The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
A podcast dedicated to humanizing the experience of miscarriage, and normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers.
The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
E29: The Invisible Loss (ft. David Bradley)
Welcome to episode 29!
How do fathers cope with the invisible grief of miscarriage? Joined by David Bradley, a chaplain with a rich background in the arts, we explore the emotional and psychological journey of fathers experiencing miscarriage. David opens up about his personal story from 1997, recounting the initial joy of discovering a pregnancy, followed by the sudden heartbreak of loss. It's a poignant memory when his identity was transformed by the news of impending fatherhood, only to be shattered by miscarriage. We delve into the complexities of communicating this loss to family and colleagues, the struggle to find language for such an invisible grief, and the solace found in shared narratives and supportive conversations. The episode underscores how the non-linear nature of grief can be navigated through open communication and compassion.
We also examine the profound impact of storytelling and societal expectations on our understanding of parenting and miscarriage. From the concept of "ambiguous loss" to the unique emotional tolls faced by fathers and mothers, this conversation with David Bradley sheds light on the necessity of empathy and patience. We share personal anecdotes and reflections, emphasizing the importance of integrating grief into daily life and finding moments of both sorrow and joy.
Ultimately, this episode is a heartfelt call for creating spaces where fathers can openly discuss their grief and experiences, fostering healing and resilience through compassionate conversation.
Sincerely,
Kelly
Instagram: @themiscarriagedad
Email: themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
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It's not a quiet thing. It doesn't have to be. It's your shared story and then it's two individuals. Both of those things are true, but it's yours, it's the you in each of those three stories, and then you do with it what you want. That's the biggest thing. But it doesn't have to be a shame, a quietness, a thing you don't talk about.
Speaker 3:This is the Miscarriage Dads podcast, the podcast humanizing the experience of miscarriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. Welcome to another episode of the Miscarriage Dads podcast. My name is Kelly and I'm delighted to be here with a unique and special guest who I am going to ask to introduce himself. So, my guy, can you please go ahead and introduce who you are?
Speaker 1:Thanks, kelly, and thanks for inviting me to come talk with you. I'm David Bradley. I'm a Philadelphian, I'm the father of two sons who are 24 and 22 years old, I'm the husband of a marvelous woman and I'm a chaplain who comes to chaplaincy from a 35-year career in the arts as a theater director and teacher and creator of community-engaged arts projects.
Speaker 3:In lots of different ways I think this is, you know, for the sake of our audience. The sake of our audience and, I think, because of the value of how you and I even got to get to this place, of having this conversation. It's worth mentioning that you and I are colleagues. We work in the same place and not just work at the same place. We share an office together and it's within that setting that we spark these conversations.
Speaker 3:I don't quite remember how the conversation started that led to me sharing this about myself and then you sharing that you have a similar story as well, but I think it's important to begin with that, given the fact how uncomfortable this conversation is period, let alone having two colleagues talk about it sort of out of the blue. Right, it's not that I had been experiencing anything and, as you are going to tell us, you are well removed from your experience of miscarriage, but still, here we are talking about it and in our office. Do you remember what the conversation was that sparked it or how we we came to to land on this and, you know, discussing about me inviting you onto the podcast? Do you remember at all?
Speaker 1:I mean, I very much remember the conversation and what I'm trying to now remember is did you just start by talking about? I knew you had a podcast and I knew you were very interested in the perspective of fathers and the perspective of fathers. You know, in all kinds of processes where fathers are sometimes where the voices of fathers and perspectives of fathers are sometimes harder to bring to the fore and I forget whether we were talking about the podcast or you just were talking about your experience becoming a father in your family. I forget which led to which, but that then got us into it and then I shared that I had, that I was in that terrain with you. I don't even want to say similar experiences because I don't. You know, the experiences are very different but they're under the umbrella of each of us having experienced our spouses having miscarriages and being dads, or dads to be involved in that process and then being dads on the other side of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I remember from the little bit that I can that while we were having that conversation, it struck me, number one, just how valuable that moment was, given that you've shared that your experience. Again, you're far removed from your experience, and yet we were talking, we were sharing a similar language right, we were sharing a lot of of similar things that you would say something, and I think I said to you at one point it it feels like you're reading my script, you know so so just that dynamic of it was was really valuable in the moment that we were talking about it, and that is one of the few things that I do remember in terms of when we were having that conversation. So I'm thankful that we are finally here and that we are going to get into your story, and so feel free to share as much or as little as you would like and take as much time as you want.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I also just want to start by saying what an amazing space this is, and it's a space that, as far as I know, did not exist in the spring of 1997, when my journey into this began, and that was actually one of the things that I think my wife and I experienced all through this was and we talked about this, you and I the invisibility and the kind of muted volubility of talking about miscarriage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I guess begin there. If I may interrupt you begin there. Give me a sense of the landscape in terms of how that conversation, to the best of your knowledge, was happening or not happening, received or not received.
