Welcome to episode 19!
In our latest episode, we open the doors to the silent grief that men endure. The conversation moves beyond the physical absence of a child never held to explore the emotional chasm left behind, and how the lack of traditional mourning markers can render the pain invisible.
The dialogue stretches into the significant role of emotional intelligence as we, as fathers, share how we form an abstract connection with the unborn. Tokens like a pregnancy test become symbolic relics, carrying the weight of dreams unfulfilled. Our discussion is a raw look at the identity transformation that starts with the anticipation of fatherhood, the struggle to articulate the loss without physical anchors, and the search for solace in a world that sometimes forgets the father's pain.
In closing, we not only acknowledge but also embrace the idea that love does not dissipate with loss—it merely changes shape. We examine the potential for growth in the face of static love, and the empowerment found in channeling this love into parenting, creative endeavors, and life itself. This episode isn't merely an exchange of experiences; it's a testament to the enduring power of love and the resilience of a father's spirit in the aftermath of miscarriage.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
References:
All There Is (Anderson Cooper podcast)
Welcome to episode 19!
In our latest episode, we open the doors to the silent grief that men endure. The conversation moves beyond the physical absence of a child never held to explore the emotional chasm left behind, and how the lack of traditional mourning markers can render the pain invisible.
The dialogue stretches into the significant role of emotional intelligence as we, as fathers, share how we form an abstract connection with the unborn. Tokens like a pregnancy test become symbolic relics, carrying the weight of dreams unfulfilled. Our discussion is a raw look at the identity transformation that starts with the anticipation of fatherhood, the struggle to articulate the loss without physical anchors, and the search for solace in a world that sometimes forgets the father's pain.
In closing, we not only acknowledge but also embrace the idea that love does not dissipate with loss—it merely changes shape. We examine the potential for growth in the face of static love, and the empowerment found in channeling this love into parenting, creative endeavors, and life itself. This episode isn't merely an exchange of experiences; it's a testament to the enduring power of love and the resilience of a father's spirit in the aftermath of miscarriage.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
References:
All There Is (Anderson Cooper podcast)
So, all of that hope, all of that excitement, all of that love, all of that anticipation, all of that, all of all of who I was in those moments, what do I do with those? Who is that? What is that? Where does that go? Where do I place it? What do I do with it? What do you do with it? What does anybody do with it? What do I do with it? What do you do with it? What does anybody do with it? And is that even the right question to ask? Are we supposed to do something with it, or does it just stay there? Does it just hang? There.
Speaker 1:This is the Miscarriage Dads podcast, a podcast humanizing the experience of miscarriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. What we want to focus on today in our conversation is imagining some of the reasons why grieving a miscarriage may be a challenge and in particular, I think we want to start, I want to start us off considering we kind of spoken about this before in various conversations. I know we briefly talked about it last week also, but when it comes to a miscarriage, particularly and especially because of our place in the whole, how this whole thing plays out as men, as fathers, there's already a level, a degree of separation, right from the way that Amber experienced it, from the way that Michelle experienced it. Obviously, we're not the ones who are carrying the babies, so that's a point that we've made before. So there's already a level, a degree of separation from that. On top of that, there's the fact that the miscarriage has happened before a physical, the death has happened before a physical baby came into the world, right, so the pregnancy has not progressed in a way yet where, as we've also spoken about before, the things that begin to give you and I, as fathers, a sense of that physical connection and I'm obviously not talking about the emotional connection yet, I'm not bringing that into the equation yet, talking specifically about the physical connection, the feeling of the kicks and seeing the belly and the talking to it and reading to the belly and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:None of that has occurred yet. In fact, none of that will occur because of the miscarriage. So there's no physical manifestation of a baby or a pregnancy to the level that we can start to get that connection, that physical, visible connection. The miscarriage has happened way before any of that happens. There is no, perhaps I don't know, in your story, but definitely in my story no one even knew that Michelle was pregnant and expecting. So this loss happens in this environment where it can be very secretive. It is so early on. Again, there's nothing visible, there's nothing tangible, there's nothing physical or no one physical to grieve, if you will bringing in the emotional aspect of it. That's all you and I have. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So I don't know what. What was your experience in terms of how feasible or unfeasible you found it to grieve your loss after Amber's miscarriage?
