The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
A podcast dedicated to humanizing the experience of miscarriage, and normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers.
The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
E31: Miscarriage & Ambiguous Loss
Welcome to episode 31!
Have you ever felt the weight of a loss that the people around you don't fully recognize? In this episode, Chris and Kelly unearth the complexities of ambiguous loss from their limited understanding of the category. Inspired by Pauline Boss's powerful insights from "Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief" and Rich Oswald's "Unnamed Pain: Coping with Ambiguous Loss", this episode sheds light on the unique grief fathers face following a miscarriage—a grief that often remains unacknowledged and unresolved.
Our conversation dives deep into the societal shortcomings that leave grieving fathers without the support they need. Miscarriage disrupts the traditional grieving process, lacking the usual rituals and communal recognition that help in processing loss. Together, we discuss how crucial it is to validate this type of grief and offer practical ways for friends, family, and colleagues to provide meaningful support. From naming the lost child to creating personal rituals, we explore ways to bring comfort and closure to those affected.
Finally, we focus on the importance of community and professional support for grieving fathers. From grief counselors to support groups, we highlight resources that can provide the much-needed validation and understanding. Non-linear grieving is emphasized, reminding us that healing doesn't follow a set path. By sharing coping strategies and personal reflections, we aim to create a safe space where fathers can find solace and support.
Tune in for heartfelt advice and practical suggestions on navigating this profound loss, and learn how to better support fathers through their journey of grief.
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Instagram: @themiscarriagedad
Email: themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
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Episodes Referenced:
E14: The Unspoken Agony of Life after Multiple Miscarriages (ft. Miscarriage Mumma Support)
E18: Doing Right By Grief (ft. Miscarriage Mumma Support)
E26: A Nightmare Realized: The Surprise of Pregnancy & The Devastation of Miscarriage (ft. Elspeth Edmonds)
E30: Navigating Guilt & Shame After Miscarriage (ft. Chanel Wainscott)
I've never seen a funeral home even offer services for someone who has a miscarriage. As a minister, I've never performed anything like that and I have never offered to perform something like that. When you look at it like that and realize that we live in a society that does not validate that as an actual form of death or something that deserves time to grieve or anything like that, it falls, like you said, straight into this category of now this ambiguous grief, because now people are acting like it's not real.
Speaker 2:This is the Miscarriage Dads podcast, a podcast humanizing the experience of miscarriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. Welcome to another episode of the Miscarriage Dads podcast. My name is Kelly and I'm your host. I'm Chris your co-host, and we are delighted. Man, I'm personally delighted to have you back, chris, because it's been a couple of weeks since you and I have had a conversation. I know you had some things going on on your end of things, so just to check in my guy, how have you been and how are things currently?
Speaker 1:Things are good right now, man, and it was a long, a long unintended break, but things are good now.
Speaker 2:Things are good now, a paradigm to help us understand in the biggest possible point of view what the experience of miscarriage is for us as men and fathers. I recommend anyone who is listening to this episode to buy the book Ambiguous Loss Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief by Pauline Boss.
Speaker 2:Loss learning to live with unresolved grief by Pauline Boss and I've only read the first chapter so far, chris, and it's completely blown my mind and set so many things in perspective for me. So I found an article that I sent over to you. The title of that article is unnamed pain coping with ambiguous loss from the Mayo Clinic Health System, and I sent that over to Chris so that he can read it as sort of a first exposure to that. So we're going to this conversation is going to be more of a dissecting and revealing our understanding of ambiguous loss from the little bit that we've read. So by no means are we presenting ourselves as experts on the matter, but we have learned some things over the past week or so that we think can be beneficial in a conversation and how to apply the things that we've learned into understanding our experience of grief and loss after a miscarriage.
Speaker 1:Also, too, this is not a giant ad podcast Facts, Miss, or Dr Pauline, I'm not sure what exactly what our credentials are, which should help you all understand that this is not an ad. This is something that we found that was just very helpful, and we also. We just want to make sure that we're sharing those tools with you, so no one's getting paid. Like I said, this isn't like a sneaky ad like on TikTok or something like that.
