I often use this blog to post silly videos and random by-the-seat-of-my-pants entries to laugh a little at life. It’s a good outlet for me, and while I’m not necessarily interested in growing a huge readership, I know that I have a nice little group of stalwart followers (thanks, y’all!).
Every once in a while, though, I do get serious, and it’s always about something that’s close to my heart. If there’s one thing that my vocation as a teacher has exposed me to, and that I’ve taken absolutely to heart, is that each of us has a story that’s yearning to be told. Our lives are unique — filled with many joys, but also pains. They go hand in hand with this thing we call the human condition.
Bloggers are sometimes guilty of always presenting the best side of our lives. It’s lovely to share photos of family get-togethers that look like Norman Rockwell paintings, and I’ve been guilty a time or two (ha!) of taking a picture that is cropped just right so you don’t see the laundry basket or the pile of papers that gets moved from the table to the counter, and back to the table. It’s all about illusion, isn’t it?
While I love to get hilarious comments from readers over fun posts, it’s actually the serious disclosures, like this one, that get feedback. Why? Because we are all suffering in some way. Each of us, and we so often miss opportunities to connect with others and share these hurts. We can find much healing in the simple act of sharing and discovering that we are not alone in our suffering. Both empathy and sympathy are gifts.
Karen Edmisten, author of After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman’s Companion to Healing and Hope talks with Pat Gohn this week on a special two-part edition of Among Women Podcast on a subject that is dear to my own heart. I experienced two miscarriages early in my marriage. Twenty-five years ago, the subject was not brought up in polite company. The doctors were horrible to me … one dismissed my second, very early miscarriage, as nothing more than a chemical pregnancy. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Needless to say, the scars from such an experience go beyond grieving for a lost child.
Pat and Karen discuss this topic with tenderness and honesty, two essential qualities that go a long way in helping women heal, connect, and hope. I hope you pass this along to other women. If we haven’t experienced miscarriage first-hand, the odds are very high that someone close to us has. Share it.