There are so few articles that deal with the grieving process decades later. Even fewer for miscarriage, and non existent for teen miscarriage. Our society frowns upon teen pregnancy. Sadly, teen moms and their children are stigmatized. Hence, a teenager who has miscarried will seldom, if ever, receive the emotional support she needs. When I was 13 I miscarried at week 17. My parents were very angry about my pregnancy, so when I returned home from the hospital, I never received any emotional support. At that time in my life I didn’t think I deserved to grieve. 27 years later the memories of my loss came flooding back. The feelings were so immense that within two weeks I got myself into therapy. Best money I ever spent on myself. My therapist said, “Our emotions are always with us. Like a book that we re-shelve, when taken down and opened to any page, the words are still the same. You are grieving. You lost a child. People who’ve not experienced miscarriage or still birth measure grief by the length of a pregnancy.” For the first time in 27 years someone acknowledged my sorrow, and freed me from silence. About a year and a half after my therapy began I was diagnosed with PTSD. What that meant for me was that I got to experience the same exact emotions that I felt 27 years ago. I believe it took me roughly a year to come to terms with the loss of my child. During that time I wrote letters to my child, my husband bought me a lovely pendant of an angel embracing an infant, I registered my sons name and details on a site called gonetoosoon – http://www.gonetoosoon.org – There is a section for infants lost to miscarriage and stillbirth. Recently a woman in Europe wrote to me through gonetoosoon. She wrote the following, “I too suffered in silence for 26 years after losing my first through miscarriage, when my daughter lost her son my grief took over and I collapsed, unable to be strong for my daughter because my grief was buried for so long. I know they say time heals, but hidden grief and pain doesn’t heal in time, acknowledging and talking does.” I had my sons name engraved at the local elementary schools Learning Garden. Most importantly, I talked to friends and family. People who have not experienced the loss of a child have the misconception that once you have a child that you are over the loss of the other. This is a fallacy. I have two grown children and I have never gotten over the loss of my first child. Four years have passed since the onset of my Delayed Grief/PTSD. The intensity of the grief has greatly diminished, but sometimes, unexpectedly, something will trigger the grief. Fortunately, the sadness passes quickly. I have read many posts about miscarriage. I notice that some reflect or envision what life would have been like had their child survived. On an intellectual level there was a high probability that I would have been the worst mother in the world, on an emotional level, my love for my son is so immense, that I can’t bring myself to say, “I’m glad I had a miscarriage.” I told my therapist this and she told me that many other teen girls have said the same thing. I am the mother of three children, two are grown, and one is an angel…

A Garden For Baby Nicholas

Articles And Sources New York Times After a Death, the Pain That Doesn’t Go Away http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/29grief.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Delayed Grief: Grieving Years Later | Hello Grief http://www.hellogrief.org/delayed-grief/ American Psychological Association Miscarriage and loss: Losing a pregnancy can affect a woman — and her family — for years, research finds. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/miscarriage.aspx Online Memorial http://www.gonetoosoon.org

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