Speaker 1:Nah, this is this, is this is legit, this is something that we found that has helped. Kelly's the one who found the book, like he said sent me the article and I think I think it's going to help. Just the article for me, cause I haven't read the book, but just the article for me really got my wheels going.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about the article that we both read Again. The title of the article is Unnamed Pain Coping with Ambiguous Loss, and it's from the Mayo Clinic Health System, and I'm trying to see here when. So it was written by Rich Oswald, who is a psychotherapist in psychiatry and psychology in Eau Claire, and yep, I'm not even going to pronounce the name of that other place in Wisconsin Menomonee. I have no idea, don't listen. If you live out there in Wisconsin, please forgive me. Yeah, we are sorry. Yeah, we are sorry. I do not know how to pronounce that. So, but, rich Oswald, thank you for writing this article for for Mayo Clinic. From what you've read, how would you describe ambiguous loss?
Speaker 1:or what ambiguous loss is. Yeah, so the way that I understood it when I read the article was that this ambiguous loss it is losing someone without them actually dying, like so it's their, their physical presence is no longer there for whatever reason. Some of the things that stuck out to me I am a child of a divorced family. Now I'm still in contact with both my parents, so I never had to have that feeling. But you know, hey, your parents have divorced. One of the parents has moved away, far, far away and like you can't see him, you can't talk to him, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:That person might be still alive, but because there's no way for you to be able to confirm that by like, seeing them and being around them, there is that feeling of loss because you're not able to tie up any kind of loose ends, or you were never really able to say goodbye People that go to war and you're unable to contact them or talk to them. There was a few other examples in there of just when someone, for whatever reason whether it's your fault, whether it's just random circumstances, whether it's their fault, whatever that person is no longer around you, that person is no longer accessible to you. So you grieve the loss.
Speaker 2:So I think the best way for me to understand the concept and to appreciate it for what it is is that and we've we've talked about this before especially when Sophie from Miscarriage, mama Support, when we're talking to her, to something concrete, to something physical, and when those constructs don't exist and yet you're still feeling grief and you've still experienced loss, that's what ambiguous loss is. So, to use an example, you and I, we are friends, we are buddies, we are mates and God forbid I die, you will feel the sense of loss and you will grieve the fact that man, my friend Kelly, died. You have history with me. You will be able to talk about that one time. Me, you, mandy and Amber went to your apartment and seminary and we had a great time, right Like. So you would be able to share actual, concrete memories and experiences that you had with me and then, most likely, you would be sharing those stories, you know, at the repass after my funeral, and so you would have come out of a ritual, a ceremony, that concretely affirms I don't know if that's the right word, but at least concretely like affirms the fact that, wow, kelly is dead. You know, we went to the cemetery, we laid his body to rest underground. These are things that kind of help people move through this process of grief and these are the responses, the appropriate responses that we have to losing someone who has died, for instance with ambiguous loss. That would be the equivalent of me and you.
Speaker 2:We had set up to talk about ambiguous loss today, right To get on record this episode, and then I never showed up. And then you don't hear from me for another week and you don't hear from me for another two weeks. And then you reach out to our mutual friends and they find out that, just like that, I just disappeared. And there is, I left no note. And there is, I left no note. There is no trace, gone without a trace type thing. And now you are left like well, is he dead, is he alive? People are investigating, people are searching, I mean the whole nine. And then you blink and you realize man, it's been five years and I still don't know if my guy is alive or not. What do you do with all of that? You're grieving the fact that it's been five years that you haven't seen me, but yet you don't know for sure if I'm dead or if I'm alive. And so that grief and that sense of loss that you're experiencing is unresolved.
Speaker 2:So ambiguous loss or big ambiguous grief is any loss or grief that is unresolved. And I think miscarriage falls perfectly in that category, because when I had my experiences, and when you and Amber had your experience, we didn't have anything concrete, we didn't have anything physical, yet we knew we lost something as well as someone. And navigating through that is the reason why we're having this podcast and we're having this conversation, and we've been having these conversations because there isn't necessarily a clear cut way to move through that type of through that type of grief. Thing that I want to get your comment on is when it mentioned that when someone loses, someone experiences a loss in whatever fashion, right, Whether it be death or someone loses something or someone, the aspect of being able to validate that loss is crucial. And so, again, the funeral service, the celebration of life, the repast, the gathering together and telling of stories, these are all ways of validating that sense of loss and that sense of grief.
