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
E37: Miscarriage, Art, & Advocacy (ft. Chari Pere & Eli Schiff)
Welcome to episode 37!
Chari Pere and Eli Schiff, the creative duo behind the groundbreaking Unspoken Series are this week's guests on the Miscarriage Dads podcast. Chari, a cartoonist, and Eli, a voice actor and director, open up about how their personal experiences with miscarriage have driven them to create comics and animations that resonate with those facing similar challenges, ultimately fostering a community of empathy and understanding.
Reflecting on the emotional whirlwind of loss and the tough decisions that follow, Chari and Eli share their story of navigating the heartbreaking reality when a seemingly healthy pregnancy took an unexpected turn. They recount the difficulties of managing these emotions while being apart, highlighting the unique struggle of maintaining religious observances amidst such turmoil. Their candid discussion reveals the often-overlooked impact of miscarriage on men, underscoring the need for supportive outlets for fathers who grieve alongside their partners.
Tune in as we explore the broader implications of miscarriage and the importance of open communication. The episode delves into society's need to recognize the emotional toll on both partners and the critical role of community support. Chari and Eli also share insights into the evolution of their Cartoonmentary series, discussing future projects that promise to cover a wide range of sensitive topics. Be inspired by their mission to break the silence and provide solace through storytelling for those navigating the often-hidden struggles of reproductive health.
Sincerely,
Kelly
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Links:
Cartoonmentary Series: https://www.youtube.com/@UnspokenCartoonmentary
He left, everything was fine, and he came back and he's no longer a dad-to-be, and he didn't have a chance to even think about that until the moment he sat down on the couch when he got home.
Speaker 3: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. Welcome to this episode of the Miscarriage Dads podcast. My name is Kelly and I'm your host, and I am delighted to have two individuals Well, they're a couple, so they're one unit who I am. I'm just really looking forward to diving into the conversation. So, without wasting any words, I'm going to ask you to please introduce yourselves.
Speaker 1:So good morning. I'm Shari Pair, I'm a cartoonist and I've been working on art that either makes people laugh and smile and or inspires them, preferably both. Right now, my husband, who's going to introduce himself shortly he and I are co-producing a series of comics and animations called the Unspoken Series, where we take people's stories, including our own, and put them into a format to tackle challenges related to reproductive health, in order to make people suffering through whatever they're going through feel less alone.
Speaker 4:And I am Ellie Schiff. I get to work with my lovely wife here. I am a voice actor and director. I've done some casting In particular for this. I've done all the casting along with my wife and I help direct the performances. Yeah, I've worked in all areas of voiceover and this was interesting because I've never really been able to produce an animated project before and this was really a fun thing to be a part of, to help to write and produce and and do some uh, directing, so right, I my background.
Speaker 1:I graduated from the school of visual arts with a bfa in cartooning.
Speaker 1:I was top of my class cartooning is illustration, not moving cartoons, as people seem to think I uh, ended up um, I, my skill set is about the story, was the non-moving part of animation, and also the, the comics, the illustrations. So, working in these agencies for about five, six years altogether, I learned how to take other people's work and assets and they would give me the either illustrations or little clips and I would have to put them together into short films or ads. And over the years I realized, wait, I could do that with my own stuff, not just other people's stuff. So I ended up applying for a fellowship to turn my existing comics into animated shorts as well as create new ones. So I'm with the Jewish Writers Initiative Digital Storytellers Lab this year and I've produced so far two finished animations, one comic, and I'm in production for two more animations.
Speaker 1:I got let go from my last job over two years ago now and it was a dream job, loved, very tight knit, community. But unfortunately my marketing agency got picked up. I got hired by a company in in London and basically everybody got let go and I've been getting a lot of work, rejections, one after another, third, second, third round interviews and nothing. And there was a fellowship that popped up where I could apply using. I've always wanted to turn my animated, my uh comics into animated shorts. So I figure you know this would be a good fellowship.
Speaker 1:I saw it in September and I'm like great, I'll apply for it. And then we got hit with how many people I think six people passed away in six weeks, including my uncle, two of my best friends. It was mostly untimely your uncle was mostly untimely deaths deaths to cancer and I got a Facebook ad today's, the last day to apply, and I told Ellie I don't, I don't, I just had another rejection, I don't think I can handle another one. It's like just apply. What's the worst that could happen. So I did, I did and it was the easiest application process I ever had and it was able to lead to this.
Speaker 3:That's actually a very good segue into the reason why we're having this conversation today is because you both are voices for people who have experienced miscarriage and all of the different complications with not just the miscarriage itself but how to then process a miscarriage, how to then talk about it, how to cope through it, how to grieve it right. So all of those things, and you're doing some really unique things. So, before we get into that part of it, walk me through the. You can start wherever you want, but let's talk about that that first miscarriage and how the both of you, from your own perspectives, were perceiving things and dealing with things individually and as a unit.
Speaker 1:I guess it started with, all of a sudden, I had one healthy pregnancy. Everything went completely to normal and I had a baby, completely normally. I had a baby, healthy, happy boy, and about a year and a half later we're like, oh, we should have another one. So you think, you know, been there, done that, no problem, got pregnant right away. Everything was going smoothly. But then all of a sudden I started spotting, and very light spotting. So I went to my doctor for my first checkup. The heartbeat was there. The doctor was like oh, it could happen, just keep an eye on it. And if it gets dark red, then you know, let me know. So Ellie here was going to chaperone. He was working at a high school at the time.
