Pregnancy Loss, Rage, Sadness, Shame and Guilt: The Emotions Society Won’t Let You Feel

You know how quiet, routine places are the ones where your brain does the best thinking. For me it’s either in the shower or the car. Those are the times when my brain synthesises the thoughts running around up there. Yesterday morning a few different things I’ve read recently synthesised and the start of this post about pregnancy loss emotions downloaded. 

Pregnancy loss emotions are big and loud and uncomfortable for the people around the person feeling them, and society tells us to not show them, or speak about them or share them. AND if we don’t have the places and spaces to feel them and talk about them and share them, then we tend to crumble at some point. 

The Readings that prompted this

I’m currently reading Liberate Your Business by Becky Mollenkamp. I’m still in the early chapters where she reminds us that we have little to no control over the air we breathe. It reminded me of something I’ve heard Leonie Dawson talk about in one of her courses*, comparing it to a fish having little to no control over the water it swims in. Both these analogies explain how we are so massively influenced by the people, situation, culture and location we grow up in. 

It is the society we grow up in that shapes the beliefs we have. The norms and structures that we are exposed to our whole lives, shape how we show up in the world. And that world is patriarchal, capitalist, heteronormative, ableist and racist. Our identities and views of ourselves are shaped so massively by what we are surrounded by that when we experience something as devastating as loss, it rocks not only our internal world, but affects so much of how we are perceived in the world. 

The second piece I read was an article by Christine Powell on feeling emotions. That as humans we need to actually be given the space to feel and move emotions through our bodies. 

Pregnancy loss emotions are A LOT.

Pregnancy Loss emotions don’t fit in this capitalist, patriarchal society. They’re uncomfortable and big. And everything about our society is about hiding, changing or minimising the things that make others uncomfortable. 

But pregnancy loss emotions are big, loud and hard to keep down. If we keep them in check we either end up exploding or hospitalised. As women we’re told that mental breakdowns are more acceptable than losing our shit. We’re told that crying in the bathroom is the acceptable choice, not showing our sadness to other people. That declining an invitation to a baby shower when we’re a few weeks out from losing our baby is bad manners to decline because we’re sad, but acceptable if we have the flu. It’s more acceptable to smile and nod when a relative asks questions about your sex life, than give them a piece of your mind. 

But here’s the truth about pregnancy loss emotions: They’re complicated, unpredictable and need to be felt in order to be able to process them. 

Rage

Rage needs to boil up, leave our bodies and then we are able to look at it clearly. Dancing is one of my favourite ways to let my rage out, nothing like a good head banger or a heavy dance track to get the body moving, the fists pumping, the rage working its way out from deep down in my soul and out of my body. Screaming and crying works too. I know people who prefer punch bags or marathons, that’s just not me. 

I know that for me when I hold the rage in it, it comes out when I’m driving and yelling every curse word I know at the terrible drivers on the roads. At least I’m letting it out. 

Society doesn’t want us sharing our rage or letting it out. They’d rather we channel it into a pricey gym contract or the latest exercise class, sweating it out in a room full of other women paying for the privilege, because burning it off in silence is acceptable in a way just feeling it never is. And it’s never lost on me that the sanctioned outlets for women’s big feelings always come with a premium price tag. 

Sadness

Sadness needs to wallow in all the places it sits. It needs to be given a reason to gather in our chest and have a chance to leave through our tears. If we leave it inside, the ache under our lungs becomes unbearable.

Society has told us to keep this to ourselves, which is ridiculous. So rather than cry in public, we turn on comfort shows and cry at fictitious people’s stories. Or we eat our feelings, drink them, whatever gets us through the evening.

And then society has the audacity to judge us for the bodies that leaves us in. By insisting we hide our big emotions, society hands us the numbing, then punishes us for reaching for it. It’s a horrific spiral that just leaves those of us working on feeling our emotions at a complete loss. 

Shame

Shame is not ours to carry. Rather it has been thrust upon us by a society that devalues women and can’t handle emotions of any kind. A society that continuously tells women that they’re not good enough. A society where pregnancy loss is seen as a woman being incapable of her designated role. That we’re letting the side down.

Shame is a tolerated emotion in our society, however in this case it isn’t what we feel ourselves, but rather something that is handed to us as the truth. And you know what? It’s not the truth! We have been told lies – by omission and outright – about what having a baby is actually like. We’ve been sold a man’s version of events that glamourises and glorifies pregnancy and child birth while having no grounding in reality. 

Guilt

The partner to shame is guilt and this one is far more internal than the others. There’s no real outward expression of guilt. Sadness is tears, happiness is laughter, rage is explosive, but guilt is silent and quiet and internal. And it’s the one that I know a lot of people who’ve experienced pregnancy loss feel often.

It’s not something we talk much about, because who wants to admit that they feel guilty about a situation. So often it’s a situation that we had absolutely no control over. But this is where society comes into play again. We live in a society that always puts blame somewhere. And where there’s blame there’s implied guilt. Bad things don’t just happen – they happen for a reason, and that reason is usually because someone is responsible. When it comes to pregnancy loss this is the biggest issue! 

Becky is looking at the world with the business lens, and Christine is looking at it from an aware parenting perspective. I value both these opinions because I have both a business and children I want to foster real relationships with. I am here though, to talk loudly about pregnancy loss emotions and everything surrounding that. Grief is a huge part of that, but so are all the other emotions that we are told to suppress by society. We can’t change the world overnight. But I do know that my talking loudly about pregnancy loss and joining the countless other creators doing the same thing is changing the narrative little by little. 

I dream of a world where my kids and their peers can feel all their emotions and never have to bottle them up because society says they’re too much. A world where there is community and support for every single person who has lost a pregnancy and is feeling alone. Only to discover that there have always been people willing to talk about their baby and hold them as they feel all the emotions that are bubbling in their bodies.

Maybe you bought into all of this a long time ago. Maybe you’ve been performing fine for years because that’s what the world asked of you. Finding Yourself Again won’t ask you to keep performing. It’s five days of permission to feel your pregnancy loss emotions exactly as loud as they actually are.

*I earn a commission if you sign up through my link, but you don’t pay any more. I only recommend things that I personally use and stand by.