The categories I present are meant to be universal, based on my observations of fan culture and personal experience as a fan. The beliefs and behaviors, in italics, are included to illustrate the category. They reflect my own journey and development of beliefs as my Star Wars knowledge expanded¹. The beliefs may vary for each fan. But you should know that mine are correct.

Qualifiers:
Self reported. Can be attached to any type, i.e. Basic Nextgen, Sith Lord Firstgen.

Firstgen: Dislikes the prequels, often ignoring them as if they didn’t happen.
Could have seen some portion of the original trilogy in theaters when they were first released. Will definitely let you know if they did. Enjoys watching videos where people crush JarJar toys. Believes George Lucas stole something from them.

Nextgen: They like or appreciate the prequels.
Tired of having to defend movies that people would have totally liked if George Lucas had told the story in a different order. JarJar may still be an issue.

Star Wars Casual: Seen most of the movies at least once. Liked them.
Knows character things and recognizes cultural references. Minimum level required to discuss Star Wars online and have opinions about what Rian Johnson did or didn’t do in Last Jedi. Thinks Yoda is cute and Han Solo is cool. Waits to see the new movie at their own convenience. Shrug emoji.

Star Wars Basic: The galactic language most active Star Wars fans speak. Seen all the movies. Primarily movie based fan, but really enthusiastic about the movies. May have basic knowledge in non-movie areas.
Will discuss at length in any media. Wants a lightsaber so bad. Knows that Han Solo is, in fact, cool. It is indisputable. Takes quizzes online to see what character they are. Played the Star Wars theme on whatever instrument they learned as a child instead of practicing the song for their upcoming lesson.

Star Wars Padawan: Those who discover they have something — a feeling — inside them and they need to understand it better. Movie love accompanied by advanced knowledge in one of any of these areas -

• How the films were made
• Canon books and comics
• Legend books and comics
• Video games or RPGs
• Animated shows
• Fandom
• Toys and collectibles

Their eyes are open to a larger world. Thinks about what kind of droid they would want to have around versus what kind of droid they would want to be. Retakes quizzes online to see what character they can make the quiz tell them they are. Starts to really “get” Anakin. Waves hand in front of automatic doors at the supermarket to feel what it would be like. Surprised that people fight about Star Wars.

Star Wars Knight: Advanced or basic knowledge in at least three areas listed above.
Viewed all films multiple times. ALL OF THEM EVEN IF IT HURTS. Occasionally loses sleep thinking about Star Wars. Thinks the Jedi were on the right track and the Rebellion was morally justified in their actions against the Empire. Thinks about how sad Obi Wan must have been on Tatooine. Realizes George Lucas is a primarily visual artist and any of the OT and PT films’ emotionally satisfying moments came from another director, the actors, the music or the editing. All of which he still had a hand in. Refers to trilogies and film titles with acronyms. Won’t read or join hostile discussions about Star Wars to support a positive vibe. Fan level might not be apparent on the surface, but minimal probing required to access. Light side all the way.

Star Wars Master of the Knights of Star Wars: Basic and/or advanced knowledge in majority of areas listed.²
Fanatical and passionate, has a hard time containing their enthusiasm in non-Star Wars company. Believes the Jedi failed because of their dogma and seeks a new path. Comprehends how people can support the Empire/First Order. Wonders about how one might engineer a planet to be a weapon so one can get one’s point across that much better. Remembers that no one knew anything about the Emperor in the OT, and has issues with your Snoke complaints. Ahsoka Lives even if they kill her on screen in front of everyone. Doesn’t understand why you can’t see how right they are about Star Wars. Even if they don’t fight with people about it out loud, they know they are correct. Seduced by the dark side. Wants to be free of this pain.