Speaker 3:Man, it's funny, as you're sitting here talking, I'm just realizing how much I haven't thought about this part of it and how much I haven't even connected that in terms of the physical part and just with all the things that you're saying. I'm sitting here thinking, man, you're completely right, because Amber lost the baby's soul early on, and I know for some people it's later, but for our situation, you're right, I never got to touch my child, I never got to have that physical part of the connection and that is actually another piece that I need to grieve because I never thought about it and that does make me. That makes me sad. I didn't get the chance to feel a shape or I don't think we think about how important, like you said, those little, even those movements, those little kicks are, and I didn't get to see any of that. In fact we didn't even get to hear a heartbeat, so there was no physical connection yeah, I didn't even include that too, bro.
Speaker 1:you know like, yeah, yeah, you would not have spoken about how magical that moment was when we went into that ultrasound and we just heard that you know like 140, 150 beats per minute rhythm, and it's just like, oh, that's my baby, you know what I mean, yeah. And in a miscarriage, like most likely you. You haven't even gotten to that point yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and that's that is tough. That is tough, you know, going back to that point. Yet, yeah, yeah, and that's that is tough, that is tough, you know, going back to that moment. I know we've covered our stories before, but again, just thinking about it with this new lens that you're bringing out, man, this hearing for us, randall, hearing, like you said, that heartbeat, it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard, but the reason reason that it was was because I didn't hear it the last time and, like you said, just the physical part of it. And I think this might even go into like kind of another part of how we connect things and how we don't really think about how much physical touch really does mean something, because it does bring another dimension of reality to us. When I think about something that's real, I think about things that I can experience with my five senses.
Speaker 3:yes, and all five of those senses are physical yeah you know being uh, sight, sound, taste, sight, sound, taste, touch. All that is all physical, yeah, and I got none of that. I got none of that. I never saw the baby, never touched the baby, never heard the baby, never felt the baby with my own two fingers Shoot man, you know, I never. I never even got to have the baby like throw up in my mouth by accident, you know like you know, man, like I got, I got none of that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I got none of that, you know. And it's funny because with your original question about the barriers of grieving, it was already hard enough trying to get over that barrier, that first barrier, without this part. Right, just thinking about, I have to now think of this as real and honestly, I think, with what we're talking about in terms of this physical touch, that might also be a part of the problem that we have of looking at it as a real loss, because there was not that physical aspect, there was not that touch, there was not that sight or sound. So because of that, not only is it hard for us to grasp, but it's also hard for other people to grasp, which is what brings in this barrier, because you have to accept that it was real, you have to accept that that was a child or had the potential to be a child, and that never came to fruition.
Speaker 3:So it's almost like you had a plan and the plan fell through before it even got started. You wanted to have a building, you got the foundation, but the foundation crumbled apart, so you never even got to actually build the thing. It never happened, but you were planning for it to happen. It's a black hole, man, it's a black hole. So I think a part of the barrier is finding something to grieve, because there's a whole half of that experience that isn't there. But you know you're sad, you know you've lost something, and one of the things that we have is our emotions. We don't consider our emotions to be a part of our senses, but we loved that baby, that child.
Speaker 1:The whole thing that we're talking about is the way in which we often make meaning and sense of our experiences is through the physical world, like everything that we know, the way that we talk about things, the way that we experience things, is very much in the physical realm, is very much in the physical realm, and obviously there are the abstract things like love and emotions and what have you that we understand, excuse me. We understand that these things are abstract, but we also try to put some sort of construct to convey what they mean. But very much so we are materialistic in the sense of we inhabit the material world, and when we don't have those things that we can touch or experience with our senses, like you said, it leaves us grappling with another reality that we're not very well versed in right. Over the last several years, the term emotional intelligence has become more prevalent in our vernacular right and that has everything to do with this awareness now that it's not just the physical stuff, it's also the abstract emotional stuff that we need to deal with and that we need to be faced with. So, even in your analogy of you know, building the foundation and then that crumbling apart, if I'm going to, I'm not an engineer or an architect by any means, but I know that before I can even get to the point of digging a foundation, I got to have some sort of of blueprints and plans and all of that stuff. So, even if that building never gets erected, I still have some sense of what it should have looked like and you know where it was going to go, how many floors it was gonna be. I still have the paper for crying out loud where all of these drawings were made on.