Speaker 4:I was the athletic director at a high school.
Speaker 1:So we were traveling out of state for an event, for a baseball tournament, yeah, so he is heading out for a five day trip and it's a Friday morning, so it's over the weekend and I go. I start spotting more heavily a few days before that. The doctor had no appointment at all for five days and I'm like I feel like it's more of emergency, but sure, I'll wait. So I go to the doctor's office. Ellie's flight is delayed, so he's still on the ground. We were living in Los Angeles at the time and our families on the West coast. On the East coast. We're on the West coast. It's really just me and a few friends that we have. And, um, uh, so I'm there by myself at this appointment. Ellie's at all the appointments with me. No, jake, he was in school, um, so anyway. So anyway, I'm by myself. Normally Ellie's always there with me for every doctor's appointment. So I go for the ultrasound. We still hear the heartbeat. I think everything's great. I don't realize.
Speaker 1:The ultrasound technician is quietly leaving the room and she tells me yeah, go meet your doctor in another room. So, heading to my room, thinking, oh good, heartbeat, we're all good, and all of a sudden my doctor comes in. She's like oh, I really wish your husband were with you today. Have some bad news You're going to miscarry. And I like did not know what that meant. There's a heartbeat there. How does it mean that I'm going to miscarry? And apparently there was a part of the brain that was missing. That actually the ultrasound technician had said in all of her multi decades of experience, she'd never seen something like this happen so early. I was lucky quote unquote because it's normally something that happens around week 16 and it happened around week 10. And she was Googling my case because she'd never seen anything like that. So I apparently I had to let it take its course or else we would have to make some decisions.
Speaker 1:Now let me back up for a second. My dream was to have two kids two years apart. I had a sister. I have a sister who's four years younger than me and we were never in high school at the same time. So it was really. I just really wanted to have kids two years apart. So that really was devastating to me, because my whole life I really wanted to have this and I was having it, it was in my grasp and now like, how would it? How am I supposed to pull a trigger to make decisions which would have meant abortion? How would it, how am I supposed to pull a trigger to make decisions which would have meant abortion? Um, to get rid of a baby that had a heartbeat but no brain, and that we wanted, and that we wanted, yeah, so, um, I call Ellie from the airport, so you can.
Speaker 1:I don't know, we've never actually talked about what, what you had felt.
Speaker 4:Well, I didn't really have time to process it, especially because I was running a baseball team of kids out of state, pretty much alone. There was one other person with me and he had a lead, so he kind of came with me to bring them there, and then a parent ended up coming for a bit. But yeah, I mean it was one of those oh, it's going to be fine, don't? I can't imagine this is, you know, like we had a normal pregnancy the first time, so it was it kind of was. I didn't really process it at all.
Speaker 4:It was one of those things that I think you had a better grasp on because you were already experiencing it to some degree with the spotting. So for me, we had to fly to the airport, fly to Ohio. When we get there, I'm still kind of getting information, but then it was Shabbat Sabbath for us. When we get there, I'm still kind of getting information, but then it was Shabbat Sabbath for us, um, and so, like I couldn't use my phone and contact her until that was over the next night. So it was, it was one of those like what's happening, you know, I kept trying to get information, um, and I was there with the kids and I couldn't.
Speaker 4:I mean, these are high schoolers. But you know you, you don't really want to let those emotions bleed over and affect them in that way. Just remember, you know, there were a few moments where I just kind of had to like excuse myself and go into another area just to kind of like not break down in front of them. And I mean it was particularly tough because, like we were separated, we were in separate states, you know. So it wasn't even like I can go to her and be like, how are you doing? Or she can come to me and we can talk things through. It was just a very, very strange position to be in.
Speaker 3:You say it was Shabbat and there is the in your practice during the hours of Shabbat, there are certain things that you just don't do right as as a way of of observing um, the the day so was there? Was there any distress that came along with man? I really want to call my wife and and find out how she's doing, but, but, but I can't like, can you describe that level of distress, if any, that you might've been experiencing?
Speaker 4:We both experienced that because, um, I'm sure she wanted to call me and update me and let me know what was going on, but I'll you know you can answer that for yourself, but for me, um, it was, it was two levels because, yes, I wanted to call her and it was Shabbat, so I couldn't go on. We don't use electronics at all, so it wasn't like I can go on a computer or you know FaceTime or you know call on my phone or anything like that, and I also had to be chaperoning these kids so I couldn't even be in the moment for myself. So it was, yes, definitely I couldn't call her and I couldn't call my close friends. I mean, I couldn't do any of that stuff until later and we lived next door to one of you know still, who was one of our best friends and who helped us basically raise the kids, you know, when they were little.
