Comforting Skill Sets
Carolyn Hax had thought-provoking pregnancy loss advice this week. A woman wrote her after a miscarriage, stating that she is now in limbo. She didn’t tell people she was pregnant, and now she doesn’t want to start the conversation by talking about the loss. But she wants support.
Please think of your most supportive person or people beyond your partner, and tell — even if that person isn’t necessarily your closest person. You want someone who has crisis chops and knows how to be supportive, which may be a different skill set from the one your mom or best friend has. Invite people emotionally to help you through this, at a pace you feel you can manage.
So the thought-provoking part begins with your best comfort may not be the person you would identify as your best comforter before a crisis. People have different skills sets, and someone who is not particularly close to you may turn out to be the best support in the moment.
Carolyn also sends the woman to the online community. Sometimes strangers who have gone through something similar can be better listeners and question-askers than someone who knows you (but not the situation) well.
I was thinking about that idea of different comforting skill sets and how we automatically have a hole in helping people through pregnancy loss in many cultures because we keep it on the fringes of society vs. building ritual or conversation around it.
It goes back to what we were talking about a few weeks ago. If we taught pregnancy loss as part of sex ed, it would be commonplace knowledge. But it isn’t commonplace knowledge, and when we’re shamed by society NOT to tell people about a pregnancy until 12 weeks (because doing so may mean that you have to talk about pregnancy loss), we remove all possibility of people building the skill set. Unless they’ve been through it themselves or have high empathy.
Food for thought.
4 comments
I think many in this community have lived this advice. I remember feeling so betrayed by people who I thought were my support system failing miserably when it came to supporting me through infertility and loss. You’re absolutely right about skill sets and how everyone’s is different.
I agree that miscarriage and infertility need to be part of sex education. But I also think we need grief education and resources, given the dearth understanding.
This is so true. Because sometimes the people you are closest to end up needing their own care in these situations, or become high maintenance in trying to take care of you. If that makes sense. I didn’t tell many people about my miscarriage because I didn’t want to have to feel obligated to keep up with them as they “comforted” me. My parents, for example. They are wonderfully supportive. But my mom doesn’t understand not wanting to talk. Which means if I didn’t answer a call she would worry. Which would lead to me feeling like I needed to reassure her or answer the calls. It’s important to recognize the kind of support we need, which is sometimes being left alone and other times not, and go from there.
This is all such good advice. So many of us had to figure it out alone. And I’m particularly glad that online support is now accepted as a legitimate support. I always remember hearing a radio presenter scoffing about it, saying that it was so sad people had to turn to strangers for support. She never understand the power of that, or the power of anonymity in doing so.
My close co-worker had a pregnancy loss. She didn’t tell anyone about the pregnancy and felt very alone after the loss. I learned about it during/after the loss when she had to take time off from work. For her subsequent pregnancies, she told EVERYONE as soon as she found out because she wanted their support and more importantly prayers. She was telling entire cross functional teams at work on conference calls when she was 6-8 weeks. I think there has to be an in between because it made a lot of people uncomfortable since it went against the norm of waiting. She went on to have another loss after a successful pregnancy and was much more at peace with more people knowing the good news and sad outcome. I completely understand sharing the news with a pre-determined support system, but I feel like she might have overshared. There were a lot of difficult business calls where people asked how she was doing and had to share the sad news.