Speaker 1:In our case, bro, we got nothing. The most that we had in terms of something physical and tangible was maybe a pregnancy test, maybe a pregnancy test. And what did we do with that pregnancy test? We threw it away. So, like we legit just have nothing. But all of the things that we do have exist in these, in this abstract world of feelings and emotions and dreams and expectations and ideals and all of that stuff that we can't touch or experience with our five senses, and we grapple and struggle to put language to.
Speaker 1:So, on the one hand, someone who experiences a miscarriage doesn't have anything physical, tangible to connect it to in that way might be tempted to just chuck it over to. Hey, you know what, it doesn't matter, completely ignoring the stirring that's going on inside of that person. And because we don't have language, because we don't have the framework, the paradigm, the awareness to even say no. Like you said, this is not some. This pregnancy was not supposed to be my child. This pregnancy was my child. Yeah Right, the starting point has to be embracing fully. Just because it didn't materialize doesn't mean that that pregnancy was not your child, because when Michelle first told me that we were, that she was pregnant, I already saw myself as a father. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:She already started seeing herself as a mom and we had no baby yet. So the becoming a father, or the becoming a mother, or I should say the being a father, the being a mother and you've made this point many times doesn't begin when the baby arrives. It begins the moment that the knowledge of this baby, the anticipation of this baby, the first instinct of knowing that oh my God, we we're in this now, like that's when that identity of a parent for you and I, fathers, just instantly gets turned on. Yeah, so when that miscarriage happens, the loss is not just the loss of our child in that form. So I guess this is this is the next thing that I'm going to invite you to try to talk about. Yeah, how do you even talk about having a child in the abstract?
Speaker 3:On a. You are reading my mind, bro. Reading my mind because that is so hard like abstract anything.
Speaker 1:It's so hard like this is why we have a problem with abstract art I was just about to say that, bro, like you're looking at that and you're like yo, my three-year-old could have made that like. What deeper meaning am I supposed to get from this stuff?
Speaker 3:exactly. And then you have like this small amount of people that get, are like moved, and I'm like yo, it's like what are you watching?
Speaker 1:right, it's a dot on a canvas, bro. Like right, what's so moving about that? And it's like no, it's the existential stillness of the. It's just like whatever homie.
Speaker 3:Right, you know, but that's it right there, man. That's the problem. That's the problem. Yeah. You don't know how to deal with this man. You don't know how to find what you're supposed to grab onto. You know like at least and I shouldn't say at least. That's insensitive, I don't mean I don't mean to be insensitive, um, but when you lose someone that has been born at whatever age, young or old, there are memories that you have, clothing that you can feel, and hold on to yes spaces that you can walk into, that this person has lived and you don't have any of that.
Speaker 3:And the problem is it's only in your mind, with all of those other things. There is that feeling of being able to move past a little bit. And I do say that as someone who has lost loved ones, like I've lost. I haven't lost anyone recently, I'll say that, but uh, I mean, I remember losing my grandmother and going back to her house and being in her room and still smelling those smells and those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Now, granted, that was you can kind of feel that person's presence in some way, shape or form still in that space, because you're walking back into that space and you have your memory to rely on, even though your memory is not tangible, it's not physical, but you still have that to rely on and to help you feel that connection to the person who has since departed Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And with this, there's none of that. There's none of that's, none of that. I mean, I know, even for me and amber, I hadn't even started working on the room yet. It was still an office at the time, so I had I had nothing to grab on to. Like you said, um, and this was something that made me say, man, I never even thought about how the pregnancy test and we said, hey, you were done, you just threw it away. And my brain?