Speaker 4:So it was, it was tough not to be able to to to call Sherry, to call my friends, call my parents and just check in with people. I mean, I remember I was able to talk to my dad briefly before Shabbatat started, but but it was also like so quick that because they were getting ready also. So it's like one of those things where you can't really fully process at that moment, and I guess shabbat is good for that, because normally you shut down you, you log off and you get to be in the moment with the people around you. And if we had home, if I had been home with her, I think that would have been probably a helpful thing, Although you know you can explain what happened on your end while dealing with calling and all that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I don't remember feeling like, do I have to call Ellie? Because I was dealing with my own crises at the moment. So you know, my spotting was getting was already heavier bleed and I woke up Shabbat morning really, really heavy, heavy bleeding. So the thing about Judaism you're allowed to break Sabbath if someone's life is in danger. So I wasn't sure if my life was in danger or anything, because the doctors have said your body's going to take care of it itself. This is what's going to happen. And you know I was expecting more. It's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:The baby hadn't, to my knowledge, come out yet, but I was cramping and I just didn't know if it was something where my life was in danger or if it was just part of the process. So I took my son and I went to my next door neighbor, and my next door neighbor is like, if you don't call the doctor, I will. So I said, okay, I'm calling the doctor. There's no need for you to be breaking the seven on my behalf. And looking back, obviously I should have done it. I should have called sooner.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think that I just wasn't thinking right, Because in my head I'm still like I still want this baby to live and I'm not. I'm not convinced that the baby's going to like go, and they still said there's still a chance, but it's not looking great. So you know, I was just very confused. I think that if I had Ellie to bounce off with in the morning, you know, and he would have been like of course you're going to call, it would have been fine, but probably when I was, if I were there. No, it's all right, I'll call. Yeah, but I'm dealing also with a very hyperactive 17, 18, 19 I think it was like 18, 19 month old at that point. So I'm not thinking straight. And also, if there's something you know about me, I don't like blood, so already I'm usually the calm one.
Speaker 4:When, unfortunately, her daughter fell at one point in the playground and cracked her head, we had to go get staples, basically for her head. I was the one who was bringing her in and when they asked, who do you want to hold your hand or who do you want to be with you? And she's like daddy and I was very happy about that.
Speaker 1:That is a-okay with me. So I'm already not in my best situation. So, anyway, I called the doctor and the doctor basically said it's doing it, there's nothing to do. So I was correct in my gut that I didn't need to call, but there is something to be said about the mental health side of things. So the fact that I did call meant I was you know with throughout this entire miscarriage.
Speaker 1:I was okay, unless the doctor wasn't available to tell me what to do. I need a checklist. So I'm like if I'm doing this, fine, I can handle that. But if I'm left to be with my own head and I'm not I'm not a doctor at all. In fact, when I was tested for my private school when I was six, I tested off the charts with some visual tests and I was put into the honors class and the person who had interviewed me told my mom she's really great, she can either be a doctor or an artist. And my mom's like great, I'm going to have an artist daughter, because she's not going to be a doctor already by the age of six. She knew. So you know, this is not my favorite field. So as long as I'm told what to do, I'm fine.
Speaker 4:She's an information junkie. She needs to know like she went. Well, we'll talk about it probably afterwards, but after the miscarriage happened, we went about things very differently. Yes, she was like information, information, information. That's just how she is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. As long as I know what to expect, I'm okay. It's the unknown that terrifies me.
Speaker 3:What I really appreciate about what you guys are bringing up is not just you're states apart, and this is impacting both of you in very different ways you Shari, because it's like it's happening to you, and you Ellie, because you're out with kids and you know you still have responsibilities. And also you're you don't have all the information. And also whatever bit of information you have is like well, I want to know how my wife is doing. And then there's the cultural, there's the religious practice piece of it. What fascinates me about that is because I think that, across the board, whether someone is devout in any type of tradition or not, the event itself brings you to a place of asking some really deep existential questions.
Speaker 3:And whether you have any kind of, like I said, any kind of devotion to whatever practice, whatever religion, whatever philosophy, I think what cuts across the board is that every single person who has experienced any type of devastating loss of pregnancy in the fashion that you're mentioning it or in any other iteration, at some point you go deep into your mind and you start asking what I call the God questions. Some point you go deep into your mind and you start asking what I call the God questions you know, or the universal questions like those deeply existential, what the heck is really going on here. And the other part that I appreciate you bringing out, especially you, shari is that you're saying you know, you, you weren't just losing this baby. There was this ideal of having kids at a certain age bracket because of your own experience. So there's like the construct of some ideal that you have and that you were right there on the doorsteps of getting to, and then that one loss triggles, triggles. Did I just say triggles?
Speaker 1:I said triggles I'm going to use that word for now and I love it.
Speaker 3:We should say triggles. I'm going to stick with triggles, but you know what I mean. It just triggles a whole cascade of other losses that you were experiencing, that you have experienced, and it's really murky, I think that's the best word that I can use. It's very murky, it's muddled, to try to navigate all of that as it's happening. Sure, in hindsight we can look back and say you know, shoulda, woulda, coulda, but in the moment you have zero control, and especially from your perspective, as your body is just going into auto processing. And so I'm curious if you could speak a little bit about your awareness of what your body is doing and also just the lack of control about what your body is doing.
Speaker 1:I like knowing what's happening and it felt completely crazy. I had no idea which direction all this was going to go or how long it was going to take, but actually like to talk about control. So you know, I thought with this whole pregnancy we were in control, because I mean, one level of this, of this pregnancy, that we don't even we don't really talk about it is that we moved up the timeline of when we wanted to get pregnant, because we have some very close friends who had lost their four month old to SIDS suddenly, and so we and I have this. This haunts me, this constantly haunts me, but we had a conversation. Maybe we should start trying for a kid sooner and I say, yeah, in case we have a miscarriage. I literally said that.
Speaker 4:So that's one of those things where, like you know, you don't really consider some of that stuff when you're talking about it. I mean, you're just you're talking about natural events that could potentially happen. You don't really think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1:I don't know where that came from. I don't usually talk like, yeah, we have to do this in case this really bad thing happens and I never had one before. Where did that come from? Did I cause it by using my words like put it out there in the environment? You know, these are things that I wrestled with during this period of did I do this to myself?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's the sort of thing we do, I think, naturally, as humans, is we look for reasons and sometimes, you know there isn't one. We, we blame ourselves, you know, for things that happen. In fact, the one that we're producing now, the, the person was expecting twins and then there was an issue, and she, you know, in the comic, you'll, you know the comic is out.