Star Wars Sith Lord: Advanced knowledge. IN. ALL. AREAS. Full immersion.²
Probably wearing something Star Wars at all times. Stan or Lucasfilm employee. Can identify which version of the Main Title is playing within the first minute. Pretty much believes the universe is fucked no matter who is in charge, but still interested in the journey, the engineered chaos. The Rebellion is the Vietcong! The Empire is the U.S.! Morality is contextual! Canon is malleable! Light side, dark side, all of it. Here for ALL. OF. IT. Laughs maniacally when people fight about Star Wars.

[1] I started as a Basic Firstgen and developed over many years into a Master of the Knights of Star Wars Nextgen, but slipping occasionally into Sith Lord territory. I would have to take up gaming to truly reach that level, so I sleep at night knowing I am okay.

[2] You will note that after Knight, it are only dark side naming conventions with no light side equivalent. This knowledge is not a path to the light side.

I’m very lucky to have insurance that covers medications pretty thoroughly, but there has been a requirement on this particular medication my insurance imposes that I have to get a yearly note from my psychiatrist — prior authorization — saying that I really do need this medication. Not because it’s a controlled substance, not because they do this with all psychiatric medications, but because I’m over the age of 19.

You read that correctly — I’m older than 19 (I am! A lot! SO MUCH!) so they have to double check that my doctor really means what he says when he prescribes this medication. That he wasn’t just kidding when he wrote that specific medication and dosage, my name and date of birth out on his preprinted prescription pad with security protections in place so it can’t be duplicated.

I’ve been on this medication since 2009 or so, except when I have been actively trying to get or stay pregnant. Every year for the last six years I have gone through a week of phone calls and paperwork. A week of tedious tasks and hoops that are a challenge for those of us with diminished executive function without the medication to manage the diminished executive function.

I’ve learned in the last two years how to survive off the medication but I am far from thriving without it. Every task that isn’t a creative challenge that attracts my natural hyperfocus takes an enormous amount of energy to start, maintain and complete. Really basic tasks wipe me out mentally and physically, draining me of energy I should be using towards the creative work that pays my bills. Emotional regulation is really difficult, and my anxiety goes up because I am terrified I will yell, cry or laugh at something inappropriate and I constantly feel like I am disappointing everyone, including myself.

This medication is a vital part of my life as a productive member of society.

The DSM-V came out in June 2013. It made some significant changes to the ADHD listing. One is moving it from a category of behavioral disorders to one of neorodevelopmental disorders. The other change is recognizing that symptoms of the disorder do not disappear after childhood, they often persist into adulthood. Unofficially that had been recognized for a long time, but this is official.

When I read that in 2013 I was so relieved. Almost every year I had one to two weeks of major disruption in treatment because of this prior authorization requirement, which is based on the idea that it is rare that symptoms of ADHD would persist past the age of 19. It was official that there are adults with ADHD, so I should be treated equally with my 12 year old counterparts.

RIGHT?! Nope! No way. No change.

I didn’t expect the change in 2013, these things take a while. I gave them a pass in 2014, and 2015 I was a grieving zombie so I didn’t pay attention to what steps I had to take to get on a normal track. It’s 2016 now, and I’ve been off my medication for more than a week while trying to get this form filled out and submitted to the correct people. I have filed a complaint with MedImpact, letting them know it is a an outdated and discriminatory policy that sets up yet another barrier to treatment.

I have kept this kind of thing to myself in the past, because I used to think these things made me look like I didn’t have my shit together and that somehow this was a lack of an ability to be a basic human. I have worked really hard in the last 6 or so years to manage this invisible disability to mostly remain invisible. Or at least comes off as minor “quirkiness.” It takes a lot of energy to maintain invisibility for me. I would rather use that energy in other ways.

I have also avoided talking about this as much as I want to because I see so many people still questioning whether or not ADHD is a thing. I still see posts and comments about it being made up so parents don’t have to be accountable for their children’s behavior. Children diagnosed with it are still shamed that they just aren’t trying hard enough by teachers, and they are denied services from institutions. There are insurance companies that require me to double prove that my doctor has diagnosed me correctly in order to receive treatment.