Speaker 3:I just suddenly thought, like man, that was like the only thing that I had that even proved that that was real and it's gone. And my brain was like, oh no, that was something I could have grabbed out immediately, just like that, you know, and again I feel like that's really. That is this. It's a strange type of thing to try to have to figure out and go through and it's stressing me out. If you're just talking about it right now, you know, and maybe that is a part of this whole thing of trying to get to this point of grief is it's so stressful to even get there. It's exhausting. It is easier to ignore this, like to not think about this, to not even go through the stress of understanding. It is so much better. But at the same time I realize, kelly, I'm not the same person I was. I'm not. I am not the same person that I was.
Speaker 3:That moment changed me and, whether or not I want to ignore it, it changed me. It changed me at my very core, changed my theology, changed the way I interact with my wife, changed the way I interact with my wife, changed the way I interact with both of my kids, the one that I had pre-miscarriage and the one that I had post-miscarriage, the one after the one that we had miscarried, completely changed everything in my life and, like I said, it would have done that whether I acknowledged it or not, whether I took the time to grieve or not. So if there is this moment in my life that is so tragic that it has literally shifted me as a person, then that has to be looked at, I have to grapple with it, I have to figure. Looked at, I have to grapple with it, I have to figure it out. Regardless of the fact that there again, there's this barrier. I've got to be able to push back that barrier, because a part of all of this is understanding. And if I just move on from this space without any kind of understanding about why I am the way that I am now, I'm losing and I'm always going to have a piece of me that is lost.
Speaker 3:Now, granted, that piece of me will always be lost, because losing a child, that's not going to come back, but at least I can come to a place where I understand what happened and I understand what has impacted me and how it has impacted me. So that way, as I'm moving forward, I can identify what's going on. With those low spots that I have, I can say yeah, you know, this is probably bringing me down today, let me try to do this or do that again. This is the whole reason. We're doing this podcast right Is so that we can create this space, so for other guys and ladies that are going through this, they can have a space to say okay, I do need to actually spend some time and think about this for a moment. I need to figure this part out Because, like I said, if you don't, you change and you don't know why, you know and that's a that's a big thing.
Speaker 1:So last week I was telling you and Sophie about. Last week I was telling you and Sophie about what's been going on with me ever since I started listening to Anderson Cooper's podcast All there Is, and what has what that has done for me is to free me up, to bring to the surface the grief that I have been burying following the miscarriage, the miscarriages that I've experienced, but in particular, the very graphic and difficult one that took place here in the home, and so I have some new thoughts that I want to share with you about that, because, again, that's just been on my mind this whole week. What I realized this week is that that miscarriage number one would have been my baby girl, kelly Rose. That's the one that I refer to as the blob with a heartbeat, whose nickname was Nemo or is Nemo, and so that's how I refer to her and that's how I'll refer to her throughout the rest of this conversation. What I found is that it's so much easier for me to grieve Nemo because I have the 30 something second video that Michelle sent me when she was in the ultrasound, and also because of the horrific, graphic scene of when she passed through Michelle's body here at home, and also because of the emotions that are attached to it as a result of what I saw and that whole story that I'm not going to rehearse.
Speaker 1:What I've also realized is that through that one miscarriage I've been able to then attach all the other ones to that one, so in some way that's become like the focal point by which I have been grieving all the other miscarriages, because some way, somehow again having that video, having those visuals it's kind of like we were talking about when you said after your grandmother passed, you were able to go back to her house and sort of feel and relive memories and her presence to her house and sort of feel and relive memories and her presence. There's not a time that I walk into that bathroom where I don't think about what happened here. So it's almost like for, as weird and gross and inappropriate as this sounds, my daughter in that phase, in that form that she was in, lives in that bathroom. Yeah, like that's where. That's where the memory of her is locked.