Speaker 1:So it's. I mean, I start with just a memory I have in in May of 1997, getting ready to go to this national conference on theater for young audiences. It was happening in philadelphia. Like that morning my wife shares with me, she's pregnant and I remember being in the bathroom of our apartment and looking in the mirror and going, wow, this is the face of a father. Like you know, the identity shift, yeah, like I was 30 years old and like, boom, I was something different, all of a sudden. And and all of a sudden, and there wasn't a consideration of like, well, don't count your chickens, buddy, this is, it is, it's very early there. It was just sort of like, boom, this is the face of a father. And it was then only, I think about a month later that, uh, I was actually up in New York.
Speaker 1:I don't even know how Margaret reached me, cause I don't think I had a cell phone. I I mean like I don't know, but that something was not right and she was worried and so I came back down, and then that was a Saturday night. I came back down Sunday morning, late Saturday night. So I got out of train Sunday morning and by Monday we knew that she was miscarried and what my memory was not knowing how to talk about it with family, with, like, are you gonna, who are you going to talk to about it? Don't make a big. You know we don't want't want to. I mean, I do remember calling for her to her work because she wasn't going to be in and she just didn't want to call.
Speaker 1:And I knew the folks she worked with, we. They become people who we were close to. Many of them were in our wedding a couple years before and I called and said, well, margaret's pregnant and his and his, the guy's first thing was wait, wait, wait, congratulations. I was like, but but this is what we think is going on. And that conversation happened a couple different times and, like I, I had a meeting at work that was going to involve a lot of people, so I had to call and cancel it and I had to say something. But you didn't know it. It's a, it's an invisible thing, right, you know? And that was the first experience of like, how do you, how do you talk about this? Do you talk about it? The first experience we had was we first had to tell people that margaret was pregnant before you can even before you even said the miscarriage because it was very early.
Speaker 1:So like breaking, you know, our parents didn't know, you know because it was early. And that, I think, was a strange feeling of like we hadn't even shared good news and then you sort of had to share the good news. It's almost like the. If it were musical it would be like and what and what? The and was the good news, the downbeat was the actual news. And then how do you talk about it? Or you don't talk about it, and I remember telling my older brother like we don't really want to talk about it. He's like all mean.
Speaker 1:It was somewhere in the process that we were in then for the next two years. I remember encountering a book called I think it was called Wanting a Child and it must have been written fairly around that time or just a little before, and I think it was a series of essays from different writers about people going through the experience of either not being able to conceive at all or miscarriage or whatever. And that was solace because you sort of felt like you're not alone in this and there actually is, like there's language for this. But so that was. That was the beginning of a journey, of what would turn out to be four miscarriages over two years.
Speaker 3:So here, here you are now. There was that moment of that instant identity. This is the face of a father, and a month later, what happened to that identity?
Speaker 1:Well, we're going back a long way. So I wish I could. I wish I had been an avid journaler or something, so that I could read to you my thoughts, because I don't remember the specificity of it and in a way and maybe you experienced this too in a way a first miscarriage you go, you know one, you do learn that other people have had miscarriages. I might've even known my mother had had one already at that.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, okay, I was actually going to ask you that question next. Had you known so maybe you might've known that your mom had a miscarriage. Did you know of anybody else in your circle?
Speaker 1:I'm trying to remember, in our circle at that point, not that I know of, not that I was aware of, I I you know, I, you know we were we were just at the beginning of, like our friends and family members. Well, here I did know, I knew of of a family member who had been trying to conceive and didn't, and then, you know, adopted and that was before us. So, but I didn't know any particulars and I don't know whether even miscarriage was involved. I don't know anything but and I think then an aunt on one of our sides said you know, I had a miscarriage too, trying to normalize it and and in a way, in that way of trying to normalize it, almost playing it off, as it's not a big deal, you know, and statistically kind of, we know, if you just look coldly, statistically right, it's very common. It's very common, yeah, but the statistics and the, the emotions, so they live in, live in different realms, yeah, 100, um. So I, I think the feeling I had at first, maybe with that first one, but just trying to remember back, is like, okay, this sucks and it's sad and we don't know what we're doing, but it it's one and there's no pattern, there's no, there isn't as much and I can't speak for. What my wife was feeling and that was also one of the hard things was just not knowing even for the two of us how to talk about it. But maybe, okay, maybe this was a quote, unquote bump in the road, and then the road it's going to turn. And then in I think it was January no, it was again spring. It was spring, early summer of 98. We had another miscarriage and then in january of 99, another one and then in april of 99, another one.
