A Heartbreaking Loss

Chrissy Teigen and her husband John Legend shared the sad and heartbreaking news this week that she had lost her baby. Teigen had been hospitalized due to excessive bleeding.

Teigen wrote, "We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we've never felt before. We were never able to stop the bleeding."  

Teigen said she has received an outpouring of support. "Thank you to everyone who has been sending us positive energy, thoughts and prayers. We feel all of your love and truly appreciate you."

Sadly that love and support was not universal. 

Tony Posnanski, one of my followers on Twitter posted this: 

"Anyone saying anything negative about Chrissy Teigen and John Legend can seriously fuck all the way off."

Which left me to wonder who the hell in this time of tragedy, the worst thing that expectant parents can ever endure, would have anything to say that was negative? 

Well, it seems, Trump supporters.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend have been vocal critics of Donald Trump. 

Yodelingfish tweeted, "I just saw where vile diamond & silk are bashing her, including holding polls. It's absolutely a new low."

Diamond & Silk are a pair of outrageously loud and obnoxious African American women who have gained notoriety for their outrageously loud and obnoxious support of Donald Trump. Fox News puts them on a lot at least two reasons.

1) See! Black people do love Donald Trump! 

2) Hey! All you racists out there! Every bad thing you think about black people is true! Look at these two!  

OK, i did not get into this to get into another rant about Trump's idiotic followers. I wanted to post about this heartbreaking loss that Chrissy Teigen and John Legend shared because it's a brutal and hard thing to endure and I've seen that up close.

When I was a child, my mother had two miscarriages. It was a time of considerable emotional turmoil for her. We were a poor family and I can imagine she was worried about bringing another life into our family when we could barely afford to keep me fed. But then to have that life taken brutally from her, I imagine she felt no small amount of guilt. 

I say "I imagine" because I don't know exactly what my mother's thoughts were on this. She didn't talk about this, at least not where I could hear. I could only bear witness to her demeanor, unusually quiet and reserved, unsteady on her feet in the days after each loss.  

I wonder how my life might have been different if those pregnancies had gone to full term. Would I in the role of an older brother had grown up to be different kind of man, a better man? On my own, I was too focused on my own wants and needs. When younger siblings, perhaps I would have grown up to be a less selfish person. 

But I didn't have a lot of information about the particulars of my mother's miscarriages at the time. Maybe I was just too young, stupid and self absorbed to care as much as I should have. Or maybe miscarriage is one of those things that women just didn't talk about. Maybe because it's viewed as some kind of failing of a woman's primary responsibility to bear children or some other outmoded thinking like that.  

Miscarriage leads to feelings of guilt and shame which need to be addressed. Chrissy Teigen sharing her heartbreak gives a public voice to a time of soul wrenching crisis in the life of a pregnant woman. 

About 50 years ago or so, my mother needed to know she wasn't alone. She did not have that. Her pain, physical and emotional, was to remain private.  

Anyone who has lost a child to miscarriage does not need to be the object of scorn and ridicule by clowns and charlatans. They need our love and support more than ever. 

Remember to be good to one another.