Speaker 2:When a physical loss happens and there is some form of closure to it, I want to get your thought on how do you think, or even if you think it's possible as a society, as a culture as a community validating. Bro, I don't even know what question I'm trying to ask you, so let me. Let me struggle with this, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think I know exactly where you're going, bro, don't even worry, because I think it falls into that validation that you were talking about. And a part of the reason that we feel like miscarriage is not validated is because of how it's treated, and these are conversations that we have had obviously before with just us, with the different guests, but how, at your job, they don't treat it like death, so you don't. Not only do they take away, especially for a woman, you know it's not. Your maternity leave is over and they expect you to come back and you don't even get any bereavement time, same as a man on terms of paternity leave that's done. You know baby's gone. There was no birth, that's it. And people are expecting you to just bounce back of a paternity leave. It, that's done. You know baby's gone, there was no birth, that's it. And people are expecting you to just bounce back.
Speaker 1:When we take a look at just how we treat death in general, like I've never seen a funeral home even offer services for someone who has a miscarriage, I mean y'all, y'all, you know we have a bigger community here, y'all let me know if I'm wrong, but I've never seen that happen. As a minister, I've never performed anything like that and I have never offered to perform something like that. And when you look at it like that and realize that we live in a society that does not validate that as an actual form of death or something that deserves time to grieve or anything like that, it falls, like you said, straight into this category of now, this ambiguous grief, because, man, now people are acting like it's not real. And when we're talking about this ambiguous grieving and things like that and we're talking about, hey, there's this person that's not there, it's, of course, a lot harder for societies to validate because we're not sure they're dead. So, you know, how do you validate when you're not sure? Well, with miscarriage, we know something's dead, you know that someone has died.
Speaker 1:For women, I think it's a lot. I don't want to say easier, because it's not easy, but there is a lot more that goes into it. And for women to be invalidated in a miscarriage is huge. But of course, for a man which is why we're talking about we're the miscarriage dads we get extra forgotten because we didn't have that physical thing happen to us. So sometimes even in our own families, we don't have that validated as men.
Speaker 1:For us, no one really asks how we're doing. No one really asks how we're handling it, how we're going through it. It's really the focus that's on the woman, and understandably so. I'm not complaining about that. I'm just telling you what it is. When it comes to how we're supposed to now get past that as a society, I think it is very important that we as a society validate that, that we as a society look at that as no, this is a death. Now, I'm not talking about, I'm not trying to change companies' policies or anything like that, but at least give people time. Maybe, if you don't no longer want to give them attorney time, well, give them bereavement time because someone in their family has died, their child has died.
Speaker 2:I'm going to take it a step further than you, bro. I am trying to change companies policies like that should absolutely be a included in companies policies. There should absolutely be some space for someone and for people who experience miscarriages. Because the what I was while you were talking, you, you saw that I was looking, you know, flipping through through the book, and one of the things that the book says is that ambiguous loss is the most distressing kind of loss.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because of that aspect that we were just talking about, to not have that loss be validated by people around you, you are now carrying this loss, the weight of this loss, the and the grief of having lost this pregnancy, right, of having had this miscarriage, but because your work doesn't validate it, because your church doesn't validate it, because your family members don't validate it, because your friends don't validate it and maybe, even, maybe, even your partner does not validate it, you are now carrying all of that in you, because now you're asking yourself the question should I even think that this was important to begin with, right? And so there's all of that mental, emotional, psychological turmoil, and the level of distress that you are in continues to intensify the more. Because guess what's not changing, chris, your grief and your sense of loss, that ain't changing.
Speaker 1:And you know it's wild, because when we talk about grief and we think about loss, the greatest form of loss we can think of is the loss of a child, a parent losing a child. I mean anybody out there can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've when we're talking about grief, there's an there's an understanding that you're supposed to lose your parents. There's an understanding that you're supposed to lose your grandparents, the people that are older than you. That's supposed to happen, but a loss of a child is the most terrible thing we could possibly imagine. So how is it suddenly invalid when it's a miscarriage? How is it that suddenly the loss of the child is the worst thing that is possible, but a miscarriage somehow is not supposed to affect us? That doesn't make sense, because it's still a loss of a child.