Speaker 1:So what I, what I then do remember in terms of the identity shift you're asking about, somewhere in that journey starting to go. Like you know, I was working in theater, I had done theater since high school. But I would say to people you know I was working in theater, I had done theater since high school. But I would say to people you know, I was never sure what I wanted to do in my life, except I was sure I wanted to be a dad. Like that was the one thing I was sure I wanted and probably didn't question that it would happen. My wife jokes about how we are with mortality in general by saying people will say all right. So when I get married, dot dot dot. And if I die, dot dot dot and she's like you know, we really should reverse this, because only one of them is certain to happen.
Speaker 1:But I think I had some of the same certainty of, like, I'm going to be a dad, that's the thing I know, and now all of a sudden that's in real question, or that's going to take work, or that's going to take a whole other journey. That was unsettling. That was really hard.
Speaker 3:At any point did you? Because I resonate very deeply with that unsettling aspect of it. I also knew from very early on that with a certainty I was going to be a dad. And then things started happening and it was like I don't know if that's going to happen for me, I don't know if it's going to materialize. The joy, the excitement, all of that was stripped away.
Speaker 3:My, my identity as a, as a man, as a person, just came into question in all sorts of ways. There was the feeling of responsibility that I was then causing this to my wife. So this is very much so my fault and there is something flawed about me and my body, and I think it was just my way of trying to protect my wife. It was my way of trying to make sense of what this experience was all about. But it definitely did force me to not just reconsider, but it challenged, like deep, fundamental aspects of how I saw myself as a man. Did you undergo, as far as you can remember, anything like that and how did you navigate it if you did?
Speaker 1:One of the things I most remember coming up against and I don't feel good about it. Now as I look back on it and I think I guess I can understand why I felt it. I mean, I can have empathy with that. You know you start to think, well, okay, if we want to be parents, how will we be parents if it is difficult to just conceive a child? You know, and we went into a fertility program and we looked at all of that. We knew IVF was out there. We didn't get to that point but we held it out there and you're making financial considerations and then we also, you know, adoption becomes a thing and I found myself having a really hard time considering adoption was a litter.
Speaker 1:There was some literality in me of like wanting to have a child that came from us and came from me, yes, genetic. And you know I, I have the you know my goddaughter who my door is adopted, my, you know, I've got these cousins who were adopted. I, you know, now I have friends that I didn't know then. You know our dear, dear friends who've adopted two children, who we, you know, I've got these cousins who were adopted. I, you know, now I have friends that I didn't know then. You know our dear, dear friends who've adopted two children, who we, you know, have grown up with our kids and their family too. So now I look at it and go what was going on with that? I mean, these beautiful families who are absolutely the children, are absolutely the children of these parents, stone, cold, cold. No doubt this is a family, but I think that was a hard limitation that I was coming up against. An adoption was a. For some reason, that was a wall.
Speaker 1:I even like, in the spring of 99 I was directing a play actually written by a very good friend of mine. It was a new play, it was, it was a, it was a spin on Lewis Carroll's through the looking glass, and so it was an identity quest story and it was about a girl who was adopted and was wrestling with who you know, her identity and who was her, who were her parents, birth parents or adopted parents? And you know the playwright had just come up with this and I remember going and, and so this was between. This was after miscarriage three. We started conceiving. It went into rehearsals and in rehearsals miscarriage four happened. While, also in the rehearsal process, two close friends of mine, who were also part of this theater company. They weren't in the play but and they were married to people in theater.
Speaker 1:So two couples who were within four days of each other had their first children wow, this is all of it, yeah you know, while you know and I forget whether, with the fourth one, whether I came in and told people I might've told a couple, I might've told I probably told a few very close colleagues at the theater, you know, there was one person I was working with closely who'd become a real confidant and but like.
Speaker 1:So all of that and wrestling with adoption and all of that, that was, I think, the biggest thing I felt in an identity way, and where I took and a wall I hit that I, at looking back on it, I only can think of as a kind of trauma response to a literal mind and a person who grew up thinking you have to, you know there's right ways to do things and I, I think I have a lot more latitude in my thinking now and my experience, but and and and also the world's a little different. I mean, you know, even even you know, we like to think of the late nineties as a more enlightened time and it was that, say the fifties, but I think of the world's even more different, you know, 25 years later, and I'm glad that you brought up this adoption piece, because I found myself wrestling with that thought also.
