Last May, I found out I was pregnant. I wasn’t expecting to be, I didn’t imagine it would happen so soon. I know “so soon” is a relative term and I’ve always found the pressure of having a timeline unnecessarily oppressive and gendered. I grew up in a culture where child bearing and home making was the most important framing for every decision I made or that was made for me as girl child, a girl and a woman. It’s what was and still is expected of me.

It’s hard for me to say this openly, as I feel vulnerable and fear being judged. But motherhood is never really something I planned for in my life. It’s not something I’ve craved for or wanted to achieve. It’s always something I’ve felt would happen if it’s meant to happen but I made a commitment to myself to never put my body or mind under pressure to “achieve” something that may or may not be in my control.

Part of it is an act of rebellion towards a society that expected me to get married at a certain age, to a certain type & behave a certain way and produce a certain amount of children in a specific amount of time. Part of it is my deep commitment to be kinder to myself & focus on my emotional and physical well-being before considering birthing another human. This is a strictly personal belief, it’s not something that influences the way I see or experience other wonderful mothers or mothers to be in my life.

It stems from my own experiences and those I’ve been able to witness around me.

I witnessed women in bad marriages being told to get pregnant to “fix the issue”, I’ve heard people pity women who didn’t get pregnant within the time frame that’s expected of them, I’ve heard aunties give unsolicited advice to women who are clearly uncomfortable, I’ve had people suggest folks think of adoption while the mother is still recovering from a loss; may it be still birth or a miscarriage. As if there’s a shelf life on how quickly you can replace one child with another. I remember hearing the term barren being used to describe a neighbor who was experiencing infertility & thinking to myself, why do we as society fetishize motherhood and fertility to the point where a person’s identity is minimized to that one experience?

My fertility doesn’t define me. My motherhood is not defined by my ability to conceive. My personhood is not a prisoner to your false notions of womanhood.

I don’t share all of this to say I wasn’t happy. My husband and I both couldn’t believe it. We were excited but apprehensive. Surely it was a false positive, I rushed to get a few more tests only to get each one of them showing the same thing. I was pregnant. I remember sending my doctor a note saying “I’m probably not pregnant but…” & her baffled response back. I didn’t want to allow myself to believe it was true in case I miscarried.

We started our 9-week wait with a lot of apprehension, nervousness, anxiety & what I often justify as expecting the worse but what really is eternal pessimism and endless negativity. Both my primary care and my gynecologist told me I had nothing to worry about, that I was healthy, and that I was going to have a healthy pregnancy. I’m not yet ready to talk through the experience we had on my first scan & how it complicated things for my health and well-being because that’s a story for another time, but I’m writing this specifically to talk about grief. My own relationship to grief and other people’s expectations of it.

The miscarriage and the complications that came with it left me exhausted emotionally and physically. I knew there was nothing that I or anyone else did that cause this to happen. I knew that this only showed that our bodies are magical, that my body’s ability to shut down building a baby was a healthy response as most miscarriages happen because it’s not viable for the fetus to continue to grow. I knew and know all of that and it was still hard. It was painful, dark time riddled with anxiety, fear and grief that came in waves. Grief that was always present and making itself known. Grief that pierced through my body day in day out; sometimes like a little prick on the finger and other days like punch in the gut. Sometimes it was the only constant in my life. I often found myself feeling fortunate that I had decided long ago to learn what grief meant, to educate myself about making space for my grief and of others, to do the work beforehand so that I was able to prioritize my well-being.

Despite all that, I remember setting a goal for myself to start trying to get pregnant again after I had waited the required three cycles. I was ready, I had set up a follow up appointment with my doctor exactly 6 months after my miscarriage. In fact I remember walking out of surgery, still swollen and bleeding and going straight to the counter to set up my next appointment. Not the follow up to check on my healing, nope, but an appointment to “check on” and “fix” what was wrong with me. I’ll wait three months for my body to heal, I’ll try for three months to get pregnant again & I’ll go see a doctor to explore other options if I am not by January 15th 2020. I got pregnant within three months of trying so I should be able to again and if not there’s something wrong with me.

I was doing to myself what I had always promised I would never do. Put what’s expected of me before my own well being. I was expected to try again and be pregnant soon after a loss, I was expected to have kept trying between the loss and now. In the small circle of people I talk to I still get reactions from amazement to confusion at my decision to not try again for a year after the loss. I have shied away from telling people we are not trying again, not until I feel ready, for fear of people’s inquiries. It just not something that’s expected of us, it’s not something we allow ourselves to do. In fact I’m not sure how I managed to break away from this pressure either. But I did and I’m proud of it. I am proud of not rushing back to trying to conceive again, I am proud of not wanting to put a timeline on my healing and I am proud of making the decision that works for me, that works for us, that is our journey and ours alone.

It’s not the only thing that was and is expected of me though. I’m also expected to feel grief if someone else I know of is pregnant, I’m expected to be reminded of my own loss if someone else is going through their journey and are able to conceive, I’m expected to be “cautious of” when someone’s sharing their pregnancy announcement with me as to be “sensitive towards my experience”. And this hasn’t happened once or twice, it’s happened multiple times over the course of the year even though only a handful of people know about the miscarriage.

It’s as if we are taught to believe that people grieving are incapable of sharing in others joy because of their own loss.

As someone who has experienced this kind of loss, these expectations, stereotypes, judgments and assumptions are hurtful and insulting. No matter how well-meaning they might be. They shock me even though they shouldn’t. There is not a bone in my body — quite literally as I am a very expressive person — that is incapable of feeling joy for others because of my own loss; no matter what kind. That’s not to say there are not other people out there that do feel hurt, or anxious or feel pressure or grief when they hear of others around them being pregnant while they recover from a loss. It’s natural, there’s no shame in that. But we — people who have experienced loss — aren’t a monolith.

Assuming someone who has experienced a miscarriage needs to be shielded from other people’s pregnancy news isn’t considerate. It is presumptuous. It is not about thoughtfulness it actually is about centering your own guilt — that btw no one asked for — and putting the burden on the one grieving to make you feel better about feeling pitiful.

My loss doesn’t prevent me from being happy for others, my pain doesn’t prevent me from feeling joy for my loved ones, the notion that I should be shielded or protected from someone else’s joy makes me feel like I’m being defined by my loss, that I’m being belittled as an object to be pitied & that my ability to heal, grieve and experience joy is undermined and erased.

My intention in writing is not to shame anyone. It is not meant to “call out” anything, I am just hoping that my vulnerability allows others to liberate themselves from manufactured burden that was never theirs to carry. You don’t need to hide your happiness as a form of care for others. I know each and everyone of my loved ones who acted in this way were only trying to show compassion, care and being thoughtful. I know it’s not the least bit malicious. It still doesn’t make it okay.

I just wish we had more spaces to talk about loss, to talk through grief, to learn about being in solidarity with each other without patronizing and stereotyping the people in our lives who have suffered loss.

For now, I just want my truth to be known: my loss doesn’t define me, my grief no matter how debilitating doesn’t prevent me from feeling joy for others & pity never helped no one.