I had a miscarriage two months ago and had serious complications as a result. I only just got a clean bill of health last week so it was an almost 9 week ordeal of trauma, medical issues, hospital bills, and grieving.

I finally feel a little like myself again. Well enough to go to all the baby showers everyone else is having. It hurts to go, but I can handle it now.

What I can’t handle is how people keep trivializing what is honestly one of the most traumatic experiences in my life.

“Well on the plus side, you can drink now so enjoy it! I’m so jealous,” said my pregnant friend when I went to her baby shower.

“Oh well at least you don’t have to deal with all the swelling and discomfort,” said another pregnant woman at the same shower.

“You should just try again,” said another woman at a different shower.

The list goes on.

I’d rather not be able to drink, be as swollen as a damn balloon, and as uncomfortable as these pregnant women are then not be pregnant because I miscarried two months ago.

I’m scared to try again because I suffered for 9 weeks of bleeding, pain, grief, and almost weekly medical visits and multiple rounds of medications and ER visits. I have suffered enough for one year. But I don’t tell people that.

I just force myself to smile, though I suspect it doesn’t quite reach my eyes since their faces usually twist into a grimace or embarrassed poker face after the words leave their mouths.

Why can’t they just ask how I feel and accept the answer without trivializing it with some dumb “bright side.” There is no bright side to this loss and I am ok with that. I will move on and I will try again when the idea doesn’t give me flashbacks to the day it happened.

It hurts when they do this. It makes me feel like I’m not allowed to be sad. But I have every right to be. I don’t being that to their showers. I come with a gift and a smile, but then they ask about it and I give an honest answer. If they ask “what was it like” I am not going to lie to spare their feelings. It was traumatic and horrible and I don’t want to talk about it with anyone, least of all to satisfy their curiosity only to have them brush it off with some “bright side.”