Speaker 3:And so 25 years ago, three years ago, three or four years ago, it's the same, it's the same struggle, and I haven't thought enough about it yet to try to understand why that was such a thing for me at the moment. Because the irony in my experience is that my wife and I had spoken about, before we even started trying to have children. We had spoken about, after we have kids, it would be cool to adopt kids, it would be cool to adopt. So it's not that we had any type of negative feeling or we we would never consider adoption to begin with. It's something that we had spoken about prior to even having children.
Speaker 3:And then here I find myself now in my quest to try to have children. I find myself now in my quest to try to have children, and at that moment, in that context, adoption was not a way of escape. It didn't seem to pacify this deeper drive, this impulse in me, this thought that so encased my thinking. I want to have a child that comes straight from my own body, that my wife and I produce genetically, biologically, me and her. Nothing else is going to satiate this. Whatever that thing is or was, or I mean, I don't know if is there language for what this drive is, is it more than I would like to say? That it's more than just some animalistic, primitive impulse to just biologically or genetically reproduce. It's something deeper than that, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it is that and that, that we probably can't discount that part of it because in a way, that's that's how the species is millennial. So there's, it's part of that. But I do think, as the species has evolved and gotten cognitive on this stuff and thinking, you know, we're we're shaped by stories, we're shaped by mythology, and I mean that in the biggest sense not the fake sense of mythology we are shaped by this notion of parents and children, fathers and sons. And, let's face it, a lot of the mythology, for as long as humans were creating things, was male centered, yes, you know, unfortunately. So there there is all of that that steeps us. And maybe, actually, if women had been centered more in those story, in that story making and in situating the iconography, who knows how we might've felt about all of this, because we would have been less centered.
Speaker 1:But I think there's also something in all of this about how hard it can be to let go of something about which we feel very sure and certain, which, funnily enough, is a part of the journey of parenting anyway. A part of the journey of parenting anyway. It's a continual letting go, whether it's just realizing, well, this human life's going to grow up and move farther and farther away from anything you can determine. We're even very early on going. Yeah, well, that day didn't turn out the way we planned it. You know we're going to do this this morning. Well, somebody's sick or somebody has a temper tantrum, it's only just doesn't want to go to the park. Parenting is nothing but letting go. But I think we're also very sure that we, you know, as humans, we get something stuck in us. It's hard to let go.
Speaker 3:You know, to that let go point that you're making, I think the challenge that comes with miscarriage is that, physically, tangibly, there was nothing to let go Right. And so, in terms of loss, I'm being asked to what let go of something I've never had, if loving is also a form of letting go. I've loved because there's that moment, that identity discovery moment. This is the face of a father, right, and then, just like that, that is gone. But I never had more than just that memory of seeing my face in the mirror in a different way because of this news. So, yeah, I don't know what the question is, but I just wanted to put that on the table and say, bring up something about miscarriage.
Speaker 1:That's that particularly when I was experiencing it and still sounds like when you and your wife were experiencing it, but maybe there's. Maybe well, now there are podcasts and maybe there's more language for it. But's this concept the psychologist named pauline boss has done a lot of work on called ambiguous loss. Yeah, where she? And that it can get applied to, say, soldiers who are experiencing, after their service kind of the trauma they experience and they're processing that. Or you have a parent or somebody you love who's moving into dementia or Alzheimer's, so you are losing them even though they are still here.
Speaker 1:It's not as clear-cut loss as some others you might experience. I think miscarriage falls into that category 1,000%. So if we go back to my story of looking at myself in a mirror, here's the face of a father which, in fact, was me just projecting. There's nothing visibly different about looking at my face. I made a story, I made the mythology right there in that thing. Well then, a month later, I look in the mirror. Nothing looks different, but I have seeded the face of the father.
Speaker 1:Now it's an ambiguous loss and you don't hold, like you can hold, a child that lives for an hour or is born having already died in utero, but you can hold that child there, and I'm not saying one is worse or anything, it's just different. You don't hold, you don't have the similar tangibility. And the loss of a miscarriage there wasn't isn't good language for it. It's a very different thing for the mother than the father, cause it's more. I believe it is more tangible for the woman. Her body has experienced something, has begun to change and is now changing again. So I think my wife we talked about the invisibility, but I also know and I think I wasn't good enough at really understanding this then because I got caught in my own stuff she actually was experiencing tangible physical things impact, on loss?
Speaker 3:yes, because at least for for michelle, my wife, she had to go. She underwent all of these surgeries. I remember when, after I think it was the first procedure, and she said several weeks later or several days later it's fuzzy in my memory now that she was still feeling the internal pull of the suction and how traumatic that was to her, to her body, to her memory, to everything, everything. A couple of weeks ago I spoke with a woman on here who shared her experience and she was just advocating for men to be very patient with their female partners because not just because of the miscarriage, but throughout the duration of the pregnancy, even if it doesn't end in a miscarriage, the woman's body is getting intruded by a whole lot of things. You know, not every ultrasound, as she said, not every ultrasound is done on the surface of the belly and I was present with my wife many times when the doctor said I got to get a better ultrasound so I have to use the wand and all of that just sort of her body is keeping the score of all of that.
