In the lead up to the release of my new novel, Amazing Grace, some friends have been brave enough to share their confessions. Confessions of domestic violence, abuse, an eating disorder, and miscarriage are often stories of shame, fear, and secrets. We often feel like we are the only ones who silently suffer, the only ones who have shameful secrets, the only ones who shudder to speak.
These confessions tell of grace. Grace isn’t always easy to give and it’s not always easy to receive. Grace is free, but it’s not easy.
*Trigger Warning: This post contains references to pregnancy and miscarriage.
Guest Post by Jodie McCarthy
It is strange how grief mutes you. You lose your voice. Sorrow silences you. I couldn’t talk about it for a long time. The loss I had experienced. It was as if speaking it aloud would make it more real, more concrete.
Even those closest to me, members of my immediate family, good friends, I couldn’t release this truth to them.
I wove an impenetrable cocoon of silence around myself. I didn’t want sympathy or empathy. I barely knew how to handle my emotions, how to handle the intensity of my own pain. I didn’t dare let others close enough. I was just learning how to grieve myself; I didn’t know how to share this grief with others.
So I kept my loss secret, like I had kept my pregnancy secret before.
I kept my pregnancy secret, that’s what you do. That’s protocol. I was going to tell my family at my birthday breakfast on the weekend.
But a happy occasion had ended up as a sad one. Devastating. And I couldn’t share, I couldn’t speak of the was, and the no longer. Of the dead child inside me. Of the operation still to come.
I’m sure we ate croissants, drank coffee, and presents were given. I believe I said thank you and smiled at the right time. I don’t honestly recall.
It would have been mechanical. My reaction. My body knew what to do. Sending the synapses to my lips to curve, to my hands to accept the present. The rest of me felt empty, void.
And because I was operating mechanically, my heart and my mind could not work together to shape the words. I couldn’t speak the truth aloud, ‘I’ve had a miscarriage’.
By Jodie McCarthy
*If this post has affected you please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au
brew
it’s a mess in there
a jumble of emotion
anger
pain
hurt
hope
feeble faith
and the brew is too potent
for me to contain
one day
it’ll bubble over
and scald someone
