Every Loss Is Valid, Even If Not Every Loss Is the Same

'Every loss is valid,' a lesson I learnt. Read the Grief Story, 'Healing After Recurrent Miscarriage' by Anna Kettle about navigating grief and healing after multiple miscarriages.

Welcome to the Grief Stories community! I hope you’ll find this to be a welcoming place where you’ll be able to share experiences, get things off your chest, support one another, ask questions, and chat to people who truly ‘get it’. I invite you to read and share stories of hope and healing; giving a voice to loss and grief. This is a safe place helping us to feel less alone on our journey and providing comfort in hard times.

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Loss takes many forms, and while each one may feel different, they are all equally valid. However, whilst all losses matter, because you matter, it may not always feel so. We often fall into the comparison trap, labelling some losses as ‘worse’ than others. As already mentioned in previous Grief Stories, our society tends to downplay certain types of losses, leaving grievers feeling like their grief isn’t as significant as others - pregnancy loss being an example of this.

This is despite the fact that pregnancy loss is a heart-breaking experience that affects many, and no matter how early or late in the pregnancy, the pain is real and valid. Yet it often doesn’t get the acknowledgement it deserves. My heart goes out to every woman and family who experienced pregnancy loss, just like Anna. Today I’m sharing her story.

In today’s Grief Stories, Anna Kettle bravely shares her experience of multiple pregnancy losses. Her story reminds us that every pregnancy loss is not the same. The emotional, physical, and psychological impacts can vary greatly not only from person to person but also from loss to loss.

Her deeply personal journey led her to co-create SPACE, a miscarriage and infertility peer support network. It is a unique space where those wrestling with questions about pregnancy or baby loss, infertility or faith can connect and support each other. Whether you’ve experienced a miscarriage in the early weeks, a stillbirth, or the loss of a pregnancy at any stage, each one carries its own unique grief.

Whilst not every loss is the same, every loss is valid.

I’m deeply grateful to Anna for sharing her story with such honesty and vulnerability. Anna’s words are an important reminder to honour your feelings, whatever they may be, and give yourself the grace to grieve in your own way and time. Please let us know what you found meaningful in the comments.

‘Healing After Recurrent Miscarriage’ by Anna Kettle

Grief Story #011

It was December 2017 when my family plans were first turned upside down by a sudden and unexpected miscarriage. As we left the hospital, after the scan that had confirmed my worst fears, I was devastated, and so was my husband Andy.

My son was two and a half at the time, and we had just lost our second baby. So we spent most of the run-up to that holiday season in a fog of sadness, just going through the festive motions and feigning half smiles, but unable to summon any genuine kind of joy.

I never expected a miscarriage to happen to me until it did, even though I knew that the experience was pretty common. It was such a shock initially, and I couldn’t stop wondering, Why me? What had I done wrong to deserve this, I kept asking, even though rationally I already knew that the answer was nothing.

It was such a confusing, emotional time – and it left me with lots of questions about my body. What had gone wrong, and why had it let me down? But once I got over my initial disappointment and sadness, I reasoned that I would just take a few months to physically recover and then try again.

Five months later I found myself pregnant again, and in an instant, my disappointment shifted back to hope for the future. Everything felt like it was finally falling into place. Our rainbow baby (a baby after loss) was on its way, my son was finally going to be a big brother, and I would be a mum again.

But my excitement was quickly shattered again when I suffered a second miscarriage. This second loss hit me really hard. Experiencing two losses within six months felt so unfair and it left me feeling angry, anxious, and undone. I spent a lot of time in tears.

And I had so many questions whirling in my head. What if something serious was wrong with me? What if it happens again and again? How many times were we willing to put ourselves through this pain? Suddenly I found myself in conversations with doctors about recurring loss, and nothing felt certain anymore.

In the months that followed, we were advised by our medical team to take a pause on trying to conceive while we had some tests at the local hospital’s recurrent miscarriage clinic. That was a hard decision because, in the emptiness of loss, it can feel like the only ‘fix’ for your pain is getting pregnant again.

But although it went against everything I wanted at that time, in the end, the invitation to stop trying for a season of time was a small mercy as it gave us some time to heal emotionally and get into a healthier mindset before trying again.

