6.23.26

I had a miscarriage at the end of spring. A “missed miscarriage”—meaning Dan and I were at our first ultrasound at 8 weeks learning that the embryo failed to develop but my body hadn’t realized it yet.

The day before I was in New York, in the studio of A Big Fancy Theatre Company for a reading of a new play of mine. It’s about a royal family trying to break a witch’s curse that’s made them barren. (Trust that the irony is not lost on me.) I told everyone in the room I was pregnant. How could I hide it with saltines and Gatorade in front of my script? But mostly I told everyone because, even knee-deep in nausea, I was excited. 24 hours later, that excitement had transformed into regret. Why did I tell them? Why did I tell anyone? What about the friends and family who we hadn’t even told I was pregnant in the first place? Do I say anything to them? Someone asks me how I’m doing, and I say “I’ll work it out in my writing.”

I’m sad, but not devastated. It’s early enough in the pregnancy that, even with the weeks of being tired and sick and bloated and hormonal, it still felt like the only thing growing inside me was potential. And, as an artist, I have an overdeveloped muscle for processing potential cut short. This fires in my brain like a script I put my heart and soul into that doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t know if that’s a healthy way to think about it, but it’s the truth. I’m not devastated, but I am annoyed that I still have morning sickness. That I’m still exhausted. It feels like a cruel joke my body is playing on me. But mostly I’m at peace. I feel a real embodied sense of the mantra I’ve practiced my whole adult life, “What’s for me won’t pass me.” And I ride the wave, having already surrendered myself to let the process of growing our family be whatever it’s gonna be.

I make a tasteless joke to the nurse at my OB’s office, “sometimes ya gotta throw out the first pancake,” and she sends me home with mifepristone and misoprostol. Between the small swells of sadness, Dan and I toss more tasteless jokes to each other like colorful life preservers. This situation is deeply unfunny, but laughter keeps us afloat. (If you think this is twisted, you should have heard all of Dan’s cancer jokes.)

At home we balance out our gallows humor with the unwavering empathy of Olivia Benson. I think about my enduring love for Law & Order: SVU and the relation of it to my own work. The body as the site for an event. A wire hanger abortion in a treehouse. A ritual drowning in a hotel hot tub. I realize my darkest fear is that I conjured this for myself. That this was my body rebelling against my desires as a plot twist—the inevitable bloom from a seed I planted in Act 1. But I know that’s ridiculous. 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I don’t need to take it personally. And plus, I’m more powerful than that.

There are two things I’m confident about: 1. I’m a speck of dust on a flying rock experiencing the random and unlikely event of being alive, and 2. I’m a piece of the cosmos experiencing divine timing while the universe conspires to bless me. If you ever wanted to know about my spiritual practice, it’s the act of holding these two ideas in balance with each other. I’m having a miscarriage because they’re statistically common. I’m having a miscarriage because that’s my path. Either way I lean, I’m still experiencing the miracle of being alive. Dayenu.

I take the first drug and go see Dan conduct a pops concert. It feels good to be dressed up. There’s something about adorning myself with jewelry and makeup that makes me feel like I’m honoring and paying tribute to my body for this hard thing it’s about to do. It’s hot and sticky in the concert hall. I smile and make pleasantries with everyone who wants to meet The Conductor’s Wife, while I secretly contemplate being both pregnant and not. I take my seat in this in-between space and let the music wash over me.

The next morning I take the misoprostol. While I wait for it to take effect, I start cleaning out my drawers. I find a wand and point it at Dan, yelling “expecto-abortion.” We workshop more dark jokes while he caresses my back. I find an old bandana and put it on. I can’t decide if it’s giving shtetl chic or non-equity Fiddler on the Roof, but I keep it on for ancestral support. Sagan follows me around. A furry sentinel. She knows something’s up. I go to our balcony to drench myself in sunlight. The heat feels good. Like energy for my body to soak up. I listen to Florence and the Machine. Her latest album was inspired by her own pregnancy loss. Fitting. And all shall be well, all shall be well. Miracles are often inconvenient. And a prayer is a spell. I recline on our leather green office chair. It belonged to a priest. We got it at an estate sale when a monastery closed. I watch the big tree outside our window sway with the wind. The birds are busy building. One stops on our sill to show me material they found for their nest. Asshole. The cramping peaks within a few hours. Then what happens is straightforward and, thankfully, uncomplicated. And the physical passing feels like closure. The seasons change. The world turns.

The next day I feel better than I have in weeks. My energy and appetite are back. I feel a surge of hunger and vitality. And as much as it invigorates me, it also comes with a serving of guilt and shame. Like, how dare I be so okay. How dare my body take delight in not being a host anymore. How dare. How dare.

I appreciate the soft touch of people checking in. The cupcake delivery. The “I’m proud of you for how you’re walking through this.” The simple invitation of, “how are you doing?” But I find it hard to resonate with the unmooring some assume or project onto me. Yes, it’s incredibly disappointing and not what we wanted—but I’m finding it… manageable. Now, I need to be so abundantly clear that I am only speaking about myself and this specific pregnancy. I don’t want my words to be a betrayal to anyone else’s experience, or betray any future version of myself that might exist. But as data goes, I do feel compelled to mark this experience. The mundanity of it. The unexpected sense of normalcy.

Dan’s evergreen steadiness (one of his most generous qualities) reinforces my own steadiness. But guilt and shame are still swirled in there. This feeling that I should be suffering more. Why am I not suffering? But when the nurse was explaining to me what she was seeing (and not seeing) on my ultrasound, my mind immediately went to all the women who’ve written and shared their own experiences of this very-common-thing-we-don’t-really-talk-about. Their words, their stories were a net that caught me instantaneously and reminded me I was not alone and I would survive this.

I want to add my story to that net.

We pull onto the wooded campus of our summer home-away-from-home, Interlochen, and I cry happy tears. It’s a beautiful summer ritual Dan and I have—returning to this place that, for us, sits frozen in summer, and reflecting on how we’ve grown over the year. I feel all these new corners of myself and I want to write about them. Write about this time. But I’m scared to share. I’m embarrassed by my hubris. More so, I’m superstitious that I should wait until after we have a child—as if speaking out prematurely might curse the whole thing and I need to prove I can make it to “the other side” first. But I don’t know what journey lies ahead of me, and the silence feels disingenuous. The silence feels like perpetuating the stigma. Keeping this terrible and common thing in the dark.

I’m part of this club I didn’t ask to be in. And I want my fellow members to know I’m here. I’m with them. And if one day you find yourself in this club, I want you to know I’m with you too and you’ll survive this. I want my words to catch you like the words of others caught me. And that can only happen in the light.