Speaker 1:In fact, I would dare say that and I think this is where the lady was going in terms of writing this book, in terms of talking about what you're saying with that ambiguous loss, how it can be that much worse is because there's no closure, there's no moving on. I think that's something we've talked about before, in terms of looking at this as a situation where it's stuck, love. It's just, it was there and it was gone, but now we can't move past it. How is what are we supposed to do with the feelings that we had? We never even got the chance to fully express that love. And again, this isn't just for anyone, this was for your child Normally. Yeah, we're going to tell you you can take all the time you need, you can do this or do that, but with miscarriage, suddenly it's not the same.
Speaker 2:So now imagine you're carrying all of that in you and then now you're going to work and you're expected to produce and to perform in the way that you are expected to produce and perform at work and you just can't, bro, like your emotional reserves are completely drained. You are psychologically incapable of focusing on the tasks that you have that you are responsible for. That is yet another form of invalidation that the person who is experiencing this loss to miscarriage experiences even at work. Like that validation piece is so crucial in helping people like me and you and others who have experienced a miscarriage to begin processing our grief and our loss in a more healthy way. As a matter of fact, I think you did share that when you were talking about your story, that you had people right correct me if I'm wrong that you had people who, like they, validated your loss. Am I making that up?
Speaker 1:No, no, yeah, because there were some people that you know I found out had miscarriages, and it wasn't a situation where it was kind of both right, where I had people that were validating and then people that just didn't say anything, right, right, which for me is much better than trying to figure out something to say, because we have heard some horror stories together about what people have said that have made situations way worse, way worse, situations way worse, way worse. So I experienced kind of the good to the middle in terms of people being validating it and then people not saying anything because they don't know what to say, which, again, it's fine If you don't know what to say.
Speaker 2:Being there is just as good, yeah, so in my experience there was no validation, and these are some of the things that are falling into place for me now the more I learn about this. It was a series of invalidating circumstances to not have anyone say to me man, like what you're feeling is real, I am so sorry that you experienced this. You know what I mean, and partly the reason why no one validated that is because I couldn't talk about it. I didn't talk about it and finally, when I did, I did get some validation from you know, a small number of people. But this was like later on down the line, when I had started talking to my wife and I was like I can't keep doing this. I can't keep keeping silence about, you know, us trying.
Speaker 2:And then, if we experienced a loss and all of that jazz, and I do remember around that time talking to one of my buddies from church and he and his wife of my buddies from church and he and his wife were trying for a second child, I believe, and they experienced a miscarriage, and so I remember him sharing that with me in the moment that I was sharing with him that we had experienced a miscarriage and, bro, that was just so comforting man, yeah, someone who understands what I'm feeling, someone who understands what I'm going through unfortunately, because they've experienced it also. But that validation piece is so crucial. So I think I want us to stop here for a second, because right now you just said, even if you don't know what to say to someone, your presence is fine, and that is 1000 percent correct. But let's try to arm, not arm. Let's try to equip people with some things that they could say to validate someone who's experienced a miscarriage.
Speaker 1:You know something as simple and I know it's very. I'm not even sure if cliche is something as simple and I know it's very. I'm not even sure if cliche is the right way to say it because it's so common. But saying I'm sorry, because that is the best way for you to show and say I might not understand what you're going through, but I understand that you're going through and I am emotionally I don't want to say connected, but at least emotionally open to understanding that you are hurting. And I want to show you, even if it's just through my words, that I understand that you are hurting. Even if I don't I've never been through it, so I don't fully understand what it's like I am able to at least recognize that you're hurting. Also, you can say I don't know what you're going through, I don't know how to feel. I just want to be here for you. Simple, yeah, perfectly fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, it is not a bad thing to say that I don't understand, because I'm not necessarily expecting you to understand. Empathy doesn't need your understanding. I just need you to know that I'm hurting and for you to recognize that I'm hurting and for you to just say, even if it's just sitting in the same space with me or if you know me that well, and and let's say the that what I need is for you to leave me alone. If you know that, then do that. You know, like, um, whatever it is that I need emotionally at the time. If you can just do that, that's fine, and if you're just someone who's there, I'm just sitting there, I just need to cry. You don't got to say a word, but that is a good way to at least start the conversation, because that opens up that world of validation.