I don’t have the energy to spare from trying to keep my life from exploding into unrecoverable chaos to defend how my brain was made. ADHD is so a thing. I don’t want to hear about you not “believing” in it. What a privilege to have that opinion. I don’t get the luxury of not believing in it. I have it. Not being diagnosed with this disorder until I was well into adulthood has ruined several aspects of my life that I am still recovering from. (Women are often not diagnosed until they are adults, efforts have been made in the last decade to recognize it earlier. In women it is frequently accompanied by depression and anxiety — check! — and it is often compounded by the societal expectation to be a super mom, super woman in charge of running the home.) Financial and legal systems are an especially terrifying nightmare for me to navigate. I have a team of every kind of professional I can afford working with me — psychiatrist, therapist, professional organizer and I had an amazing ADHD coach until I couldn’t afford it anymore. (Even though there is research showing that ADHD coaching is highly effective treatment, insurance doesn’t cover it. HSA won’t reimburse it. Coaching focuses on practical strategies for the challenges ADHD poses, whereas therapy focuses on the emotional aspect of it. If I were 10 years old I could get occupational therapy covered, but adults can’t get what looks like “life coaching” covered. )

I am grateful to have this brain in so many ways, with support and therapy I have found ways to take advantage of the gifts of ADHD so it starts to compensate for the challenges. I am privileged to be born to a family that loves and accepts me, find a job that is patient, flexible and provides decent insurance. I am lucky to have found a community of people that understands and believes in me. I recognize not everyone has that. If I am still struggling with managing my ADHD with all of that in place, imagine how much a person with ADHD struggles without that basic level of support. I want the world to stop making us prove that this is real and start listening.

I am lucky to remember the way I felt before, an artifact of a time trapped in resin. Not only have I mourned the loss of my unborn children this year, I mourn that joyful, trusting enthusiasm. My second pregnancy was not full of light and fun, it was a daily battle to hope for the best and trust in nature. I kept it more of a secret than I expected to, not sure I could manage other peoples’ thoughts and emotions on top of my own. When it ended, I stopped fighting to hope for the best. I see nature in a different way now, I have to work to accept the path it takes me down. There is no fairness or grace, just the simple facts of existence: yes or no. I can choose to move forward, backward or stay still. On this path I am not in control, I can’t outsmart it, I don’t get to choose where it takes me.

Every day I have a moment of imagining the sliding door world of spit up and sleeplessness. Five little onesies with numbered months on them, grandparent and great-grandparent visits and first Christmas memories. That world is full of choices I made, a sense of agency in chaos. That world is far from reality, but I often feel like I could just reach out and brush it with my finger tips.

Whether or not string theory is real, this is an non-visible world I visit habitually, subconsciously and daily.

The real universe I exist in is where I miscarried a child as I neared the end of the first trimester a year ago this week. After seeing a heart beat. After talking to it in my belly and feeling super awkward about it when I realized what I was doing. After reading the statistics that told me at that week it was mostly “safe”. The reality I live in includes the words “stillbirthday” and “angel baby”* and uncertainty of what my experience of motherhood will be beyond these pregnancies.

I have moments of insecurity about my grief, where I compare this to other types of losses, looking for validation and finding my own judgement. Sometimes I worry that people think this kind of loss doesn’t merit what I’m experiencing. Sometimes I worry that people think it is contagious, that if I talk about my loss they will catch it and blame me.

Sometimes I worry people think something is wrong with me or I have made a mistake.

This haunts me the most, because I am not the only one that thinks this way. It is so tempting when something inexplicably bad happens to point a finger somewhere. In this reality, people try to blame me for it. Whether or not they intend to blame me, they are looking for a reason out of fear for themselves. I recognize it because I have done it to others. Questions about my health, my habits, my medications, advice on things to try. We are hunting for a reason beyond the facts of not being in control, that this was somehow a choice that was made or a defect that could be addressed. That they could make a different choice or identify and address defects and be “safe”. Reality check: after lots of tests, there is no evidence of any labels or obvious defects at this time. I am of “advanced maternal age” but whenever I bring that up as a possible explanation I hear about an aunt or sister or wife that was 40+ when they had their oldest. There are still a couple of unlikely things to check out, but in the end it may be unsolved. This reality is full of questions that really can’t be answered by any doctor, therapist, religious leader, well meaning friend or relative.

