Healing From My Miscarriage in a Year That Took So Much
By: Charlene Carruthers
Tags: Loss, Healing, Grief, 2020, Pandemic

I knew something was wrong before my doctor confirmed that I had miscarried my first pregnancy.

For years, I imagined being a mother in a country where caring for Black children often meant increased vulnerability and violence. I spent many moments being anxious about Black maternal mortality rates, thinking through my options for support and care. I did not know then that this year would bring a global pandemic, uprisings, and suffering under the heels of murderous political leadership.

What I knew for sure was that I wanted to parent and that doing so as a single, queer, Black woman was a challenge I was willing to pursue. One evening, about a week before I met the in-demand Black woman doctor I’d held out for, I had felt a heavy presence sitting at the end of my bed. I remember fighting to wake up and regain control over my arms. I clutched my abdomen with my hands and declared “No, you won’t!” to whatever had welcomed itself to my bedroom. I had already encountered so many challenges while trying to conceive and did not want to think about having to go through it all again.

Even with my own personal experiences of sleep paralysis and the work of haints at night, I could not determine whether who or what had shown up was there to hurt or warn me. Impatience, anxiety, and fear compelled me to visit a private ultrasound technician the next day. The technician, unable to confirm if my pregnancy was progressing, added to my belief that my first pregnancy would end at 10 weeks. Later that week, my doctor told me what my spirit and body already knew.

Ten days into 2020, I chose to fully end the pregnancy at home on my own using medication prescribed by my doctor. My body still holds remnants of the physical and mental pain brought forth through that experience. I knew that miscarriage was possible and common — between 10% and 20% of all pregnancies end through miscarriage — and still, I was not prepared for how it would actually feel. I felt and at times still feel ashamed, inadequate, angry, and sad.

This loss is now a part of how I process the other losses happening around me.

There is rarely a day that goes by where I do not feel that loss or wade through that grief. I spoke with a therapist who works with people who have lost pregnancies. I was supported by my parents and some of my friends. Outside of my immediate circle of support, I remained silent as the year continued. Each celebration of birth and observance of death in my family and community brought me back to that moment in January.

In February, I sobbed at my aunt’s funeral for the loss of a woman who helped raise me. She had mothered her children and her siblings’ children too. I wondered if I would ever be able to do the same. My uncle died of Covid-19 complications nearly three months later. I left my home during the city-mandated quarantine in order to attend his wake.

The year did not let up. I learned more and more about my own limitations. I found myself unable to write more than a few sentences, so I turned to writing poetry, finding the economy of words much more fit for the times. I was a Black woman living in one of the neighborhoods with the highest Covid-19 infection rates in Chicago. I began to feel afraid of what my hands could do. Would I touch something or someone and bring sickness into my body? Would I get my parents sick? People my age and of generally good health were dying too. I had already lost so much from within my body; would the same vessel die from a virus ravaging my family and community?

As the seasons began to turn and summer teased the Midwest, the world opened up and ignited into uprisings against the very systems that had consistently left many of us to suffer and die.

I had two choices: I could either stay at home and continue to grieve alone, or I could l hit the streets and join others who held their own grief too. I chose the latter.

I joined millions of other people in bearing witness to the killings of Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and many others. Pop’s death shook me and reminded me of how even in the midst of global pandemic, anti-Blackness, misogynoir, and transphobia were still taking away Black lives.

I had two choices: I could either stay at home and continue to grieve alone, or I could l hit the streets and join others who held their own grief too. I chose the latter and rejoined the Movement for Black Lives organizing team in order to support base-building organizations across the country developing strategy to divest from policing and invest in our communities in real time. This included traveling back and forth to Minneapolis to support Black organizers there advancing efforts to transform their city in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Working alongside community organizers as they contended with the internal and external pressures of the moment reified what I knew and understood about movement-building. First, all that sits underneath the surface — things rooted in conflict and love — shows itself during an uprising. Second, anything that has not been healed will beckon those within its path to tend to whatever caused the pain — doing so with or without grace. Third, whoever answers a call into leadership, particularly in these moments, will have to hold things well beyond their control — and they will be tested beyond what feels fair in the process.

Taking that time to really be with my grief allowed me to show up in my full dignity in a moment and contribute to the struggle for my people’s liberation.

I tried to shake the feeling that I was only able to show up on the ground because I was not in my third trimester. I had to accept that reality over and over again. Nearly a year later, I continue to have to accept it on a daily basis. This loss is now a part of how I process the other losses happening around me.

The early months of quarantine gave me room to grieve the loss of my loved ones alone and sit with my feelings. Those moments allowed me to be imperfect in ways that I still do not feel I can be out in the world. Taking that time to really be with my grief allowed me to show up in my full dignity in a moment and contribute to the struggle for my people’s liberation. If caring for myself is, as Audre Lorde says, an act of political warfare, then allowing myself to name my loss and move through grief is central to the fortification I need for any battle that I face.