Speaker 1:We released it in October for pregnancy and infant loss awareness month.
Speaker 4:If you look at the panel where she's driving home, right, I mean, all the things is what did I do wrong? Can this be changed? Have I done anything? And they're really just. It just happens sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she also had a similar dream. She was. She was a twin girl and twin. She had one twin sister and her dream was to have twin girls and she was pregnant with twin girls. So, just like me, she was very close to fulfilling her dream. And then one twin became very unhealthy and actually through this comic, I realized wait, her baby was also missing a brain. Whatever my baby had was the same thing as hers. So I feel very close to the story because I actually learned something about my own miscarriage while telling her story, and this was the story.
Speaker 1:We were working on it five years ago in 2019. I had just had my third child. I was able, after my miscarriage thank goodness, to have like I was very, very fortunate to to go and have two more easy, relatively easygoing pregnancies. And after my third child, I battle was battling postpartum depression, and I was working on this comic and I said I can't. I can't handle somebody else's heaviness when I'm going through my own, so I put the project aside. I got postpartum depression therapy, I was feeling great and then, two or three weeks later, a pandemic happened. So this comic I just released was five years in the making and I picked up the script where I went off, left off and we're in production for the animated short, it's a very powerful piece.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, she did have to make a decision. We were in this situation, um, where you know sherry's body, for better or worse, to you know. Handle the situation, um, because, by all accounts, if we were to have this, this fetus, you know, and have a baby, um, it would not have had any quality of life. It was missing its brain. For better or worse, it took care of itself. That's not always the case. Some people have to have a DNC.
Speaker 1:I you know, or born entirely because it's not nothing's happening with it.
Speaker 4:Unhealthy for the mother or the baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the lots of reasons, but like I do recommend that if you, your baby, does so, I mean we can loop my story and end it. Um, because there's a lot, of, a lot of fun stuff that happens on the last day of this pregnancy. So you know, ellie's, you know, you know September Saturday, I made the call to the doctor and then I'm just kind of like my friends are cooking for me, helping take my kids places, and then on the last day, tuesday, ellie's coming back that night. It's like I'm going through like five days of this, this bleeding process, and then I wake up early the last day Ellie's coming back that night and I remember thinking like, oh, he's coming in five days. That feels so long. Like I feel like I can't, I feel like I'm not going to get him here in time for whatever big finale finishes is going to be there.
Speaker 1:So I wake up that morning and I see something in the like I'm cramping and I go to the toilet and there's a big clump there and I'm like I don't know what that is. Is that a fetus? And you know I mentioned before I don't do blood. Well, so immediately I flushed the toilet because I don't want to see it anymore. So I called the doctor's office and I'm like I need to come in. I think I had a big clump. I don't know what's going on. I need an ultrasound to see what's going on. And the doctor said there's no. The office receptionist said there's no doctors in today, the office in the middle of moving and nobody's here. I'm like nobody, there's absolutely nobody. And she's like I'll call, I'll call you back. And I called around to different offices in this practice and everybody's giving me the same kind of like no, it's basically with that practice, just don't have anything emergency, any urgency on a Tuesday, like just don't have it that day.
Speaker 1:So so I, one of my closest friends, was like she's a, she's an aunt, like an aunt to my kids. She literally works from home, comes into the bed with me and like sits with me until I get. I get a, finally a call. I keep calling and then, finally, I call back and then my ultrasound technician, who had discovered this issue and had researched my issue. She happened to walk past the receptionist when she was talking to me a nicer receptionist from the one I had previously and she said who's on the phone? And the receptionist says it's Sherry Pair and she's like bring her in now. So I was lucky to have an ultrasound technician who advocated for me and apparently there's a thing called a nurse, a physician's assistant, who was in that day also. So there were people there.
Speaker 1:The receptionist was just completely unhelpful and I really didn't need to see the doctor. I needed to see what was going on in the body. Again, my mental health was spiraling and you can't control the physical parts, but there's so much you can do to make you feel better mentally. And talking about that, I didn't know I'd had three friends who had miscarriages, who mentioned it in passing. So I reached out over the course of this weekend for help. One of them came and brought over ice cream, because ice cream is always the most important healing bandaid of all. And I had friends, you know, talking to me. One of them came to the, to a specialist, to an appointment with me on a Friday afternoon, even though we're all very busy getting ready for Sabbath. So I had people really coming there for me, but I only knew three. And then I call my parents and I say oh, you know, I think I'm having a miscarriage.
Speaker 1:And my mom's like oh, I think I had one too, and you know, your grandmother and your great grandmother had also and I'm like learning stuff about my family that, like, had I known it at any point in time, might've been like, oh so it's not just me doing something wrong or falling, you know, or tripping over something, or eating the wrong thing or whatever. Thinking the wrong thing, yeah, thinking the wrong thing. So, and then you know, as I'm telling people this, I have one of my best friends is like we, as I'm telling people this one of my best friends is like we had two miscarriages before our first. Another one of our closest friends also yeah, we had two miscarriages before our first. So, as I'm talking, I'm learning that everybody else had it and almost everybody.
Speaker 3:And this whole time I'm being hard on myself like what did I do wrong?