Speaker 1:So it's become easier because, again, of these physical things that now I can put and attach to to that event, to that loss, to that life, for, as irreverent as all of that may sound, and listening to more of these conversations, right, and we're talking about a miscarriage, for me and you lives in the abstract, right? We've spoken before about the womb of our imagination, like that's where it lives. So all of the thoughts, all of the feelings and emotions that you and I experienced during our, in our experiences, they all live and are stored in this cloud of our minds, if you will, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what do we do with that? Like it's, it's there, it's there. What do we do with that? So this week I've just been thinking and processing through, okay, so what do I do with that? Obviously, I'm doing something about it. We're having this conversation. This podcast exists as a result of all of those things, but I'm talking about in particular, specifically for me, what do I do with the things that I imagined or how I imagined my life would have been like with my daughter, with my daughter?
Speaker 1:I know that, like I said also last week, I grieve many times when I see fathers and daughters. You know, right now, as I'm talking to you, my cousin's daughter is here. My male cousin's daughter is here. So every time I see my cousin with his daughter, you know I love to see them because they have a beautiful dynamic and that little girl loves her dad and she's here and she's sad because she misses her dad, and so I'm watching her. And you know, my wife was holding her a little while ago and she fell asleep on Michelle and I'm watching that little while ago and she fell asleep on Michelle and I'm watching that and it's almost like I didn't want to focus my gaze on her and I wanted to be distracted on my phone because, as I'm watching her lay on Michelle, there's a part of my subconscious that is envisioning that could have been me with my baby girl taking a nap peacefully on her daddy. You know what I mean. So there are always these things that are playing around in my head.
Speaker 1:So the question that I've been wrestling with this week, chris, is what do I do with all of that that is stored in my mind, all of this love that I have still for this child who has never materialized? What do I do with all of these dreams of being a girl dad? What do I do with that? They're just living there, and I know last week I said grief is the language of love, because all of that love is just there and it's static.
Speaker 1:And so now that I know that, what am I supposed to do with it? Is it just supposed to stay there? Am I supposed to ignore it? Am I supposed to lock it away? I can't throw it away because that would be just no Like. There's no way. I don't ever want to forget that that blob with a heartbeat that I named Nemo was going to be my daughter, or is my daughter, and I don't even know what's the right terminology to say. Is it, was it going to be my daughter? Is it is going to be my daughter? Like? What do I do with all of that? And so I'm still trying to process through. You know what these things mean for me, brother, because I know that I can't just ignore all of that in me, and yet I am acknowledging that I don't even have the language or the tools or anything to really figure out what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, you know. So that's that's where I'm at with with this whole thing for now.
Speaker 3:I think that's what makes this situation very unique and, again, we're obviously not taking shots at people who have lost, people that they've been able to experience physically Clearly not, but each I would even say each type of death is unique. Losing a grandparent is not the same thing as losing a cousin. Losing a parent is not the same thing as losing a child.
Speaker 1:So here we are now in this space where we're not even sure if we can call it a child, and then, on the other hand, it almost feels inappropriate not to say that that is our child Because, again, that's a point that you and I have made very clearly on the podcast so far, and you were the one, the first one to say it the moment you find out you're going to be a parent, you are a parent, which inherently means that that is your child. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. Yet in talking about this and in trying to figure out, like, what to say and how to say it and how to convey it here, I am like tripping over my words.
Speaker 3:Because it's hard to convey it here. I am like tripping over my words, because it's hard to convey. This whole thing is confusing. It's confusing man, and it doesn't help living in a world that is also just as confused about it as we are, because you can't even say well, just go to counseling for it. You tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't know how many counselors, I don't know if there's a lot of counselors that specialize specifically in miscarriage.
Speaker 1:That's something that we'd have to look into.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and I guess that is something we can find out. Maybe that's a good resource for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:For us and to share with others if we find something, but you just don't. How do you deal with the abstract? How do you grab it? This is the problem that people have I'm not trying to be funny, but it is kind of funny is the problem that people have with math. Math is completely abstract. It's a bunch of made-up numbers, man, you know. I mean like early on, obviously, like addition and subtraction, okay, cool. But calculus, why, what? What is, what is the purpose of any of this?
