When a few weeks ago we explained the nine things that should not be said to a woman who has suffered an abortion, we end up with one that did not talk about something that was said, but about what was not said. I kept talking about it in a few days, and in reality it has been two months, so I return to the topic to talk about that point, which can become as or more painful than all the phrases that can tell you: how much after an abortion or loss they stop talking to you because they no longer understand your pain.
When he leaves, it all starts
Because a loss does not end at the moment it occurs, but quite the opposite. That is the moment when everything starts. I wanted to head this post with a beautiful illustration of Korrig'Anne, which perfectly sums up the feeling of a mother before her unborn baby, or before the baby that is born but dies.
What hugs? Nothing but everything. Nothing holds, and yet a baby's body is glimpsed. The love contained in that tiny empty space, which really is not because there is love, there are dreams, there is a life that could be and was not. That does take up space.
I have explained it on other occasions, and I repeat it because it is necessary: it is not only life, which is going away. It’s not just a little body for a few hours, days, or not even born. everything was going to be. That is what is lost, that is why suffering, because it is going to be what was going to be a new life, a little person who was going to grow up, who was going to occupy a space in the parents' emotional and physical life, who was going to share emotions, time, responsibilities, that he was going to grow through them ... All that will never be, but it was in his parents' mind. They did dream it. They did imagine it. And when fate suddenly blows it away, the emptiness is so great that it hurts, and it hurts a lot.
But people don't think about that. He doesn't usually do it. They only focus on what they see, what they feel, what comes through their senses. If they see it, it exists. If they don't see it, no. If they share space and time, they can love. If not, how to do it? That they ask: how are you going to love a baby you've barely met? How to hold on to the affection for a fetus that has not come forward? Why? "Of course it hurts," they tell you, "but you have to go ahead and leave it behind." And then come all the phrases that try to minimize the problem so that you also minimize it, and for you to banal your suffering: "you are not the only one," "you are young," "it would not have to be born," "better now. that later "," turn the page "," you didn't even know him ", etc.
The silenced cry
These are phrases that help very little because they make a woman feel that her feelings are wrong, that she has no reason to cry, suffer or remember. That I shouldn't think about the baby that won't be because it has happened to others and they don't go around the world regretting.
The problem is that they do not do it for the same thing, they do not lament because they are made to believe that it is something for which they should not suffer, and thus hundreds and thousands of women who silence the pain of gestational grief are added because they believe that they do not They are strong enough, or brave, to overcome it. In fact, they feel the opposite, weakness, fragility, the gap in their self-esteem and self-confidence for wanting to cry when the world tells them they shouldn't have them.
And they cry in the corners, when nobody sees them, hidden so that nobody knows that they are weaker than the rest of the women when it turns out that most of them feel the same, crying when they know that nobody will tell them that it is worth so much to cry, hiding from the looks of those he loves most, maybe a son, maybe a mother, maybe the couple: "Come back. Leave it now. We need you to be the one before. Forget it and I still feel you."
The loneliness of loss
But you can't come back because life doesn't go back, but forward. Irremediably, it always goes forward. After being a mother, you'll never be the one before. After a loss, either. Of course, at home, physically, everything is the same. You take a picture and there is no one else. The room that was empty waiting for a baby still is. Nothing has changed. But a woman is not what she shows in a photo. No one is. A woman, a man, a person, is the sum of their experiences, their desires, hopes, desires, doubts, sufferings, ... so an abortion or loss becomes part of all that and no, you can't come back.
That is why those who suffer without being able to hide, or those who try but cannot hide it, take the scourge of misunderstanding, the blow of loneliness, that moment that comes after the insistence to make her come back, that one in which nobody looks for you anymore, nobody calls you anymore, nobody wants to be with you anymore because they consider you weak, that all you do is regret and hey, everyone has their own problems and the last thing they want is to keep listening to you always with the same.
Because one step before is the point where you could have approached to walk together, staying with you to think about other things: "we are going to take her out of the house, she is drowning in her sorrows, and we are going to show her that there is a life beyond, but no one gets the subject. " It is undoubtedly a good idea. that is poisoned as the phrase progresses. She is poisoned because what you really need is a "we are going to get her out of the house, she is drowning in her sorrows, and we are going to show her that we are with her, she has to be able to talk about it.
How different, right? But how difficult! "And what do we do if he starts to cry? Won't it be worse? What if he collapses? And if he runs out to his house again? What if he doesn't even agree to come? What if he doesn't pick up the phone? ? " And there we are all. At that point where we are unable to heal our own wounds and we see ourselves, obviously, totally unable to heal those of others, because as soon as they take us out of "cheer up," "think of something else", "that is nothing ", we run out of tools.
And therein lies the problem, in that we believe that we have to do something or say something, that it is we who have to give the solution, and no. The wounds of a loss can only be healed by oneself, oneself. We can help her, being there in case the wound opens, because you do not hesitate: they open, again and again, but it is not the same if she is alone, that if she is accompanied, because while one holds her arm, the other the hugs, a third says words of comfort and so she is much better able to heal the wound and raise her head to continue with her life, despite that scar, and all the scars.
We don't have to say anything, but we have to be there. We cannot give the solution, but we can accompany it when you want to talk about it. And we cannot let her feel alone, because then the emptiness occupies everything and she will feel that it is she who is broken, and not the others, who are not able to understand that Being a mother is something that comes long before giving birth.
Illustration | Korrig'Anne
In Babies and more | What you should never say to a woman who has suffered an abortion, How much they tell you that the fetus has no heartbeat, you do not get a curettage and days later they tell you that the pregnancy continues, The creator of Facebook decides to talk about the three abortions of your partner to encourage people to count their cases
