected to the constellations of others - infinite others who have also known the specific flavor of our grief. We might even find this connective tissue stretching outwards into adjacent constellations of people who have felt different, but similar grief. We might find ourselves softer and more committed to kindness as the path that moves us forward.

As Naomi Shihab Nye wrote:

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.”

I journaled. And miraculously, was able to keep a (grim) sense of (gallows) humor. I noted wryly that a great title for a book would be “How to Have a Mindful Miscarriage.” Mindfulness is so often reserved for benign activities like eating and moving the body, why shouldn’t it also be extended into our bleakest experiences?

I stretched and shook and massaged my body. I meditated. Without question, I meditated, which is like sitting down and tapping a lifeline. I practiced heaps of self compassion - for being messy and grieving and dropping balls on commitments because I was messy and grieving. I never did find the specific something for the specific kind of pain that I was feeling. I gave myself over to the simple things that I knew were actually useful.

These were the basics that had gotten me through a variety of maladies in the past, physical and otherwise: burnout, breakups and bouts of seasonal depression. And lo and behold — it was the basics got me through this period, too.

I let time create distance. I let distance create perspective. I let perspective create healing. I let healing happen without a timeline. I removed my agenda from the equation because this is the order of things. There’s no rushing through these steps. I came back to the basics, over and over again, until my grief found a place to live within me that felt safe, and eventually integrated.

I’m often asked (in my work) if I can offer a meditation practice that addresses a highly specific experience. For example: could I lead a meditation that’s designed to develop confidence, or a meditation thats specifically meant to clear brain fog? My guess is that as “wellness” has become a marketplace, and the marketplace becomes more specialized, this is how we’ve come to relate to meditation, or maybe all “wellness” practices. Perhaps even healing as a whole.

I know this desire to find a specific “something” that will heal a very specific pain. All we have to do is open an app and type in the experience that we want to be having (or the experience that we want to alleviate) and we’ll quickly find a library of specialized practices there to suit our needs. Better parenting. Chronic fatigue. How to have a mindful miscarriage. It’s akin to staring down the Whole Foods aisle at the expanse of colored labels.

More and more I find myself taking asks for specific practices and connecting the dots back to what is basic. Confidence can be developed by simply feeling the body breathe. Brain fog can absolutely be addressed by feeling the body breathe. Chronic fatigue and parenting woes can be tended to by…feeling the body breathe. Sometimes we don’t need more sophisticated tools; we just need to be consistent with the simple ones that work.

There can be a panacea of healing that comes from learning how to stay present to (and gentle with) our experience as it’s happening; whatever that experience might be. Also, sometimes it’s nice just to leave to infinite stretch of offerings in the supplement aisle.

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