Speaker 3:once we got to imaginary numbers, bro, I was lost right, not just imaginary numbers, imaginary shapes, yeah, and then placing those imaginary numbers and shapes in imaginary situations that have never happened, like you know what, why? Why any of this, you know, like pythagorean's theorem, like that is literally just an equation of perfection. Like if we were going to imagine a perfect, you can't even draw a perfect triangle. It is a completely made up stuff, you know. That's why people have a hard time grasping it and it's like, okay, that's a made up situation. Now I'm in a real life situation that I've never been trained for in terms of trying to figure out how to deal with an abstract death, a death that is real and yet not real at the same time, a death of a child that you never saw or met or heard but is yours, you know you saying a death that is real and not real at the same time.
Speaker 1:Just kind of it struck me real in the sense that a miscarriage did happen. I'm curious if you can elaborate on what you mean, or what you intend to mean, by not real I mean not real in the sense that there was man, and this is even hard to explain yeah there was a child, but a child was never born and and not even not born, it never moved.
Speaker 3:Amber never had a stomach, her belly never got bigger. It's like it wasn't real. It's like it never happened. There is no missing space in my home where I can remember things. It never happened. It never happened. It never happened. And yet it did because, like, the baby was there, the pregnancy test was positive. Amber was having cravings. It was there then, just it wasn't.
Speaker 1:You know what this is making me think of, chris at the risk of sounding very philosophical, because, number one, I am not a philosophical person at all but this is making me think about conversations about the nature of reality. Yeah, right, like how we even define what is real and what is not real, and I guess this is what we've been talking about since the beginning, right? So there's the, the abstract, and then there is the, the physical world that we interact with, but this sense that you just described, bro of amber had cravings real amber. Um, there was the, the positive pregnancy test real, like she actually peed on a stick yeah and you, I can take it, even if I could take it a step further.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she passed the baby.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, there is that aspect. So she was in pain, bro, she went into a labor process. Yes, all of that happened, like it actually happened. And also it actually happened in a way that didn't disturb the space in the same kind of way that, like you said earlier, your grandmother's passing Right, that, like you said earlier, your grandmother's passing right like it disturbed the space in terms of now, I could never walk into that bathroom and not think about what, how I saw my wife and and all the blood that I saw. You would never walk into also the bathroom in your home and not think about seeing Amber in pain and all the blood and distress that she was in. Like that. Those things happened, yeah. And also I don't know what Kelly Rose looked like.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the sound of her voice is or would have been. I don't know what her personality would have been. I don't know if she would have looked more like me or if she would have looked more like Michelle. I don't know what her interests are or would have been. I don't know if you know she would have picked up any of my my character traits or my physical traits. I don't know what her interests would have been. I don't know what her talents would have been. I don't know what she would have become. I don't know who she would have married. I wouldn't know if she would even consider marrying. I don't know what school like there is. There are so many things that I don't know. I don't even know what kind of baby she would have been like in the womb. Would she have been more of a chilling child? Would she have been more active than Juki? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that when Michelle said that she was pregnant, we weren't excited because we had already gone through our experiences. We approached it with a level of caution and with a level of we'll just see how it goes. And then, in this attempt to not let ourselves jump the gun and express any type of emotions about this pregnancy, while I'm at work I get a 30 something second video and I see the heartbeat. I didn't hear it, but I saw the heartbeat and I let myself imagine. Finally, I told you. I said to her, I texted her back. I told you you were pregnant. I told you this one was going to be okay, didn't I tell you? I asked her, I texted her back. I told you you were pregnant, I told you this one was going to be okay, didn't I tell you? I asked her, I told you so and she responded back yeah, babe, I just didn't want to give myself, I just didn't want to get my hopes up and I was like, yeah, babe, don't even worry about it, we have nothing to worry about. I said to her. And then, when we go back to the appointment for the follow-up appointment, there is no heartbeat.
Speaker 1:Where did all that go? How could there be so much hope, so much anticipation, so much excitement, so much joy and all of a sudden bro from in a matter of a week? How could all that suddenly come to an end? No explanation, no rhyme or reason, no pre-warning, no, nothing suddenly comes to an end. So all of that hope, all of that excitement, all of that love, all of that anticipation, all of that, all of all of who I was in those moments, what do I do with those? Who is that? What do I do with those? Who is that? What is that? Where does that go? Where do I place it? What do I do with it? What do you do with it? What does anybody do with it? And is that even the right question to ask Are we supposed to do something with it or does it just stay there? Does it?
