The ripple effect

There was no possible way I could ever have imagined the impact my Facebook post would have. Since posting it, I’ve had 14 friends tell me about their experiences, including one who hadn’t really spoken to anyone about it. I forwarded on my blog to some of them and one friend told me that reading it was the first time she had felt a ray of hope. I am enormously humbled by that.

But the most inspiring thing is that my husband’s three closest work friends shared their own experiences of miscarriage as a result of seeing my post. It’s amazing to think this group of four men were all carrying about the same pain but not talking about.  As I said to my husband, it’s not like one of them would just say one day “My wife had a miscarriage.” But somehow, knowing that he had experienced, they felt it was ok to share and have now shared with each other.

They told my husband how impressed they were with my bravery and how touched they were with my post. Stereotypically, we don’t expect men to express such emotion but I’m enormously touched that they feel like that. My husband is a man of few emotional words but he told me he was proud of me for being so brave.

But I can’t take the credit. That has to go to my dear friend who experienced the still birth. I realised these events are all part of the chain reaction she put into place by posting her message. As I went to send her a message, I read one from her telling me she was feeling anxious about having to return to hospital to get test results and facing the potential for receiving bad news. My heart felt for the emotional wrenching that situation would bring.

I told her my story and the outcome of my post.  I told her she should be enormously proud of the ripple effect she set in motion and the impact she has had on so many lives of people she will never meet.  But, I also recognised that it was in fact her daughter that started it all.

While her daughter spent such a short time in this world, she made her brave, and that made me brave and that made others brave. My friend’s hope all along was that people would be open and talk about it so the issue would not be forgotten. We have well and truly achieved that. I have had some amazing conversations with people and gained a fabulous insight into what lies ahead of me. But mostly, I’ve been inspired to remain hopeful that things will work out, given I now have so many examples to look at.

I hoped that knowing all of this could bring my friend some comfort as she faced another test. I hoped that knowing that her daughter’s existence had not gone unnoticed and would not be forgotten would make her smile. Despite the fact I never met her daughter, I will always think of her as the little soul that inspired us all!