I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement

by Jessica Zucker

As humans, we are prone to trying to rush through the tough stuff—be it mild psychological discomfort or a more extreme situation, like trauma or tragedy. And this makes complete sense, of course. Why would we want to be psychologically uncomfortable, for any amount of time? It simply doesn’t feel good. As a result, we sometimes attempt to skirt the issue at hand and skim the surface of pain because we want to get back to feeling good. As much as we’d prefer to skip difficulties entirely though, we all know that life doesn’t really afford us this opportunity. This evanescent luxury. It can’t and it won’t. And beyond this impossibility lies what we would lose if we were capable of sidestepping trauma, hardship, death, loss, pain, grief. Because when we attempt to stave off our personal truths, including the ones that hurt, we often inadvertently stymie our capacity for growth and resilience. We might, by the very nature of trying to fend off some of our feelings (i.e., the unpleasant ones), unwittingly clamp down on the juicy ones as well, feelings like joy and love and peace. And as a result, we are likely to find ourselves living a little smaller, loving a little less freely—out of fear born of self-preservation—with the sincere hope of staying safe.