Speaker 1:just hang there what if we look at it from a different perspective and instead of asking what do I do with it, we ask the question what can I do with it? What can I do with the fact that I have all of this love for my daughter stored inside of me? What if it's not something that is supposed to restrict me but it's given me sort of like a blank canvas to imagine whatever it is that I can do with it? What would that look like?
Speaker 3:Honestly, I was just thinking when you, literally when you just said that you know it is, either looking at that love that is static as either a barrier or just a curve. You know something that you just that is there, there, but that you can go around, doesn't necessarily have to go anywhere, it can just be there. And you know what? I shouldn't even say a curve, uh, but a channel, um, something that you can. You can go through because you will change, you are changed, that's just what it is, you know, but you can. That can either block your momentum or you can channel through that to some kind of new momentum, something that you haven't done before.
Speaker 3:And why not? Because you're not who you were before. Yeah, as it is. Yeah, so you might as well use that love for something to make you into something, because the fact is that love is never going to go anywhere, and maybe that is the terrible beauty of it is that that love will never go anywhere because that person you never got to give it and because you never got to give it, and because you never got to give it and because it is more of an abstract thing, that means it will always be, it can always be there to help channel whatever it is that you're trying to channel that love through, and looking at it as channeling love.
Speaker 1:The question that formulated in my mind as you were talking is how can I express that love to Kelly Rose in the abstract, in the form that she exists in my mind, in the abstract? How can I still love her and channel that love to her there? By loving your kids, it could be, by loving my boys in a totally different way than I'm loving them now. It can be, I don't know, you know, by finally doing that thing that I've been putting off for so many years. I mean, it could, it could really be anyway, in any way. Right, like you know, I think that's the just just to, to close the loop on that. I think that's what I was trying to get at.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I completely agree, because for us it's loving our kids, but there are people that have had miscarriages, that don't have kids. So you place that love wherever it needs to go, like you said in terms of, hey, maybe you need to focus that love in on yourself, maybe you need to focus it on your spouse, maybe you need to focus it in your projects or what your passion is in life. But, like you said, man, taking that and channeling it in whatever place that you need it to.
Speaker 1:This has been one of the most intriguing conversations that I've had. Yeah, just in full transparency to our audience, you and I didn't even know where this conversation was going to go before we started. I think we've landed, at least for for how I'm feeling right now. I think we've landed in a in a good place, and I don't think it's a matter of providing like concrete steps towards doing or not doing, as much as I hope that what we've shared and the perspective that we've shared is helpful to someone and helping them frame their experience to realizing that love that is channeled and in a purposeful way is a way of, I guess, positive grieving, if I can even say it that way.
Speaker 3:Grieving well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a way of grieving well, the pain that one feel. It doesn't minimize, it doesn't take away, it doesn't replace, it doesn't do any of that stuff. In fact, again, every time I see a father and a daughter, there's a part of me that still feels that pain, some part of my consciousness and subconsciousness, the miscarriage that happened here at home and the fact that again I keep saying it, and every time I say it, it's yet another reliving I will never be a girl, dad, you know. And also there is this now I, I personally, I feel a lot more empowered to consider how it is that I'm loving my sons, how it is that I am able to channel that love that is static there and put some movement to it, toward something or someone. And it certainly has been doing that already.
Speaker 1:Because, again, this podcast is an expression of that and it can't be the only thing because my daughter would have been more than just my daughter. She would have been dynamic, she would have been explosive in the best possible ways, she would have been incredible. I know that not because I'm an incredible person, but because she would have been an incredible human being, full of potential and all of that stuff. So, yeah it that? Yeah, yeah, I sound like I'm bad, the bad, the bad, the bad, and that's all folks.
Speaker 3:But now, man, I think, I think that's a perfect way to end it. Man, that's a perfect way to end it. Thank you you.