Hello, Meet my Friend Gayle

Hi, my name is Sam and I’m grieving.

Alright, well now that I got that off my chest let me introduce you to my grief. Yes, I named her. A wise, supportive, amazing, loving friend told me to do that. Personalize my grief, my anxiety, my depression, and then kindly tell them to kick rocks. So, that’s exactly what I did.

Now I introduce to you, Gayle, my b*tch of a friend grief. She’s strong, not always pleasant to be around and rarely makes her appearances known before rudely crashing into my day. We haven’t known each other too long but definitely long enough now to know and understand her a little bit better.

Grief is a tricky thing. It’s a complex messy, strong, giant ball of emotions. Grief is anger, grief is sadness, grief is the dark hole you can’t escape. Grief is also love, beauty, and the brightest light. Grief is heavy. With all of this though, grief ebbs and flows. There are days it suffocates and days that allows for completely fresh air.

I was having a conversation once with someone else who experienced an unexpected loss and he explained grief as the timeline from marvel movies. It’s like all of sudden your life is shot into another trajectory that you never saw coming and you had no plans of. Then all of sudden a couple of months and then years pass and all of sudden you look back and somehow you’re here but you’re not quite sure how you got here. In the moment I couldn’t imagine getting “here” but now, I look back and I am in fact “here”. On my new timeline, winging it, and trying to find my footing one day at a time.

When Gayle first entered my life it was like she was a weighted blanket. Constantly suffocating me. There were a few moments of feeling like I was able to breathe, but they felt few and far between. You know like an older sibling who dog piles on you and doesn’t get off no matter how loud you scream or how hard you hit? That was Gayle. Always there, always suffocating and in the months after she entered my life, she only grew stronger. She manifested in my body in the form of depression, anxiety, fear, isolation, and self sabotage. I took out all of my negative thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of life and myself on the people that cared the most about me.

To be completely vulnerable and open, which is what I needed so desperately during this time, I took it out on my wife. If I felt terrible, she needed to as well. If I was suffering, she should as well. Those were my thoughts in that time and I acted on them way more than I ever should have. I was terrified to admit what I was feeling, how sad I was. The self sabotage that came from my depression was truly unhinged. The horrible things I thought of myself, I automatically assumed everyone else thought of me, as well- especially my wife. I carried so much guilt when it came to Tacoma’s death and battling those thoughts is still a part of my life some days, but during this time it was the hardest. I didn’t feel like I deserved much of anything at all, except all things terrible.

Grief is a hard emotion and feeling to understand until you have to live with it. In my opinion it’s even harder for the pregnancy loss community because sometimes our grief isn’t validated. You know, because “it was just an early miscarriage” or “at least you can try again” or “well your baby wasn’t born alive so their death isn’t quite the same”. Pregnancy loss is isolating, scary, heartbreaking, and the worst pain imaginable. It’s also not talked about until it happens to you. Then once it does you’re thrust into a world of grief and loss, just left to figure it out on your own. Pregnancy loss is different for everyone, but it results in many of the same feelings none the less. Grief being one of them.

Grief never goes away. Sure, there are days when it’s easier to manage, or feels like it’s just a small seed in my pocket. However, there are other days when it seems unbearable and like the heaviest rock in my pocket. When an unimaginable event happens in your life, I truly believe you have two options. One- let it win, lay down, and never get back up or two- take on each day to the best of your ability, chip away little by little, and slowly crawl until you can run again. I made the mistake of full on sprinting from the beginning and I was immediately exhausted. Grief is a marathon, one I will be running the rest of my life. However, I now know I can ask for help. I can slow down, I can cry and let it out, and that’s okay. I can crawl if that’s what I need to do that day and then I can get up and walk or run the next. Hiding my grief, or my feelings didn’t make it go away, it only made it harder. My son died, my family suffered the unimaginable, I am and we are allowed to grieve, in whatever way that looks like. But please take my advice, don’t self sabotage, let the people who love you, love you. Go to therapy if you need it. You deserve it. You deserve to feel okay. You even deserve to feel happiness and joy again.

The first year is one of the hardest. The grief is heavy, the emotions are high, and life is messy. Lean into your supports and please know I am always here.

No one should have to walk this path alone.

Xoxo,

Sammy