Speaker 3:You and I as men, we are impacted by that to the degree that we see how uncomfortable our wives are, but then we don't know what that feels like, because I get to go play basketball after we get home. You know what I mean. Like I, in fact, I'm here because she's going to feel uncomfortable and I, my body, is able enough to drive her back home and I, my body, is able enough to drive her back home. Right, you know. So I don't experience it in in that sense. So you, you are spot on when you say that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a big part. I can't remember, you know, a lot of time it was in between these miscarriages, even in that church. But that's the part, just thinking back, that that I know I could have done better on just kind of what that empathy is. And how do you, you know, compassion literally means suffering with, how do you suffer with somebody even as you're going through your own suffering? How do you hold your suffering together? And I'm sure we did well on some ways. But I, I just know that crossing, I mean, it's a, it's a very hard because you just don't know what the body's experiencing and then how that influences the psyche. Because, whatever we can wonder about, is it my genetic stuff, is it me? Whatever, no matter, it's still happening inside my wife's body. It's still starting, you know it's still starting to happen and then stopping and transitioning in her body.
Speaker 3:I think this is a good opportunity to ask you this question. You now have the gift of perspective and hindsight, and it is a gift right?
Speaker 1:I think that's a good word.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. Now that you're able to look at your story that time in your life in an objective way, and because of how far we have come since 1997, since 1999, thought patterns have evolved, awareness has expanded you can continue to look at your story objectively and say what you just said I could have been, I could have handled this differently, I could have done, I could have had more. So now that you have this level of awareness, whatever level of awareness you have now, how can you speak to men who are in a similar position as you and I were? They don't know what they don't know. How can you instruct, how can you encourage, how can you inspire them to really carry out that literal definition of compassion with their wives, their girlfriends, significant others?
Speaker 1:I wouldn't instruct, yeah maybe that's a bad word, yeah, and maybe it'll inspire, maybe it'll encourage, I don't know. And maybe it'll inspire, maybe it'll encourage, I don't know. Yeah, I mean the things I, the things I notice now is like and this is just very hard, and you and I know this from our work, it's grief is a hard and individual process. I guess I would say the experience of going through this as as the man with a woman who's miscarriaging is there's a lot of unknowing, you are in a lot of unknown space and there are some things you're never going to know because the woman is not necessarily going to be able to put into words that she's experienced.
Speaker 1:She can try, and we know even putting it into words is still one step removed from feeling. So there's a lot you're not going to know, and maybe that's something we just need to realize more and more. Always there's a lot we don't know, and so silence doesn't mean being cut out, silence doesn't mean being angry at it could. And even if it does, that's it. And how can you work on being still in the unknown I don't even want to say patient, because patients require patients can sometimes connote a kind of tolerance for as opposed to just waiting, waiting in the unknown and just being beside in that, because there's just there, it could be a large chasm, it could be a very narrow, just little break that one could step over, but there's just a little space of experience to a lot of space of experience. So that's one thing I don't know now, if we would have done anything ritualistic, we didn't. Then I remember my wife with a friend who also had a miscarriage once we were in the process of review. They talked about doing something and they might have done something together, and that also is about who you are as the two people involved in this, if that feels true, if there's a way to do that to make it a little more visible. I think it got a little I don't want to say easier. It got different probably by the third miscarriage. We were telling people, close people, when Margaret got pregnant, right away, because we understood the risk of the loneliness. So we then didn't have to do that first step of Margaret's pregnant. But you know, and I started to learn how to talk about it, this was probably the first adult trauma I'd experienced, and so I was new to that name, which I guess you could say. If at 30, that's the first one, maybe you have a pretty lucky 30 years. There was other stuff going on I didn't know about younger that probably would have felt traumatic, if anybody that actually did feel traumatic. But I didn't know. Uh, if anybody had told me I'd have had different experiences. But how do you learn? How do you find ways to talk about in ways that are true and useful to you? Who are the people that become?
Speaker 1:I mean, there was somebody I didn't even know that well. She was an actress who was around the theater where I was working and she'd done a few productions over a couple of years and I just kind of immediately connected. She was older than me, single, a parent, and I just kind of felt simpatico to her. She was wise, she was an old soul. I had lunches and dinners with her and I actually even recently wrote to her because I reconnected with her and I said I don't know if you know how much it mattered to me to have those conversations with you. I was in a hard time and I was talking out loud and you were really good to talk to and I and I just want you to know that that that I appreciate that you were, that you were somebody I could be with. So that's another thing. It's like who are your people and that it's not. It's not a quiet thing.