It also is full of deeply caring, empathetic friends and family, doctors and therapists, and an unexpected clarity of what to give a fuck about and who to listen to.

There is so much invisibility in an early pregnancy loss. A year ago, most people had no idea that something — someone — had died inside me, that I was carrying that tiny body in me like a living coffin. My body was so good at holding on. A year ago I felt like my reality was non-visible, an alternate universe that I was trapped in. A world that if other people could notice, they would reach out and brush with their fingers. I wished for that, but it took me months to find ways I could share it publicly.

I needed a ritual, a rite. A silent, automatic signal to others to send love, to tread lightly and respectfully around this very specific grief. We don’t have that for invisible loss. No memorials or obituaries or services for a loss that society doesn’t witness. Grieving mothers of pregnancy loss have to make up our own from scratch, there is no comforting cultural structure to turn to for those that want it. If we seek comfort from the community at large, we first must assert our identity as mothers, explain our right to grieve as we need to, and build our own language* and tradition around the experience.

My Timehop app won’t show me commemorative photos, facebook doesn’t remember what I was doing last year because I didn’t know how I could share this a year ago. They won’t show me anything that honors the heartache, because it remains invisible until I talk about it. I am the witness.

To honor the upcoming one year anniversary of my loss, the first stillbirthday of my first pregnancy, I make it visible in this small way.

*I prefer “ghost baby”.

In my first pregnancy, my pinterest feed was full of maternity clothes, baby crafts and nurseries. Facebook was full of friends announcing pregnancies or giving birth or showing images of their little ones doing neat thing that I liked with my heart full of secret camaraderie and hope. My search history was full of pregnancy life hacks, milestones and symptoms. I was excited, and when I am excited I do research. I obsess, I click on links and read articles, leaving a clear pattern that algorithms can see and advertisers love.

It made me cry to log in to most social platforms those first days after my diagnosis, with my algorithms on point to deliver relevant content based on my previous behavior. Babies are everywhere, they sell things to everyone, but demonstrate any interest in reproduction and your world becomes filled with a new level of images and sites and recommendations.

I performed the exact same level of obsessive research about pregnancy loss and what to expect when I decided to miscarry at home, finding invaluable resources and comfort online. For 9 days after I was diagnosed, I googled and pinned, setting up a new pattern that I imagine, with the rate of pregnancy loss due to miscarriage at 10–25%, is not as unique as some might think. It is like a digital personal trail of tears, looking through that history. The long path until my body let go, expressed through fear, curiosity and a need to know I am not alone.

During this pregnancy, I researched conceiving after loss support and information, images of embryos at each week and constipation remedies. This was a very skeptical pregnancy. Having that show up in my pinterest feed is still useful, as the pregnancy hormones are still fading and I am still dealing with many symptoms. I haven’t lost hope that I will one day carry a pregnancy to term, so the pregnancy after loss support system is still very relevant. I am not hurt, resentful or jealous of those on facebook with little ones, because I have felt the compassion from so many of those women and men and have learned to have compassion for all the different parenthood journeys.

I am back at work today for the first time since I found out about this miscarriage. My office mates are amazing humans that allow me space, and understand that creative working while grieving isn’t the easiest thing to do. I am returning to the world outside of facebook (it exists!) where I can’t hide posts or people that I can’t handle at the moment. I am doing some of the normal things I do in a work day. As I am traveling around the internet, I am noticing all of the ads presented to me are about maternity skirts, cord blood freezing or pregnancy sites. I understand that my previous internet trail implied pregnancy, but what happens when that trail needs to stop? Isn’t there a way to opt out? Let someone know?

