Guest Post

 “I’m so sorry, Kimberly. I’m not seeing a heartbeat.”

When the doctor said this to me, I felt like my own heart had stopped. My first thought, upon realizing that I was still alive, for better or worse, was that I hated this man. I hated him for using my full name (nobody uses my full name), and I hated him for forcing me into this new and unfamiliar world of grief.

I carried my son, Miles, for seventeen weeks before he died. I will never know the medical reason why. When the doctor left the room after giving us the worst possible news, I said to my husband, “I can’t handle this pain. This is going to f**k me up.”

I was both right and wrong. It did f**k me up. But I could, it turns out, handle the pain.

I lost two pregnancies before Miles—my first was an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in emergency surgery, and my second was a first-trimester miscarriage. I lost one more pregnancy after Miles—another ectopic. These losses, individually and collectively, made me feel vulnerable to tragedy in a way I’d never felt before. They shattered my fundamental belief in a fair world—“if you do all the right things, good things will happen.” They took me to deeper depths of despair than I’d ever been before. As an HSP, prone to feeling so intensely, I wasn’t sure I was going to survive. My very being felt threatened. The term “existential crisis” comes close to describing it, but it felt even more harrowing than that.

It felt that way because pregnancy loss is a uniquely painful type of loss. This is true for many women and their partners. My grief was complicated by the fact that I’m highly sensitive. As Dr. Huong Diep, a board-certified psychologist and my co-author of All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss, explains, “It is essential that we begin to view HSP pregnancy losses through an intersectional lens, that is, to look at the unique intersection of being an HSP with the physical and emotional realities of pregnancy loss(es). This intersection, along with others (history of trauma and other risk factors), may exacerbate the pain of the experience, a pain that is often misunderstood by partners, friends and family, and healthcare professionals.”

In her book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, Elaine Aron talks about the pros and cons of our trait. Con: We have a lower pain threshold. In my experience, I would say this is true in terms of both physical and emotional pain. But, contrary to popular belief, our pain does not make us weak. As Aron writes, “Being highly sensitive does not at all rule out being, in your own way, a tenacious survivor.”

In time, I proved to myself that I was a tenacious survivor. I sat with my pain. I tried not to judge it. I committed to listening to it, to learning from it. It was excruciating at times to be this present with the emotion, but I don’t know any other way. Aron says, “HSPs prefer the good feeling of being very conscious, very human, even if what we are conscious of is not always cause for rejoicing.”

There’s that Rumi quote: “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” I think this is especially true for HSPs. Pro: My sensitivity to, and my consciousness of, my grief enabled me to find meaning in profound ways. Some may say people aren’t themselves while grieving, but I think we are exactly ourselves, stripped of all the illusions of control and safety we had before our loss. In this way, grieving exposes us; it gets to the heart of the universal fears and hopes that make us human. It is impossible to be unchanged by it.

From my losses, I gained confidence in my own fortitude and resilience—things I’d always doubted about myself as someone who was accused of being “too sensitive” (implication: weak) from an early age. In my grief, I realized I could survive more than I ever thought I could. This has made me a bolder, less fearful person.

My losses have given me a deep appreciation for life, every breath of it. I realize how fragile and fleeting it is, how it can be gone in a second. This scares me sometimes, but mostly it liberates me to just live as fully as I can. I’ve learned the beauty of surrender.

My perspective has changed, for the better. Grief and loss demand thinking about death. And thinking about death demands reassessing life—what matters, what should matter. I don’t fret about stupid things as much. I focus on my passions, my relationships. I try to live in the direction of nurturing those things.

I feel more connected to others, more compassionate. I have a new understanding of the suffering out there, much of it silent and private. Aron writes, “Suffering eventually touches every life. How we live with it, and help others to, is one of the great creative and ethical opportunities.” Yes, opportunities. As HSPs, we have “greater access to [our own] unconscious and so a greater sense of others” (Aron). This is a gift. My sensitivity has allowed me to articulate the pain of pregnancy loss in a way that, I hope, helps others feel less alone in their own pain.

Dr. Diep echoes the sentiment about this gift: “The resounding message I want every HSP to hear is that there is nothing wrong with you and your sensitivities. As Aron says, your sensitivities are unique gifts to the world and the more you can embrace these qualities, the more confident you will grow in advocating for your needs. Please know there are providers (like me) who are also HSPs and will not dismiss your pain. There are therapists who work from a strength-based perspective and will highlight your particular HSP strengths and use those attributes to reflect to you what you have already done to get to this point in your life, and how you can continue to strengthen yourself (and others) as you shine your light in the world.”

Many HSPs talk about the strength of their intuition, that gut feeling they have to guide them. After my fourth loss, I had to tap into this intuition when deciding whether or not we should try again. I couldn’t help but think of that infamous definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. It didn’t make logical sense, given what we’d been through, but there was something bigger than me telling me not to give up.

On October 4, 2017, I gave birth to my daughter after a textbook pregnancy. All of the clichés and song lyrics and tired phrases have proven true: She is the light of my life, she is the best part of every day, she is my sunshine. One day, I will tell her about the babies who came before her. One day, she will understand a little more about what her parents endured for the often-terrifying, heart-exploding pleasure of knowing her.

Kim Hooper is the author of five novels and the co-author of All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss. She is a frequent contributor to Scary Mommy, writing on motherhood and feminism in the home. kimhooperwrites.com

Kim will be presenting an event with us in my Sensitive Empowerment Community, HSP Moms Need Partners Who Step Up. Research Shows That Moms Do the Vast Majority of Housework and Childcare, Even When They Also Work Outside the Home. For HSP Moms, This Can Be Especially Taxing. Many Of Us Find Ourselves Leading Our Own Household Feminist Movements to Get Our Needs Met.

Kim shares: Your needs are VALID and that it's possible to make positive adjustments to their lives (their marriages, their work) to get their needs met.

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Julie Bjelland is a Psychotherapist, host of The HSP Podcast, and Founder of the Sensitive Empowerment Community, whose mission is to create a paradigm shift where sensitivity is embraced, valued, and honored. Register for free Masterclasses, get a free guide to calm your brain, a letter to give your medical and mental health practitioners about high sensitivity and take the Sensitivity Quiz at JulieBjelland.com ❤️🌈❤️ (she/her)