When Your Body Becomes a Graveyard for the Dreams You Didn’t Even Choose
Miscarriage is not just a loss.
It’s a rupture — physical, emotional, spiritual.
I’ve had six.
Six separate times of carrying hope in my body,
only to watch it bleed out into silence.
Each time, it felt more violent than the last.
Not just what happened to my body —
the clots, the pain, the blood, the silence —
but what happened after.
How quickly the world moved on.
For most of my adult life, I believed that becoming a mother would fix everything.
Not because I had a deep, instinctive urge for motherhood —
but because it was always presented to me as the natural next step.
The thing that would finally make me feel full, womanly, complete.
And so I chased it.
Blindly, intensely, painfully.
Pregnancy became the centre of my life.
Because that’s what we’re taught, right?
That a woman’s story begins with love, but only ends in motherhood.
That happiness lives in baby showers and onesies.
That a “complete family” needs a child in the centre of the frame.
No one ever stopped to ask:
Do you want this?
Not even me.
Because by the time you’re old enough to think for yourself, the checklist is already written. Finish school. Get married. Have kids.
That’s the formula. That’s the dream.
Except, for me, it turned into a nightmare.
And with every miscarriage, my body gave a little more.
And my sense of self disappeared a little further.
These weren’t quiet, movie-scene miscarriages.
They were messy.
Painful.
Medical.
Sometimes violent.
I bled in bathrooms.
I flushed tiny, unformed bodies because I didn’t know what else to do.
I travelled alone to appointments.
Went under anesthesia alone.
Got wheeled out alone.
I watched my body become a site of failure.
And still — people kept asking, “When again?”
Not “how are you?”
Not “do you want to talk about it?”
Just: try again.
Because the pressure to become a mother doesn’t care if you’re still grieving.
It doesn’t wait for your heart to heal.
It doesn’t ask if the dream still fits.
And here’s the most painful truth:
I never even got the space to ask if I wanted it in the first place.
Motherhood had become this prize.
This promise that if I just kept going, it would all be worth it.
That once I had the baby, I’d feel whole.
But I didn’t.
And that deserves to be said out loud.
I didn’t feel complete.
I felt depleted.
And it wasn’t because I was ungrateful.
It was because I was running a race I never paused to question.
I don’t regret the love.
I don’t regret the longing.
But I do wish someone had told me —
you can be complete without being a mother.
You can be enough, even if you walk away from the checklist.And you can stop trying.
You’re allowed to.
So many women are carrying invisible grief, running races they never chose, chasing dreams that were handed to them, not born from within.
Share it with a friend who’s grieving, healing, questioning, or simply pausing — and remind her:
You are allowed to stop.
You are allowed to want something else.
You are already enough.
Let’s rewrite what wholeness looks like — together.