That autumn, after a summer of various tests and screenings, we got the ‘all clear’. All of our results came back normal, with no medical issues found and so we were advised to try again.

So we did – feeling greatly reassured by this news, and hopeful after our break. Perhaps it would be third time lucky, we thought. And for a while, it felt so perfect. I conceived again on my birthday weekend, which was surely a sign. A gift from God?

But it was not to be as soon after, I miscarried again. And this time, it was a silent miscarriage, which meant we didn’t have any indication of anything being wrong until we were told that there was no heartbeat during a routine scan.

Nothing. Just stillness and silence. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing or seeing, even though I was looking at the screen with my own eyes. Less than two weeks earlier we had seen our baby girl with a healthy heartbeat. Everything was fine, but now suddenly we were being ushered into a quiet side room by some nurses and offered surgery options.

We were both in total shock and couldn’t quite take it in. How could this be happening to us again? This wasn’t supposed to happen again! The experience left me completely crushed. We really felt that this pregnancy was going to be okay. We had prayed hard, trusted God, and even felt God giving us specific promises about our child. We also believed medical staff when they said that things looked good this time.

Discovering that they weren’t, left us feeling incredibly let down by God. But perhaps what hurt most was the loss of our hope for future pregnancies. We were both almost 40 by then, and time was no longer on our side. What’s more, our miscarriages remained ‘unexplained’ which meant no real medical diagnosis or treatment could be offered.

Why was this happening to us? Where was God? Why wasn’t he answering our prayers? Did he care about us at all? I had no answers. But in the end, what else could I do except cry out to God in my brokenness?

So that’s what I did. I shut my bedroom door and just cried, shouted, and screamed at God. In fact, in the weeks that followed, I did this over and over again. The Bible is full of prayers of lament like this. Just look at the book of Psalms, Lamentations or Job for some good examples.

And what I discovered there in the Bible, as well as in my own journey was not a God who always instantly takes away our pain and makes everything right again, but a God who walks with us through our grief. The God of all comfort, who extends his hope, his peace, and his comfort to us in the darkest of times.

It was a huge comfort to know that I wasn’t alone in my grief, and also to be able to hold onto the hope of heaven and know that even if I never had any more children, one day I would hold my babies again. As a Christian, I know that I have a hope which extends beyond the grave.

But our story hasn’t concluded neatly, or with a happy ending. Instead, what followed was three years of infertility spanning through Covid when all of our hospital care shut down, and into our early 40s where fertility naturally wanes.

Gradually, we began making our peace with being a one-child family, even though we never stopped wanting a larger family, only to experience an unexpected fourth pregnancy and miscarriage last year, which took us through this whole cycle of shock, disappointment, anger, confusion and grief again.

Recurrent miscarriage is without a doubt the greatest heartbreak I have ever faced in life. It is grief layered on top of grief, but it’s also a fairly invisible form of loss too as it often happens before many people even know that you’re pregnant.

Perhaps that’s been part of the reason why I launched SPACE, which is an online support community for people experiencing miscarriage or infertility.

It feels good to channel my grief into something positive that can support others facing a similar journey, and help reassure them that they are not alone.

Grief Story by Anna Kettle

Friend, have you walked through the heart-breaking journey of pregnancy loss? How did that experience shape your heart, and what did you wish others understood more deeply about the pain of loss and the grief that comes with it? In those tender moments of sorrow, what did you find to be the most comforting or healing? Share in the comments.

Anna Kettle is a published author, podcaster, speaker, and an award-winning marketing professional. Her first book, ‘Sand Between Your Toes: Inspirations for a Slower, Simpler, More Soulful Life’ is out under Tyndale House.

She is the co-founder of SPACE, a miscarriage and infertility peer support network and can also be found regularly writing and speaking about healing from grief and holding onto hope when things are hard – including on her blog Notes on Life and on What’s the Story? podcast which she co-hosts.

Anna is married to her husband Andy, and mum to Ben (aged 10). They live in the beautiful waterfront city of Liverpool.

You can find more about Anna and her work on her website annakettle.com or connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.