Amazon is busy recommending lots of pregnancy and baby focused things, because I made the “mistake”*, as a way to demonstrate my hope and faith in this pregnancy, of resetting my baby registry from the previous pregnancy. There is no way to pause my baby registry, and I had a shock when I looked at my registries months after I lost the first pregnancy that Amazon was still counting down the weeks. Amazon requires I put in a due date, and if that due date needs to change or disappear it doesn’t have very compassionate options for what to do with the registry in the mean time.

I know stuff will change maybe by the time I am pregnant, or I might not ever be able to be pregnant. But I am not ready to let go of this vision of what I wanted for my babies and my family. I struggle with decision making already, I don’t want to re-choose things or remember things I found. I also don’t want what happened with the previous loss, probably due to this registry, to happen again.

About a month before the due date of the first lost pregnancy, some time in early March, Jose got the mail and there was a package for me. Luckily, it wasn’t hidden or disguised as to who it was from, so he hid it from me and let me know about it without me being surprised. It was from a formula company congratulating me on my upcoming birth, filled with free samples of their products.

I am not sure this is Amazon’s fault, it could be any of the other websites I logged into enthusiastically so I knew what piece of fruit to compare my growing embryo to. I don’t often give out my mailing address, so it seems to me the very private, not-even-shared-with-my-husband baby registry might be the right direction to start looking into. J’accuse, but it also doesn’t really matter who sold the information as much as what the company that buys it decides to do with it.

This isn’t just a pregnancy issue. I have heard of Facebook recommending former abusers to survivors as “Someone you might know” or showing photos of their relationship as a blast from the past. Or Tig Nataro’s story about the hospital sending a survey to her deceased mother.

I am not trying to say “Automation is bad, machines are assholes.” Algorithms aren’t necessarily programmed with compassion for trauma and loss, but honestly neither are people. People program machines with their own blind spots, and this all feels very human to me: wanting to carry on as if nothing changed and not thinking about the consequence of assumptions we make. I will still have to answer questions from people about not having kids, when am I going to have kids, listen to ideas on how to solve not having kids, and I will still get a rainbow of phrases that start with “At least…” in response to my story.

This experience has taught me to be compassionate in ways I couldn’t have imagined before, and I have a long road of understanding ahead of me. What I am grateful for, with people, is that I can have a conversation to help build new understanding. I don’t know how to have this conversation with an algorithm.

*It occurs to me some people MIGHT be thinking “She shouldn’t have set up a baby registry before 12 weeks, it is way too early for that.” Or whatever people think when they know what is right for someone else and right now I feel the need to explain why this registry is important to me, at the risk of being on a soap box. Hopefully we all grow in compassion together.

I have a disability, one of those pesky invisible ones that people still question whether it exists or not. Due to my disability, I need to practice intentional visualization in order to prepare in practical ways for the future. I need images to help me process what the future will be or it simply doesn’t exist in my mind. This list is part of that. I am ready with my list of books I want to read to my child, which parks are the best for swings, but thinking about everyday stuff like where they will sleep for the first 2 months and what they will throw up on is not where my imagination shines. Everyone has different ways of processing life changes, this helps me with that.

In the end, there is no way to protect myself or my loved ones from the pain of losing a pregnancy. Grief is the cost of love. I have decided to enjoy pregnancy as much as I can from the moment I know. I am an enthusiastic person, I value authenticity, and pretending I am not thrilled out of my mind at the possibility of a little person coming in to the world the moment I see that second line is not in the cards for me. It is possible this may be the only experience of motherhood and pregnancy I get, so I don’t plan on punishing myself by not expressing joy and hope and picking out onesies until some arbitrarily designated safe week. There really isn’t a safe time in pregnancy. Safer, but not safe.

Whatever little glimmer or connection I felt with the first one wasn’t there. Often in a pregnancy after loss, mothers are in a “prove it” mode, so I guessed that’s what was happening. I was looking forward to this scan in the 9th week so I could have an image in my mind that I could connect with.