Speaker 3:It doesn't have to be. It is if you want it to be, yeah, but it doesn't have to be anything.
Speaker 1:That is the biggest thing. It's your shared story and then it's two individual stories. Both of those things are true, but it's yours, it's the you in each of those three stories. And then you do it, but it doesn't have to be a shame a quietness, a thing you don't talk about.
Speaker 3:Man, thank you for saying that. I lived that process of parsing out that it's both a shared story and it is my story and it is her story. And it is through that process of parsing out these things that I finally took the step to start this podcast. And in the parsing it's also important to highlight that it's never a competition about my story, her story, which one is more important, which one? It's never a competition. It is simply a shared story that when you zoom into, there are two people who are holding their own pen to pen that greater unified story.
Speaker 1:And there can be times of focus, yes, where you know, like, think of what, those novels that are told from different points of view and there might be three chapters in a row that are from one point of view, because that is pride, whether it's because of a physical experience that your partner's having or whoever's emotions, you know, you know, but right, everybody's a full human being. I mean, I can't. That's a, it's a really great thing to say, it's not a competition and it's and and I also just go back to finding spots of empathy I mean an image I I never forgot was from the first miscarriage, when we went into the hospital that morning and it's interesting, the woman that Margaret had set up as her OBGYN, I guess, was in a practice and I guess she wasn't there that day. So a different doctor was on and I'm going to name her because she was great and important to us, debbie Schrager, and she met with us and then I guess we had to, margaret had to go get a test or something that was really going to determine, and then we came back and she'd gotten the results of the test and I guess we had to.
Speaker 1:I just never forget we must've come off the elevators. We're walking down to whatever the conference. Debbie was towards the end of the hallway, not super, but I still remember her face of compassion. She just met us at work, she just went I'm so sorry guys, wow and I mean she ended up delivering both of our children. She was, you know, through more miscarriages and even we went to a great fertility doctor and I'll shout out Maureen Kelly, hoping she's still doing this work because she was great. It's the image of Debbie, who didn't know us, just being there. It's like the end point of this triangle. These two people were walking toward her and here's this person just receiving us with understanding and compassion. That, I guess, is the other thing is to find your point of your triangle or the end point of your line, if it's just you and someone else, and to hopefully not be afraid to show that you're receptive to that.
Speaker 3:Life happens in cadences, we talk in cadences, we walk even our walk is in cadences. Life events, I think, also have a cadence that can severe not severely, but can really influence the way someone sort of see themselves, not just in that moment, but just their overall outlook of life. And recently I was reading a post on a Facebook group that I'm on of this young man who is experiencing, I think he said, his third miscarriage or something like that, and he reached out for help. Like hey, I was an avid drinker and I am really feeling like I want to hit the bottle again. Have you guys had any experience with this? Help me out, because it's been three miscarriages in a row.
Speaker 3:And he started to get to this point of desperation. So, with your cadence, the miscarriage cadence, were there things that coping mechanisms that you felt like you had in place to help you, or did you feel tempted to fall into unhealthy coping mechanisms that were available to you at the time? Like, how did you and how did you? What's the word I'm looking for? How did you navigate through, how to keep yourself on the right track of flow, health, whatever the case is, as you were experiencing these four losses, it's a great question and I'm not super specific in the memory of it.
Speaker 1:I'll say I probably was never tempted to fall into the kind of the place that the person who reached out to you was in. I didn't. I fortunately didn't have that experience. I will say, maybe, that I'm remembering it this way because of something somebody said to me around that time which probably could have been said in a more helpful way. But after the second miscarriage, so June of 98, so now it's happened twice. So now it's like oh, is this a thing? Now, at the end of that summer I was working on a project in the summer and it was hard and whatever, and somebody said to me you were in a hard place and you were not easy to talk to. So I think back and I was like it felt like I was being chided for what I was going through. You know there are lots of other ways that could have been reflected back, so I must have been. And.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I was. I'm sure that there was a rigidity. I'm sure there was a quickness to react that was out of impulse, that had a lot underneath it. I remember somebody else saying you know, cry if you need to in the car, like this was a woman whose parents both died and then her husband died of an aneurysm within months of each other, a few years before she's like I used to do that. I used to cry and yell as I drove to work to let it out. So that must have been a very hard time. The other thing about the rhythm of it that was crazy is just because life, you know life is, and so things keep going on.