Speaker 1:One thing that my dad did and this isn't necessarily something I'm saying for you all to do, but this is what happened to me my dad asked me if we had, uh, named our lost baby. You know we said no. He was like well, maybe it's a good idea to name it, because one of the things that the article talks about is that ceremony. Yeah, and he was saying because if you are able to name your baby, then it might make it easier to say goodbye oh yo you know, yes, yes, yeah, I know right.
Speaker 1:So even now there are some times where he'll still bring it up very seldom, but when he does he calls the baby a little bit, you know, and he'll say like, yeah, I remember when you guys lost a little bit in those cards, you know. And for me that's even further than just a name, that's a nickname. Like right now we call randall bam bam, because if you all know bam bam from the flintstones, maybe I don't have to explain, you know, but a nickname is more than just a name, because a nickname is something that is you're describing, it's a loving name that you have for someone you know. So for me for him to say, hey, yeah, I remember when you guys lost a little bit, that means the world to me. So even something as simple as that, hey, in this situation and this is kind of why I brought it up I don't want to.
Speaker 1:I'm sure maybe there are some suggestions that are bad suggestions, but when you're suggesting things to help in terms of moving forward with your grieving process not moving away from your grieving process, but moving forward with your grieving process I think that can help. That's why saying hey, I brought these flowers, this is just representative of your baby. I know that they're not here with you anymore, but hey, this is the life that you weren't able to actually hold. I just came up with that right now. Obviously, it's easier for me to come up with it because I've been through it, but I'm just saying any kind of little gesture like that is helpful.
Speaker 2:What you drew attention to also is not just the validation piece, but also how a ceremony or a ritual can also serve as a means to validate your loss and your grief, right, so there are clearly things that you shouldn't say to someone who's experienced a loss, and we've spoken about that before on many episodes as well. Right, I am a huge proponent of not saying to someone it was just a miscarriage. Yeah, don't do that someone. It was just a miscarriage. Yeah, don't do that. Or at least you know you could get pregnant. Don't say that. Or you could just have more sex. I know that, but that's not what I need to hear right now. Yeah, and so, while we can provide, you know, some concrete things and steps and suggestions that people can do, think about it in this paradigm. Understand that the person who is experiencing that loss in themselves there is a great deal of discomfort. Nothing about this experience is comfortable to that person or to those people who are experiencing like they are right there in the thick of that loss and grief. For you as the one who can support them and you want to validate them. Here's the paradigm Can you hold space that makes you a little bit uncomfortable so that they can feel the fullness of their discomfort in your presence. Man, that's huge, like that is all people are asking for. Do you have enough compassion in you to make yourself a little uncomfortable, in fact, a discomfort that you are choosing to experience for people who did not choose to experience the volume, the depth of the discomfort that they're feeling because of their loss? And if you can afford someone a little bit of that space, making yourself, sacrificing that little bit of yourself and your time for them, that right there is that. I don't even know what the right word is, but, man, kudos to you if you can do that.
Speaker 2:So then now let's talk about the ritual aspect of it, the ceremony aspect of it. We could do all sorts of things when there is something that marked the app, the physical absence of this person, there's a tombstone that has the person's name on it, there is a location to, to get to that person's resting place. None of those things exists with a miscarriage. So then, thinking about a ceremony, thinking about a ritual, can it? Can it can seem overwhelming, right, it can almost seem silly. How do you encapsulate what all of that is?
Speaker 2:So, and this is just off the top, if someone were to want to go that route in the way that your father suggested to you, right? If you haven't named the baby yet, try giving it a name, and it doesn't have to be. You can name your child however you want to name your child, whether it's an actual name, whether it's a nickname, whether it's's some other symbolic naming you can think about what that is and what feels comfortable to you in your context and give a name If you want to give a name. If you don't want to give a name, that's entirely fine as well.
Speaker 1:And then think about?