Speaker 1:And had I known that so many people had. I know I was researching for stuff online for other people's stories and at that time, 10 years ago, I found maybe a couple of articles, but it's not the same as feeling like I was in that person's position or they're telling me what they're feeling they get. It was just, you know, basics of what happened and a little bit of what they felt, not really like going in spiraling like I did into my head. So you know, with my career I've had my first paid project out of college while still in college was a coloring book for kids with diabetes. I've done different social action comics, including one that went viral about one woman's story about getting her get her Jewish divorce document from her abusive cheating spouse after 10 years of struggling. So I've told people stories in this medium before and I immediately I knew I'm going to tell whatever this has done. I'm telling it in my story, but I need to be in the right place to tell it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I was still out of town when all this was happening. Um, and, I only found out when you went to the doctor eventually, uh, because, you got in that that day that you finally did, the ultrasound technician fought for and she got her in and she you know you went in and she found out that it was done. There was no fetus there anymore.
Speaker 1:So I finally go in my friend who's sitting next to me, like well, I'm like sitting there watching TV. Just, I may be doing a little bit ofriage. Do not watch the show called the Midwife or the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones. Just putting that out there maybe not the best choice of things to watch while you're going through your own story, but fine.
Speaker 1:So we went to my friend, came with me, she drove me to the ultrasound and we're sitting there and like I don't know what to expect, like I think I was most terrified of still having a heartbeat after all this, or it's still being there and having to decide. But it was the most bizarre experience of my life. Like we go and we see nothing, there's nothing in the ultrasound, the baby's completely gone, and they're all staring at me like what are you going to do? And I start crying tears of joy because I'm like, thank God, it's done, I can move on, I don't have to do anything more, I didn't have to decide anything, and so I'm like celebrating this moment and we're all like crying tears of joy and it was just very. I don't think the ultrasound technician was expecting that kind of reaction at all.
Speaker 4:So we're in your head for so long, for so many days in a row, about what's going on. You know where is this going to go, what's going to happen. And then, finally, that the relief of just the conclusion happening. Whether or not it was a good or bad, you know, it didn't really matter at that point, obviously, we were hoping for a good conclusion, but in this situation where they basically told us there's no way that's happening, this was kind of the best case scenario, I suppose the best worst case scenario.
Speaker 4:Yes, and so I, you know, I'm still out of town and I'm flying back. I think it was that night.
Speaker 4:That right, it was that night yeah, you came back that night and so I'm, you know, I'm at the airport when she calls me, um, and just again she's flying heading back with all these kids. And then I specifically remember I had to go into, like I went into the bathroom basically to kind of like not like, I was sort of crying but not really processing totally at that point, and it didn't like you have to hold it together. You're with teenage boys. What are you going to say to them? I mean, you can't, really, it's not the sort of situation that is is easily explained to kids, you know, and you know, granted, they're in high school, but they're still kids. And so finally, you know, when I came back home, I was able to process it and I just completely lost it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Were your tears also tears of joy, or was it a mixture? What do you think?
Speaker 1:I think mine was just, you know.
Speaker 4:I'm glad to be here with you again, but I'm sad that this all happened.
Speaker 1:He left, everything was fine. And he came back and he's no longer a dad-to-be, and he didn't have a chance to even think about that until the moment he sat down on the couch when he got home.
Speaker 4:It was. Yeah, it was. I mean I did call my friends and I talked to you know my parents and I talked to you know my parents, but it was one of those things that it's, I think, until you can really sit and be in it for that moment, it's just it's. It's hard to really breathe and and process everything that's going on.
Speaker 1:Right and for and for me also. My tears of joy were also, you know, I really did not want to decide whether or not to abort this fetus. However, I really did not want to decide whether or not to abort this fetus. However, the more terrifying thought would have been not even having that option, because so having to abort means I would have had to, I think, recover longer and have taken longer for us to have the baby, but still, I had a timeline and I wanted to try right away, as quickly as possible. No-transcript. Still two grades apart, we're able to make it happen. But all the tears and all the stress most of it was I just want this dream to happen and it's it's. You know, it's out of my control.
Speaker 4:And I think for me, part of it was also the idea of what this fetus, you know eventual baby, would become Like. You have these dreams of what they might be or who they might be, and, especially since we had no issues with the first pregnancy, you allow yourself to dream, you allow yourself to think, oh, what if they're this or that? Or what if they're tall or short or look like this or whatever? And those dreams don't really go away, like you kind of mourn for that too, even though you know, because nothing happened with it. You know you just they're just there still, um, and you know, like sherry said, we're so lucky that you know we have three beautiful children and you know we get to watch them grow up. But you know you still wonder what this other baby might've been.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's that sense of ambiguity. Right there there is the unresolved nature and it's not like it's not.
Speaker 4:Like you know, when you lose a family member, you know you have, we have Shiva. You know you actually sit Shiva for a week. People come, you know, after the funeral. Um, you know, you can kind of talk it out with people over the course of that week, but in this situation there's nothing. You know.
Speaker 3:You don't bury anything, you don't you know there's off the conversation by saying that you both experienced a series of losses in a very short period of time, and so you were sitting Shiva for basically six weeks, right.
Speaker 4:Well, in those situations we were going to Shiva as we were, it wasn't the only the immediate family members.
Speaker 1:Ok, so like the husband, you know if it's a parent or if it's a child, they sit Shiva or a, a sibling, okay Well, but they were. You know my dad was sitting Shiba. So I basically moved in with my aunt. Ellie took care of the kids. I moved in with my dad by his sister's house when they were mourning the loss of their brother and I helped him for the whole week.