Speaker 1:That fall of 98, I guess, we came back from a vacation or something to find that our townhouse, the townhouse where we had an apartment, had been sold and we had two months to get out. Wow. So then it was like we'd started to look for a house. It was like shit, all right, pedal to the metal on that. Um, so we actually found a house, bought a, a house, january of 99, we're packing when the third miscarriage happens. So we're like going through that and I remember packing. Margaret had gone out for something, and I'm like wrapping stuff in newspaper and crying. It's just like all of this all at once. Margaret changed jobs too, oh yeah, which was a good thing. It was a thing she had been seeking, but like it's the timing of everything
Speaker 1:so many things. And then you know, by the time we got pregnant with jacob, we became our where you learned that in the summer of 99, right after we learned, my father was diagnosed with cancer, that would he would die from a month exactly after jacob was born. So it's not necessarily ebb and flow. I just remember it as an inmate in an incredibly compressed time of change and of ups and downs and navigate. You know the ups of four pregnancies and downs of that, and then a fifth pregnancy that became our child and a new job and a house and a illness. You know coping. I mean I think I talked about finding people to talk to.
Speaker 1:I guess there was excitement in finding the house, so maybe that helped too. The part that was necessitated quickly by like an outside event you got to move, that was helpful in a way. You know it felt like newness in a way. So I don't know, I mean that just feels like a time of multiplicity and that it's not linear and that the spiral of things can be exciting and then they can suck, and they can be exciting and suck at the same time and they're unexpected. That, I guess, is its multiplicity and the whole experience just like grief, just like so many things, is not linear. You will meet different feelings again, maybe informed in new ways, but you will meet the feelings again.
Speaker 3:I guess the reason why I asked that question, david, is because my I'm challenging myself to think about the value of what I'm going to call distractions. I am a huge proponent of sitting in your muck and mire, and anyone who comes to try to get you out of there because they're uncomfortable with it, that person can go to hell, you know, because there's value in there, like that's my default. But then I'm also thinking about for me I don't know if I was giving myself room to to be distracted, because I felt like I needed to, especially after the second miscarriage. I felt like I needed to be as stuck as my wife, as I was witnessing my wife feel stuck and in order to be supportive and and and a loving husband and what have you, I can't go do that thing. That man would really be good for me to do right now, but I just can't.
Speaker 1:I really resonate because I think I might even say I kind of overprivileged my sadness and grief and upset. This is big. I'm feeling, you know, I'm a, I'm a theater guy, I'm a drama guy, but like I'm feeling this, this is new. I'm having big, hard experiences in life and so there's that and there, you know, and I wonder whether it's reframing what doing something else is, because distraction right, a pejorative term, oh, you're distracting yourself. Which sort of means you shouldn't be doing this. Distraction is what we do and we don't want to do the work we're doing. So we'll start scrolling, you know, espncom and see what's going on. Or is it life? Is that? I? Just?
Speaker 1:I'm rereading this book, kayak, kayak, mourning. I read it about 10 years ago. It's by a writer who lost his daughter suddenly, his 38-year-old daughter suddenly. And I think I'm rereading it now because I read it like 10 years ago. But now, as a chaplain, I'm like I think I'm going to get more out of this, and the reason I bring it up now is one of the things this guy started to do after his daughter died is he started to learn to kayak, and One of the things this guy started to do, you know, after his daughter died is he started to learn to kayak and he would go out on the water alone.
Speaker 1:Now he doesn't at all say he didn't feel the things he was feeling, you know, and he has a lot of metaphors about how kayaking kind of informs thinking about the world and life and your experience. But he didn't not kayak, you know he, and he clearly takes great joy in what he learned to experience in kayaking and his pun title of kayak morning M-O-R-N-I-N-G as he's also talking about M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G his daughter is a really interesting thing of how do you hold multiple things. So I think what you're feeling, what you're pointing up about, like allowing yourself to engage other parts of who you are, we can feel like we're not supposed to. Then it means we're not feeling what we're. You know we're making it invisible again, yes, yes, but maybe if we name the invisibility, that might open up ways to then to allow us to do other things. We're not hiding from it and we're not hiding from us.
Speaker 3:And I remember that point vividly in the case of a good friend of mine, one of my best friends. Her mother was in hospice and I remember her saying something to the effect of wanting to do something or wanting to go somewhere, but feeling as though she couldn't because her mom was here in this place and her mom couldn't leave. And I remember saying to her I understand that you want to support your mom and that's the loving thing to do. Like you, you are here with your mom, with your mom. It also seems to me as though you are trying to distill your life to resemble the things that your mom cannot do, to help you feel better about not doing those things that you are able to do. So because your mom can't get up and go to the store and get something to eat, you feel as though I can't get up to the store and go get something to eat.
