Before we begin, a quick content warning that this post is about pregnancy loss. Please take care of yourself and do not read if this subject feels too difficult for you.

Hello friends, and welcome October. It’s a beautiful season where I live in Portland, Oregon. The trees are turning impossible hues and the wind is crisp and has that certain smell to it. After a summer that dragged on, Fall is really here. There is some part of this season that is able to hold both excitement and sorrow, and that is true for me personally, as I feel the usual spark of creative energy that fall brings, while also marking the anniversary of my second miscarriage.

This post is about the creative experiment of making art from pain and loss. I have often found myself unable to fully describe my grief around miscarriage with only words. Drawing, sculpting, painting, making things, has opened up a channel to express feelings that might have continued to sit in the dark. Much of this work has been simple drawings and snippets of writing in my sketchbook, dashed out without the will to make things perfect, when I had very little energy. There are a couple more finished pieces as well. I’m including a collection throughout this post along with some written thoughts about grief, mostly questions I have not yet answered for myself.

Today, October 15th, is also the annual Wave of Light, an internationally recognized event that honors baby and pregnancy loss. At 7pm local time, candles are lit and left burning for at least an hour, so that there is always a flame burning in remembrance. I learned about this event from the illustrator Rebecca Green, who has written candidly and beautifully about her own experience losing a baby.

I wanted to make a piece of art to honor this day, and the children that I might have had, had things been different. I started off sketching something that felt like a self-portrait, focusing on my own embodied grief, but then it occurred to me that perhaps I needed to give shape to the child I lost. It was easy to find her in the lines, looking back at me from the page with a calm and reassuring expression, holding a light between two worlds, not quite here in this one with me. (We never found out the sex of my pregnancies so I’m not sure why I use ‘she’ here — just a feeling, I guess).

It’s strange to miss someone you never knew, but I feel her absence daily like a tiny fire burning in my chest, a heartbeat just below mine. She never had the chance to show us who she was, what I’m grieving is who I imagined she might be. Now she is a tiny bundle of cells and energy that have since been redistributed in the universe.

I want to say something about anger, how it has been a motivating and debilitating presence in my grief. How it has changed who I am. But I’m still working through it. I made the piece below to partially describe the feeling.

The last thing I want to talk about is hope. What do we do with hope, when it feels too painful to endure? I’ve arrived at this question again and again throughout the last two years, and I often find myself at a crossroads — either choosing hope, or squashing it for self-preservation. I talk to my therapist about how I’ve always identified as a hopeful person. Who am I if not hopeful? Grief has changed my identity immensely.

An exercise from a class by Elizabeth Haidle

There is a quote about hope in Katherine Rundell’s Why Adults Should Read Children’s Books: “Fairy tales conjure fear in order to tell us that we need not be so afraid. Angela Carter saw the godmother as shorthand for what she calls "heroic optimism". Hope, in fairy tales, is sharper than teeth.”

When I do choose hope, it’s this kind of heroic optimism that I like to imagine. There is darkness everywhere, calling to us. The daily act of turning away from it can be exhausting but also empowering. Here is the only answer I have for this: choose hope when you have the strength for it. If you don’t, try again tomorrow.

There is a lot of gratitude mixed in with grief. I’m so grateful for my partner, who is in this with me. For my family and friends who hold me and listen, even when they can’t fully understand. For my therapist. For you, reading this. Thank you, all.

If you are going through pregnancy loss or fertility issues, I see you and I want to remind you that your feelings are valid, and you are very normal, and so we should normalize talking about it, making space for it. Please don’t be afraid to reach out and ask me questions, or share your story if you want to. There have been so many there for me and I want to do the same.