Speaker 1:And before that, you know, I had a very, very, very close friend who moved to New Jersey the same week that we did and I'd known him since we were six and he had a terminal brain tumor. He moved here knowing that he had a terminal brain tumor and he and another one of my best friends, who actually lives out of the country, you know, in Israel, and so the three of them had very bad cancer diagnoses at the same time, three and a half years prior, and they all declined at the same time a few months before this, and you know, my friend, I was his, it was his birthday right before that. So I had started this viral campaign to get um, to get celebrities to wish him happy birthday because he was, he was blind and and, uh, partially paralyzed.
Speaker 4:He had a brain tumor so unfortunately affected his vision yeah.
Speaker 1:So I had all these celebrities like like wishing him happy birthday in videos and his favorite baseball player showed up to his house, like it was this incredible high and then all of a sudden he passed away two days later on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day of the year, and they say if you pass away on Yom Kippur, it's like, I guess, the greatest honor. I think it's just to make us feel better because it's really really, really sad. But, um, it was just really intensely involved with a lot of these. You know, it wasn't us necessarily sitting down, you know, to sit shiva, but it was us being very involved with other people who were going through it and or like moving into a shiva house. So it was very yeah, it was just a crazy time.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But so all that, all that to say, there are these rituals that you can engage in to help, to give you at least some bit of time to process the magnitude of that loss, to sit in it in community with other people and talk through and process and just be there, and I think it also serves sort of as a what's the word I'm looking for. There's a beginning and then there's an end, point right, which doesn't mean that you stop grieving afterwards, but it gives you this sense of okay, there's a finality that we can reach, there's a point that we can reach to say, okay, we can now begin to take the next step. Right, like this is there's a conclusion there With a miscarriage. There is, there's only a beginning. There really is no, no end at all in sight. You know, like the, the, the lack of a ritual to help you get through what that means and and what that feels, and and to explore the depths of of that law.
Speaker 4:There is none of that well, I think that's part of the reason why sherry did the comic was to help process it.
Speaker 3:Right, so let's jump into that. Let's jump into that.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I think there is. Well, if you had the baby, there would have been some kind of ritual to burial, but I didn't have the body.
Speaker 3:Right, right, right, which is what's unique to miscarriages, because stillbirth or neonatal death or any other type of death that includes a physical body. There are rituals that you can have, but with a miscarriage in particular, there's nothing.
Speaker 1:Well, if you have a DNC or something like that, then there is the body and apparently after the fact, I have, like, scooped the body out of the toilet and brought it home. I didn't know any of this at the time. So those are things that should have happened, that I didn't know. So there are rituals, but we didn't go through it.
Speaker 4:In our experience, I don't know what the ours also was very early on, whereas, like some people who experience it later, there is something to do but right. But either way, it's still not like. I mean not oftentimes.
Speaker 1:There's not a burial, there's not right, you know, there's no shiva, like we mentioned earlier I don't even think you have to go to be there. It's like an organization will bury it for you so you don't have to deal with it.
Speaker 4:It's like it's a whole separate issue from an actual but you're right, there's no, from a ritual perspective, there really isn't a whole lot of processing that goes on and and we we talked a little earlier about it, you know we she is a researcher, so when we were going through it, uh, or after we went through it, she was online for days, weeks, you know, maybe months, just do research on all this stuff, and I just didn't want to want to look at it. I had a process, but I was, I have like I was on a video game and just numbing myself to it to some degree until I was finally ready to kind of process. But it was. You know, it's still constantly in the back of your head until you finally deal with it. In whatever way you deal with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would meet people and talk about it and I'd want to talk to him and he's like uh, not now, I can't yet.
Speaker 4:I can't like it to me. I just I wasn't't, I wasn't ready.
Speaker 3:You know, I wanted to ask you this question, Ellie, because, for Shari, when you started saying that you well, you said that you started learning about your family and members of your family who had had miscarriage your mother, your grandmother, friends who are now coming forward and saying, yeah, you know, we had to. We had X amount of miscarriages. We had X amount of miscarriages, Ellie, when you started talking to your friends. What was that experience like? Were they as forthcoming or was it sort of like pulling teeth?
Speaker 4:Not really Well. Here's the thing the people who I, at that point was really close with were people who didn't have children yet. My next door neighbor, noah, is still one of my best friends. Um doesn't have kids and um, my parents hadn't experienced it. Um, I don't. I don't know if, at that point, any of my siblings I don't think so, um.
Speaker 4:So it's one of those things where I didn't know who to turn to. And Sherry has a very, very close friend who's basically like her brother, um, who when he found out about our miscarriage, um, he called me because he said I went through this and no one was there for me. I want to be there for somebody else, and that was a large impetus for sherry to actually do the comic was, you know, one of the lines from the? The story is nobody should be suffering alone, and that that very much sticks with me because you know, if I know somebody else is going through it or um, you know, has gone through it and and even even you know, weeks, months, years later it's still.