Speaker 2:what can you do that can represent as close as possible the experience of the loss, the miscarriage loss? So is it filling a balloon with helium, an unnamed balloon, and then, in the release of that balloon, it's a means of releasing that? Whatever it is, I don't know? Do you pop the balloon and sort of like as soon as you fill it up and then boom, you pop it as symbolic of here is this process, this beautiful thing that we thought we were going to spend some time with and then, just like that, it's gone. You know, as I was, I was listening to you talk about what your father told you. I'm thinking, man, I would love to get a fish, and then just releasing that fish in the water somewhere yeah, that's beautiful. And then just letting go of my little Nemo yeah, that's beautiful. Or or or something like that. You know what I'm saying. So what is?
Speaker 2:I remember what's her name? Elspeth, who was one of our guests, maybe about three weeks to a month ago, and she and her partner, tom. They named their baby Bean. And so what? Get a, get a little bean bag, you know, like something that can bring you as close as you possibly can to represent the hope and aspiration encapsulated in this life that was here one moment and then gone the next. And then creating some kind of ceremony, some kind of ritual. It doesn't even have to be, it could be as intimate as you want it, or bringing as many people as you want right, but to really represent in a concrete way something that in and of itself does not feel concrete at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something that's not something that me and Amber did, to be honest, now that we're talking about it, I'm like, man, maybe there is something I should do, you know, just because, but just to give that little bit of closure. One of the things that the article was saying is the thing about the ceremony. Whatever the ceremony is, it gives you the chance to reflect. And it gives you the chance because at funerals you get to share memories and those kinds of things, memorial services it gives a chance for other people to share memories as well and even if it's just you and your spouse or your partner or whoever, you have at least that little bit of chance to actually say goodbye Right, and even maybe just remember those positive parts of the pregnancy, because the miscarriage, of course, overshadows those moments. Because while we are stuck with this unresolved love and unresolved hope, it was love and hope that was created. The excitement was there, the planning was there.
Speaker 1:Like we've said a million times, there was a person that was formed in our minds and being able to say goodbye to that person man, even me, just like talking about the idea of saying goodbye, it means a lot. Like this conversation is just bringing back a lot of emotions and a lot of feelings, and you know, when it comes to death and I think that's why, hey, kudos to you finding this stuff, man, about this ambiguous law stuff but when it comes to losing that child and being able to just have closure and of course that doesn't mean you stop loving, no, that doesn't mean for any person that we lose. Just because the funeral is over, it doesn't mean that we've stopped loving them or that we forget them, right? But at least we had the chance to say goodbye, yeah.
Speaker 2:And in the case of a miscarriage, you didn't get a chance to say hello and you didn't get a chance to say hello and you didn't get a chance to say goodbye, yeah, right, you were forced to say goodbye. I am a chaplain in a pediatric setting and oftentimes I am supporting families who are having to make very difficult decisions about their child, and many a times those decisions include redirecting care Once the family gets there. One of the things that the medical team wants to offer families as like the last thing they can possibly offer, is the ability to have as much control for how the final days with their child can play out. So they start, you know, offering things like memory making and some of the memory making options and what have you, and so one will never be prepared for redirecting care and for you know saying okay, enough is enough, let's start to withdraw some of the supportive measures. One never is prepared for that, but there is something that I've seen in my time there at my setting where it's not that you're ever going to be prepared, but you have these concrete things out of the pictures the hand molds, the footprints, the lock of hair. You know, whatever it is, whatever it is, even though we're going to walk out of here empty handed, without our child, we can take a piece, a tangible, concrete piece, of our child with us, and so, in some small regard, that seems to be helpful for some family members.
Speaker 2:What is entirely missing from a miscarriage is all of that. I didn't have a choice. I couldn't have control of how this life was going to exit the world. In fact, this life never even fully entered the world. So there is no memory making that I could have with this child. There is no hand print or hand mold or lock of hair or picture or anything like. There is none of that right. We've spoken about this before. I don't even know how that child looked. I don't even know how they smelled, I didn't even know how they felt. It was all a construct, a psychological construct in my mind, and then, all of a sudden, nature says that's it. It is gone and what I am watching happen is my wife's physical body getting rid of everything. What do I do now? How do I? How do I move forward? How do I do? Anything offer is some way of reclaiming or claiming something else that can give us whatever those type of concrete things give parents who were able to have those type of memories with their child.