What was found in the ultrasound was an empty gestational sac measuring at about 5 weeks. Anembryonic is what it’s called. I’m pretty numb at the moment. I don’t know what this means for my husband and I and our wish to be parents. I do know my body really knows how to commit to a bit, you guys.

This week started with crying with the world, and I’m actually feeling guilty about crying for myself when there is so much violence and pain in the universe. I’m worried about triggering those that have had losses or fertility issues. I’m worried that someone is going to try to fix me with words that end up hurting more. I’m worried that people are going to be weird about it and it will be my job to make things feel normal. I know that these things aren’t discussed at length outside forums of strangers that use phrases like “Angel Baby” and “baby dust” so finding a place of solace I feel at home in can be hard.

I’m not sure how to grieve this particular emptiness, it feels so different than losing someone that you saw flicker with life and felt in your heart. But I know from last year that I shouldn’t try to do it alone.

In September I learned it was over. We had just seen the heartbeat the week before, and we were starting to narrow down names and get our lives ready for major upheaval. And I was devastated. It was a missed miscarriage, meaning the fetus had died but my body hadn’t noticed. I chose to wait for my body to catch up to what the authoritative science had learned, to miscarry with no medical interventions. I spent 9 days knowing what was inside me wasn’t alive anymore, waiting for my body to know as well. It was important to me that my body figured it out if possible, so I could trust it again in the future. I was so grateful to the women that were open about their own experiences with miscarriage, online and in person. I was so grateful to people in grief that were honest and vulnerable and set an amazing example of how to experience loss by looking it in the face.

I have realized, as I quietly grieved and that grief has turned into depression, I don’t feel like I own my own story and I need to do that in order to carry this forward. I have tried for the last three months to articulate this in a way that people will hear it best: witty, brief, full of data. I have decided to stop caring, for the moment, about what is best for other people and just say what I need the world to know.

I need people to know that this is a big deal for me. Most of the women that have experienced this that I have spoken with think it is a big deal. My world view totally changed in the span of minutes. Research says not everyone reacts this way, and I can imagine circumstances or world views that might make that true. I haven’t met anyone who thought their miscarriage wasn’t a big deal, yet I have felt that people don’t expect that I am still actively grieving this. People don’t hear about pregnancy loss grief, therefore pregnancy loss grief isn’t a thing. I conclude that many of us are not talking about our pregnancy loss grief because either we are ashamed of whatever part we we think we might have taken in it or it makes others uncomfortable, but not because we aren’t grieving.

This was my child. Not one that I changed diapers or listened to its breath while it slept, but one I imagined those things with. I looked at pictures of baby Jose and baby Nina and looked forward to seeing pieces of us come together in a way that has never happened before. I have a very vivid imagination, one that is honed with decades of training and practice in not one imagination based art form, but two. This little bean was inside me for almost 12 weeks. It was my first pregnancy, nothing can ever be that again. Pregnancy, motherhood and miscarriage aren’t abstract notions like they once were for me. I know what it looks like, smells like, feels like and I can never forget it.

Doctors couldn’t do anything about this. We talked about it. I asked them to stop it, if I could do something about it. I asked them what to expect now, and even that answer was too vague to be helpful. My body didn’t do this, my behavior didn’t do this. There isn’t anything I can change to make sure it never happens again. Making life is difficult and complex, and 1 in 5 times it doesn’t work out. Implying there might be something I could do next time inadvertently blames me for what happened this time. Part of this grief is the loss of an innocence, the idea that doctors can always help and I have agency over this process.

There are no triggers, just every day life. This is on my mind. It is part of my reality. Everyone was a baby. There is nothing that isn’t potentially a trigger, so therefore there are no triggers. Christmas, my birthday, funerals, weddings, trips to Target, happy friends sharing good news. Everything in the world has babies, pregnancy, children and joy tied to it. Babies sell us things ALL THE TIME. This is a pervasive grief. A different kind of trauma than what I have experienced. It happened in my body, to my body, I shared it with someone I love very much. It took away something I wanted very much, that I had worked for and dreamed about. It was terrifying and I couldn’t control it.