Speaker 3:And I said to her but you can, and I think you should, because in a way that is honoring your mom and the fact that you are doing something that she cannot, but you can, and so you. The thought escapes me right now, but some some something along those lines. That story has always stuck with me, but then, like I said to you before, there is this part of me that's like no, you sit there, you don't move until that phase is over, and then you'll be free to go and you do what you want.
Speaker 1:And I think that is a tension that is unavoidable, right and in this space, because of this experience, thank you for talking about that tension between those two things because I think it's really it's really worth realizing that each are very true impulses. Think of and and I think, like this podcast is a great way of helping us think differently about is deep down, at least you know, in in american culture. Maybe in western culture we haven't really made grief a natural part of living ten thousand percent which then means, when we hit something like that, we think we must go.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like you got to go all in or you move on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, yeah. Those are the two extremes.
Speaker 1:I talked to a parent who lost a child and he said very quickly after the child's death, people were saying, well, it seems like you're moving on now and we talked about living off. Because it's like if your friend went to the store, this friend you were talking to, they went and did something. It's not that she's not grieving or can't grieve, it's not that going to the store means it's going to stop the grief. But I think the more we learn to realize how grief, how we can organize that there is living and grief at the same time and this is all because I think we have these kind of unnatural either or walled off, siloed, notions of how grief happens, that culturally, other cultures, I think, make it more of an organic part of living. I mean a similar experience, I think make it more of an organic part of living. I mean a similar experience. I mean we had a dear friend who died eight years ago, claire, of cancer, after a year just I mean a year from diagnosis to her dying, incredibly healthy person, four kids.
Speaker 1:We went down to Florida where they were and there was a beautiful memorial service and it was right at the beginning of December and this family's tradition was beginning in december, like first saturday of december, the tree went up. The decorations were that was just what they did. Well, damn, if the next day my best friend john and I weren't at I don't know, lowes or home depot or somewhere buying the tree. Yeah, and we all decorated the tree. And then I mean, they taught it at episcopalian school and the bishop of the diocese had gotten it. There was this moment where we realized the tree was not in the stand. It was all about the topple over. So like five of us are down there under the tree, butts up and the bishop walks into the house.
Speaker 1:And it was just this absurd moment of like asses up to the bishop that held and we all just laughed, probably even more than it warranted. But it was the absurdity of the healthy woman who died, the grief of that, the living on in the celebration of the holiday that's about birth and redemption, the holy man coming in, the fools under the tree, the the whole thing. But it it kind of was beautiful, because that's what it should be.
Speaker 3:Well, not should that's what it can. That's what it can be.
Speaker 1:That's what it can be and I think it it the the invisibility of miscarriage is a small part of what has what I think is hard about what grief is meant to be and how we can be a companion with grief as we live on in our lives you are 25 or so years now removed from this phase of your life and there are there are those who are currently in it, who cannot see past the next hour, the next couple of minutes, the next day, the next week.
Speaker 3:Again, I'm going to say that you have the gift of perspective and hindsight. Can you talk about your relationship to that moment of your life now, 25 years later, not ignoring the fact that you do have two living children now?
Speaker 1:Well, that's sort of the miracle right Is is. You know, we have these two boys, these men, young men, but it's hard, in this context also, to not think of them as boys, because we're talking about their birth. You never know how your story is going to turn out, and I'm not. I would never say like we, you and I, we talked about this in our office the first day, the way people normal, you know. Oh, just once you relax, you'll be able to conceive a child. Just relax, You're thinking about your work. There's lots of ways people try to just tell you you'll get to another side. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how the story will unfold.
Speaker 1:I think going into chaplaincy got me back in touch with remembering this experience a little more, because it was my first real experience of tangible loss and that is part of life and that will come in one way or another. I guess it's it's it's compassion, it is that suffering with you are suffering with yourself, you're suffering with your partner, you're suffering, maybe, as you think, about notions of what manhood is or dadhood is or whatever. So where and how can you find as much compassion as you can? Where are the spaces of compassion that aren't about it'll all be better. That aren't about you'll end up with a child, or two or four or whatever children, or you'll adopt a child. It's not about that. It's not about forecasting. It's just about saying you're human and all your feeling makes sense. And how can you have companionship in that moment? That's what I would wish anybody to be able to have, whether it's the compassion they can give themselves, be given, give to others that.
Speaker 3:I think that's a good place to stop. David, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom and your experience and perspective.
Speaker 1:Thank you. This was really meaningful to be able to just talk about and talk about with you, who are really brave in this space, and thank you for what you're doing, for opening this up, because this is all part of how it becomes part of a human experience and not an empty universe where private or shameful or private no-transcript.
