I Had a Miscarriage Jessica Zucker (top 100 books to read txt) 📖

nowhere to go—no way to move forward or backward—I sank into an unnerving sense of vulnerability. Why me? I thought. Why me? But then again, I challenged myself, why not me? I knew the statistics of pregnancy loss, just as I knew the complexities of grief and reproductive trauma. I had studied them in depth. I had incorporated them into my daily life. I had dedicated my career to them. How could I have allowed myself to be so surprised by an outcome I had spent countless hours assisting others in traversing?

At some point along the way, I must have compartmentalized my professional life and my personal life, putting them neatly in two distinct places in my head. The result, it seemed, was that it never quite dawned on me how swiftly and deftly they could become tangled up with each other. This was a level of vulnerability and raw exposure that I’d never imagined. My heart had been pried open, and I was swelling with emotion so profoundly it hurt.

Retrospect can be such an astute teacher. I’ve learned this the hard way (as if there’s any other way to learn this). In the initial days and weeks that followed my miscarriage, I think it was primarily adrenaline that powered me through. Must survive. Must continue. Must do. But then, when I finally grasped just how eviscerated I really was, I couldn’t dodge the eventual downfall. This was only the beginning.

• • •

A couple of weeks after my miscarriage, I ventured out to my usual place in Hollywood to get a pedicure. I had been confined to my office and my home, and I was just trying to do something that felt familiar. Prosaic. Normal. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it, but it seemed like a smart step to take. Self-care, I figured, was a good thing to add to the to-do list, especially at a time like this. I thought I’d do something mindless and comforting and be okay. After all, it was just a twelve-minute drive from home down the winding hill of Laurel Canyon to Sunset Boulevard. When I arrived at the upbeat nail salon, predominantly filled with older women, I was greeted by Joanna, a heavyset Romanian woman who has been painting my toes since before my pregnancy with Liev. We had shared much with one another during those years, and whether we were swapping prideful parenting milestones or commiserating in frustration about Los Angeles traffic, I was always happy to see her. “What’s the matter?” she queried lovingly. “You look sad.” Apprehensively, I shared my news. Tears reflexively began to roll down my freckled cheeks as I spit out truncated pieces of the atrocious experience I barely survived. I didn’t want to overwhelm her with all the gory details, or gross her out by telling her about the stream of blood or the baby in a plastic bag or the sickening feeling, housed permanently in my bones, of the placenta being yanked out during the unmedicated D&C procedure. But I felt comforted by her and comfortable sharing the gist of my story with her. We held eye contact as her tears welled up in astonishment. An empathic droplet fell from her squinty blue eye as we held hands in solidarity. She’d lost a pregnancy, too, she explained. Decades prior to my own. I hadn’t known about her miscarriage until I shared mine, but why would I have? We’re conditioned to not share these stories. We’ve become accustomed to living parallel to one another, oblivious of the pain we’re all trying to overcome.

As we held on to each other, I couldn’t help but worry that I had inadvertently wounded her in some way with my proverbial reproductive war story. Or perhaps triggered her own tough memories unexpectedly. But I couldn’t hold on to this thought long. It vanished as quickly as it had seared my mind’s eye. In a split second, I lost my steadiness. I felt awash in confusion, suddenly unsure of how I had even gotten there. Another one of trauma’s unforeseeable effects: briefly succumbing to overwhelmingly intense emotions, promptly followed by full-body exhaustion and a disengagement so severe you can practically disassociate. Taken over by bodily sensitivity and what feels like an emotional storm, you realize that trauma is a depleting game of mind-body pinball.

I called my husband from the spa chair, disoriented. I was buzzing with an uncanny sense of fear. What is going on? This became my unwanted mantra. Almost all I could think, on repeat: What is going on? “Please come! Jay, I need you to sit here with me,” I pleaded. “I don’t know how I got here. I’m not sure if I can get myself home.” By the time he arrived, I was trembling with head-to-toe chills, despite having my feet submerged in the warm, soapy water Joanna had prepared for me. As the anxiety continued to carve ruthless paths inside my body, I felt miles away from the water, the chair, Joanna, and myself.

Jason’s mere presence shifted my energy almost immediately, but I needed his words too. Words of reassurance, and maybe even a wild guess as to why I was feeling so disoriented and foreign in my own body. Not that he would actually be able to pinpoint the reason why—how could he?—but his sheer attempt at wondering aloud with me about the why now? brought me calm. This exchange—of words and tenderness—eventually ushered me back to the present. To the chair. To the water. To Joanna. To my life.

• • •

Disassociation became my norm. I was an active participant and a bystander in my life, at various moments, and without so much as a warning.

Places that I used to go without a second thought became triggers—I couldn’t stand to be in the supermarket, or the dry cleaner’s. Doing the regular day-to-day things we all do suddenly heightened my anxiety, and my eventual awareness of it, alerting me to just how altered I was—how off