Grief and trauma isn’t a contest or a race. It is binary, you have it or you don’t. Comparing stories to try to place trauma or grief on a value scale to decide whether or not some quantity of sadness is deserved is not doing anyone any favors. I spent 15 years ignoring my sexual trauma because it “wasn’t so bad” and I “don’t think it counts” compared to stories I knew from others. And I spent those 15 years frozen in amber, not healing. Grief and trauma are unique and complex to each individual and the relationships that surround them. “It could be worse” and “get over it” are the flip side to “your loss is more valuable than mine, so I won’t acknowledge my own.”

I would have had no idea what to say to me either. When I was desperately looking for information about what I was about to go through, I realized I had previously viewed this kind of thing as a minor setback prior to experiencing it rather than a profound loss. I heard about miscarriages after the parents had given birth to a healthy child or were far enough along in a subsequent pregnancy to feel it was “safe” so I just assumed they were fine now they had reached their goal. I feel guilty about being so emotionally blind. I have been described as excessively empathetic, and if I thought that way, I guessed most other people thought that way as well. I was too uncomfortable to try to understand. Knowing this about myself has prevented me from talking about it. It was hard to put myself out there in a world that didn’t seem likely to understand.

Stop before you comfort me with anything that starts with “At least…” Don’t try to solve this, it isn’t solvable. Well meaning folks look on the positive side of things, but diminish the real emotion around loss. I spent weeks saying “at least I can get pregnant” and that didn’t make my grief less, it just made me feel like I was weak and ungrateful for still feeling lost. It isn’t hopeful to look on the bright side, it is a method of numbing out pain and prevents us from doing he things that help us carry around this every day. It is a way to make everyone else comfortable again when an uncomfortable topic comes up. I am not comforted, and I don’t have the bandwidth to manage your discomfort at the moment.

I have spent the last decade dealing with things that would make being a mother difficult: ADHD, depression, addictions. I waited as long as I felt comfortable before we started trying, hoping that I would have my shit together a little bit more. I don’t take this miscarriage as a sign from above I am not ready or shouldn’t have waited. I am so glad I waited because this would have fucked me up had I tried this at any other point in my life and lost. I would have given up or taken it as a judgement on my own value as a person. Even now I still have moments of superstition and doubt.

When you casually ask if a person is going to have kids, be ready for answers that might make you uncomfortable. If you insinuate that someone should have kids, get ready for emotional responses that will make you uncomfortable. If you hand me a baby without asking me if I want to hold it, get ready for me to be uncomfortable and possibly lash out to make you feel some discomfort as well. Loss is part of parenting, part of loving. It isn’t like I am not sitting here hurting before this stuff happens. But I have to choose if I have the energy to make you realize that the question is more complex and personal than well-meaning people think.

Men experience this loss as well. It isn’t my story to tell, but I can say how much of a difference it made when Jose has shared his experience. Our experience is different, our grief is different, but it helps me to know that I am not alone.

This was invisible to most people. We had told a handful of people early on we were pregnant, and we had to untell them. This was so NOT the worst part of this for me, contrary to what the culture around fertility and pregnancy might have you think. Waiting 12 weeks to share if you are pregnant, or when it is “safe,” feels totally arbitrary now that I am well versed in the miscarriage and infant loss literature. Yes, loss is more likely in the first trimester. But the loss doesn’t have a different outcome at any point in the pregnancy. Especially now that we can know we are pregnant so soon, we have more time to prepare and imagine a future with this child. Is this about not wanting to look too hopeful or excited? I can think of a lot worse things to be than too hopeful or excited. Everyone should choose their own best time to bring other people into this process, but hopefully that choice isn’t about a fear of looking silly. It was not the worst part, having to tell people that knew I was pregnant that I my fetus’ heart stopped. The worst part, for me, was feeling invisible in my grief.