Speaker 4:You know you don't think about it every single day mostly, but you do. It does come up every now and then you do have those emotions you know of. Like I said, what if and? Um, yeah, it's, it's very difficult to wrap your head around.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean that's one of the motivations for my second comic in the series. You know I put my comic. I finally, three years later, created my comic. So we had we had 10 years ago I had the miscarriage. Seven years ago I released my first comic and with the help of actress Mayim Bialik, we launch it. And I start getting emails from people all over the world. And it was crazy. I went to speak somewhere. I was invited to speak somewhere in England after that and one of my workshops. Somebody comes in and talks to me and said I was waiting for this workshop because your comic came out the week of my miscarriage and really helped my husband and me at a time where we didn't really know where to turn and it made a big impact for me and so we had stuff like that all week long coming in. And then a few days later I tell Ellie you know I really should do a comic from a husband's perspective because as little as women talk about it, men don't at all.
Speaker 4:And an hour later, right, and I'm like it's, it's, we're not physically going through it the way that they are, so it's it's kind of like where do we stand here? Cause you want to be there for your spouse or, you know, your partner. Right. But you know where do you come in there? I don't know. It's like a weird.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, recently I had a post of something online and then one of the comments conveyed like hey, I think I understand what you're trying to say, but at the end of the day, this is a woman's issue and I thought about it and I was like I think I understand what you're saying. It is a primarily it is a woman's issue, because she's the one who is carrying the baby and she's the one whose body is experiencing all of that trauma, both physical at times, and definitely all of the emotional stuff. But you just said, ellie and I totally agree with it, because that's also my case All we have is the knowledge that we are going to be dads and from that moment our imaginations just spark. Oh, my God, it's running like a wild baby and it is growing, it is expanding.
Speaker 3:My co-host and I we developed this phrase and we said that what we have as fathers is the womb of our imagination, because that child is as real in our psyche, in the depths of our heart, as it is real in the physical, physiological body of our partners. So that's what we have. So when, when the death happens, when the miscarriage happens in her and it's devastating for her, equally, it happens in the womb of our imagination and in an era where we're talking about mental health and the importance of being taken care of where we are our emotional well-being, our mental well-being the fact that there are still notions that this is only a prime, this is only a woman's issue, it's like. Are we not seeing the whole scope here?
Speaker 1:Well, I will argue also that when the baby is out, then the woman also needs an outlet to discuss. And if everybody, if men, are not able to cope properly, then they can't support the women after the fact, and then there's a disconnect and you, you know it can impact everything.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it leads to affecting the relationship absolutely. I mean, we ultimately were able to work past it once. I was kind of able to, you know, talk about it, but it was it's not, it was a rough month.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm sure, and it's one of those things where you kind of have to leave space for it because, you know, not everybody's ready at the same time, but at the same time, you know, sometimes you, even if you're not ready, you have to come to the table and just be open to listening. You know, even if you can't talk about it, because she needed to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then so you know, we had this conversation that I should really do a comic from a husband's perspective. And an hour later I get an email from a fan saying you know, you should really consider doing a comic from a husband's perspective because my husband really struggled and he needed to talk about it and couldn't find anybody to talk about it. So that's how my second comic came about Michael's miscarriage. Because you know he wanted to talk and he was told suck it up. You know, figure it out your own, like you can't, it's not like you can do you know, and that's the thing I think.
Speaker 4:men are more about action and there really isn't any action to do with this 1000%, 1000%.
Speaker 1:But mental health people, you know, underestimate the importance of getting through it. You know I couldn't control anything going on in my body at all at all, but I could have. Like if I had someone to talk to in the right moments, I wouldn't have led to the freak out of like, do I call the doctor or not, cause I would ask him like he's like, just call the doctor. Like you know, there's there's things that could have done.
Speaker 4:Our situation was a little unique, cause I wasn't physically there, right, but I you know, just having being able to talk it out and, like you know, internalize the stuff that's going on together was was just what.
Speaker 3:It is just huge to have someone to bounce off with or to go through it. I would argue that in women's health, one of the biggest misses in women's health in general is the lack of resources available to that woman's male partner to help her cope through a variety of different things.
Speaker 4:Especially when it comes to to this, Would you say counseling would have been helpful, like if someone had said, you know, after we went through it a week later or something, come in and we can all talk together. You know, even if I wasn't totally ready, I feel like just having that environment probably would have allowed for a conversation to start.
Speaker 4:Yes, and I actually wonder, like having this conversation, if you were there the whole time had gone through it had gone through the emotions, instead of shoving it aside if that would have impacted how you reacted afterwards and if you were able to go to that catharsis with me of like, is it okay, is it not okay, and then you'd gone through everything that I'd gone through, you know, and not just started processing it after the open, I wonder what, how different your experience would have been but we were in different places, for sure, when it happened, um, not just physically but mentally because of that, but, um, yeah, I think in some ways it still didn't quite feel real, even though I knew, you know when, when, at the beginning of a pregnancy, um, you see, you know you hear the heartbeat and you see the, um, the sonogram and all that.
Speaker 4:You know it's, it's real, but in theory, it Like it's, you're not physically feeling it and so when it disappears, it also doesn't feel quite real at that moment. Um, so, you know, for the, for the male partner, for the female partner, obviously she's gone through it, she's experienced it, she knows it's real, um, you know, and so that processing, maybe we're a little behind, or at least I was a little behind because of that and not being physically present at the moment. So, yeah, I think I think if we had been together also, for sure that would have made things, you know, easier to process, cause I could have seen what was happening, I could, like we talked about earlier, I was so far away and often didn't have access to my phone or the time to deal with it and process it, so for me I was, everything was delayed, everything was on delay, so that's why, when I came home and finally started crying, you had been crying already probably for five days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a big difference. No, there's always more tears, but you know.
