Poems borne of Miscarriage

         I have lived a blessed life, full of Grace, love & wonder. In the midst of it, God has allowed me to experience the "sword piercing my heart" of losing three children. Their deaths touched me profoundly.

         I survived the miscarriages, but my heart (& writing) carries the scars. Writing about it was an important part of my healing process.

         At first, these poems were written as therapy for me, ways of expressing inexpressible pain & loss. Getting it on paper didn't make me feel better, but it helped me survive another day and another day and another.

         Sharing the poems helped me make public the feelings that couldn't be expressed in polite company. There were too many "Everything's going to be OK", "This isn't the end of the world" sort of comments to make expressing despair possible, except to a chosen few. In that, sharing these was a selfish act. I needed to speak, but there was no one I could talk to.

         Posting them also made permanent, in a public sort of way, the reality of these hidden lives lost. That's a unique need in miscarriage- the usual memorial tokens are not erected like with other deaths. I hear divorce is similar- a marriage dies without a funeral or grave. Again, that was a selfish motive for me to post them.

         That said, I also know (from long experience- my first miscarriage was 20 years ago!) that there are many women hurting silently because of such loss that is so quickly forgotten by the rest of the world, but carried forever in their hearts. I hoped that my poems could help these women feel a little less alone, and give them words for their pain. In that, these poems are ministry.

         Surprisingly, these poems have opened more doors with post-aborted women than those who have had miscarriages. It seems that secret pain scars deepest; over & over these women have written to me about their regrets and sorrow, and I have been able to offer them a bit of hope. God loves us even when we really screw up. There is never a life without worth, no matter how short, no matter how twisted by choices.

         But these poems are not appropriate just for women. Do not men sometimes experience loss & pain? I'd like to think of these as functioning as metaphors of loss for people with entirely different issues they are grieving