Speaker 2:And let me be very clear here, chris this is not a comparison. Yeah, can we be explicit about that? This is not a comparison. In no way, shape or form Are you saying, nor am I saying, that one has it better than the other. By no means, by no means, bro. We're not comparing which one is better, which one is worse. This is not a comparison. This is not a comparison.
Speaker 2:None of those realities should even be a thing. This podcast should not exist. The Still Parents podcast should not exist, right, like these type of the Miscarriage Doula should not exist. You know, the Sucky Sisterhood podcast should not exist. Like those things should not exist, bro. But nonetheless, here we are. So this is not a comparison.
Speaker 2:This is not to say that if you've met your child and you lost them, that somehow that's better or worse, or that a miscarriage this is not it whatsoever. And I'm belaboring that point because I don't want anybody coming out of their neck talking about some oh, the miscarriage dads are making this claim. That is not true. We're not making that claim. Not at all. And let this be explicit, as explicit as it possibly get. We're not making, we're not is that from our experience as fathers who've been impacted by loss, to miscarriage. It is a different way to process, through our of processes, to give us something similar, something as close, something true within the context of our experience, in the same way that a parent who has met their child and lost their child gets some form of closure, some form of something to help carry them through their grieving process. That's what I'm saying and I think that's what we're saying A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent so so.
Speaker 2:So the article as we come to to end a a conclusion. The article did mention a few coping tips. I'm just gonna read them not the entire description, but just sort of the tips that they've recommended here in this article. Again, the title of the article is Unnamed Pain Coping with Ambiguous Loss, and I will include a link to that in the show notes. So these are some of the coping tips it says here.
Speaker 2:People follow different paths through the grieving experience. There's no right or wrong way to grieve. There are no specific phases. It's rarely a linear path and instead has ups and downs and moves forward and back, and that is crucial for people to understand. Just in grief in general. Yes, there are the stages of grief, but it's not linear, it has no direction, it's omnidirectional. You can feel like you've made several great steps forward one day or one moment, and then the next moment you have started right back at square one, and that's just what it is. So here are a couple of tips mentioned in the article Identify your loss, recognize multiple emotions, and I think this part is important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, last week's conversation with Chanel Winscott she's a psychotherapist in Ontario, canada she talked about just having just getting in the habit of identifying what you're feeling throughout the day as you're processing through guilt and shame and grief, just being mindful of what it is that you're feeling, without ascribing any type of judgment positive or negative to it. So recognizing multiple emotions, not comparing. It's impossible to compare emotions because people aren't simple or the same. We've spoken about considering ceremonies and, last but definitely not least, Not even close to least A hundred percent Seeking support.
Speaker 2:That's probably number one yeah right 100%. Seek support precisely for that to support other men like us who have been deeply impacted by loss to miscarriage. How can people find you, Chris? Let's just make it explicit how can people find you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean same kind of thing. You can email. I'm on Instagram. I mean you can just search my name on Instagram. That's probably the easiest way to do it. Hit me up, dm me, it's not a problem. And if, for some reason, you can't find me and you're able to find the Miscarriage, dads Kelly will let me know that you were specifically asking for me. It's no problem.
Speaker 2:You can find our account at the Miscarriage Dads on Instagram. You can email themiscarriagedad at gmailcom. We don't have a website yet, so you know that means of getting in contact with us is unavailable for the time being. I am in the process, chris, of creating miscarriage support for dads, which is going to be a way for me to specifically connect with fathers who are experiencing loss and miscarriage and to walk alongside them for the first three to six months of their journey. So these are the seeking support part is crucial. You can speak with a grief counselor. You can speak with a therapist. You can speak with a therapist. You can talk to a death doula. You can talk to a definitely talk to your minister. I mean talk man, seek help, seek support, seek people and resources in your community where you can be validated, where your grief can be acknowledged, where you find community. And yeah, that's number one, that's number one, that's 100 percent, that's number one. So, man bro, again thank you for another great conversation, man.
Speaker 2:I think this is something that we're going to keep coming back to, because I think it does provide a great frame for understanding and for being able to talk through some of the complexities of the miscarriage experience. Hearing is. Thanks for watching.