Speaker 3:I I just really want to say thank you for everything that you've brought to the foreground in this discussion so far. I do want to leave the last several minutes, just to respect our time, to talk about this upcoming election, one of the biggest issues that I became aware of, which is ironic for me to say, because I host a podcast about this issue this election giving women's rights issues and all of the volume of perspectives and conversations and implications about that. So, obviously, people have the right to vote for whoever they want to vote. People have the right to support whomever they want to support. So this is not about that whatsoever. It is about the experiences of people like yourselves, like myself and my family, and now this fear that there may be hurdles to get over or get through, or maybe even the lack of hurdles at all, because doors have been shut for particular people who are experiencing medical care, who need medical care, and state hospitals. Whatever the case is, legislation might make it very difficult for them to access.
Speaker 4:A hundred percent of the case, and it's scary because doctors can be brought to trial for trying to take care of the mother by helping with an abortion or, you know, if they need it. I mean, we were in a situation, like we said earlier, we wanted to have a baby, you know, and we then eventually did have a baby, so it wasn't like we didn't want to have a child and we talked about this other comment that's coming up, where the woman was pregnant with twins. If she did not have an abortion, she, her life was at danger and the other twins life was in danger. And we're at a point where, without those protections in place nationally, it can really affect the ability to get care.
Speaker 1:Or you know, yeah, lose your ability to have children. You know there's other implications I could have. You know, yeah, lose your ability to have children. You know there's other implications I could have. You know. For for me, you know I, if I had a, I would call the fetus inside of me a parasite because it was no longer viable and just taking up all my resources. So if it was sticking around, I wanted it out, I wanted it out and it was very clear that that was a decision. I didn't want to make the decision, but that was very clear. And you know my comics. I really don't view my comics as political. I view them as health, health awareness and women's story and men's stories. I really in general try to avoid politics in my work. I just try to show, you know, people empathy. I try to show what's going on and just tell people's stories.
Speaker 3:What's going on and just tell people's stories. And it's really upsetting that the most traumatic miscarriages that we had happened right here in our home go through this process entirely by herself, where I had no control over what her body was going through and was doing. She had no control over what her own body was going through and doing and to see her in distress in distress all meanted my distress, and it was it. I'm now at a point where I can talk about it without getting emotional and my voice cracking and tearing up. But there are times when I do think about it just because it just comes up and it's really hard to to to even imagine to, to go back to that headspace.
Speaker 4:So if that's the option, because from the medical side there is the possibility that care wouldn't be administered- this to term, or if they, you know, or if they have to go to another state somehow in order to have an abortion, just because their body's not processing it the way that you know.
Speaker 1:Maybe you know it did for shari, oh yeah, I don't think I would have healed the same way at all, at all.
Speaker 4:I don't think it's possible and without those resources and, if you know, without physically taking care of the woman um who's going through this, she could potentially have problems having more children later that she wants to have or worse, yeah, I mean, or even worse, like you know she could die there's horrible stories coming out now from states that are women are being denied their options.
Speaker 1:So it's it's it's devastating, and it's something that the woman should be deciding for herself and nobody else. You know, we're orthodox jews, and so one of the things about my fellowship that I have now is that I'm really diving into how judaism looks upon all this, and it's so reassuring to me that it's so supportive of the woman first, and then the fetus, so it's something that's reaffirmed my faith, knowing that my religion has got my back on this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean the. She talked about breaking the Sabbath in order just to call the doctor If the mother is in any kind of danger. I mean, according to Judaism, it's not an issue to to have an abortion or to go.
Speaker 4:I mean there are obviously situations sure, sure yeah but um, but yeah, the in any and I I can't go into all the details because I'm not a rabbi, I couldn't explain to you everything, but to me the most important thing is just the fact that the mother is protected. The mother has a say, and it's not just if she's physically in danger, she's mentally in danger. You know, mental awareness, mental health awareness, you know we keep talking about it. You know it's not just some buzzwords that we talk about. It actually affects people in many, many ways, and so I think it's important that these rights are there, because not everybody in this country believes that abortion is murder and it's really upsetting to me that somebody else's religion should dictate my decision, and unfortunately that's been the case for many people who've had to deal with this.
Speaker 1:So really it's about the person's right to decide what her fate should be for herself.
Speaker 3:Again, I can't say thank you enough for the work that you are doing, the advocacy, the awareness through this creative medium. So if someone wanted to tap into your, your comics and the animations that you're doing, where can they go to find out the amazing work that you're doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my website is Shari Pair. My name is spelled very differently than you would think, so it's C-H-A-R-I-P-E-R-E dot com. Slash. Unspoken cartoons All the videos are on YouTube that I have so far and the teaser trailers and some behind the scenes stuff. So all that's on YouTube.
Speaker 1:At unspoken cartoonmentary Cartoonmentary is the genre I've made up that term for cartoon documentaries. Yeah, and I'm on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn at sherrypearart, linkedin, just sherrypear, but at sherrypearart C-H-A-R-I-P-E-R-E-A-R-T. And I have more coming, you know, and it's it's, I hope to. I also hope to tackle future, you know future topics like stillbirth and um, secondary infertility, secondary infertility, postpartum depression. There's a lot of topics that I would love. I would love this series to become sort of the chicken soup for the soul for different issues and eventually expand into other topics, you know, like autism, adhd, asperger's, um, individual stories, the loss of a parent. There's a lot of issues that can be had. So I'm hoping to have a Patreon account to help make them work on that, to expand my projects and to have support for them. So Thank you, you.
