In just a moment, a single life-defining moment, my miracle was gone (again). The dreaded words no mother wants to hear pierced my heart and soul…

“I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

I couldn’t breathe. I shook. I wept. I felt hollow. My body cramped and ached. My heart ached more. I was left to grieve, to empty. This was my second spirit baby whose hand I would never hold, whose hair I would never smell, whose smile I would never see.

Grieving from miscarriage or pregnancy loss can be one of the loneliest, traumatic experiences of our lives. And the fact is, there is no right or wrong way to grieve.

My hope is that sharing my experience with processing loss and finding healing can help grieving mamas feel held and empowered to lean on their community for support.

After my first miscarriage, my brain switched to autopilot and signaled my adolescent coping strategy for processing trauma: isolate. I alienated myself from my loved ones, and my inner critic kept me captive in the darkness, literally and figuratively, as a form of self-punishment and self-preservation.

I hated my body—it failed me. And I failed my baby. Ruminating about these intense feelings sent me into a deep, dark depression.

With my second miscarriage, the loss was even harder. You think that you can’t hurt anymore. You think that you’ve already experienced the greatest hurt in the world and that you won’t survive it—but, somehow, some way, you do.

This time, I knew I needed a different script for how to heal in a healthier way, a way where I wouldn’t lose myself again. So here’s what I did differently: I allowed myself to feel every single feeling that came up without any shame or judgment—and I openly shared everything. Sorrow. Shock. Rage. Numbness. I didn’t hide. I didn’t put on a façade. When family or friends asked, “How are you doing?” (a question I d-r-e-a-d-e-d)…I removed the mask. Raw. Real. Me. I was out of hiding.

I let each and every feeling take center stage for as long as it needed to, unapologetically. I opened my breaking heart, sought grief counseling support with grieving mamas, shared video journals with a safe community of hundreds of women, and leaned into the women in my family so we could grieve together (because I had forgotten that they, too, were suffering loss).

While this helped me feel less alone—I heard countless stories of other women who also were impacted by miscarriage and pregnancy loss but never talked about it—there was one transformative and cathartic act that guided me on the path to healing. My intuition told me: “You need to release your rage.”

My intuition told me: “You need to release your rage.”

I didn’t understand it, but I trusted it. I invited my sister to bear witness. Together, we mustered the courage to bare our most vulnerable selves and channel our rage in a rage room, a safe space for people to release their anger by smashing objects (i.e., televisions, glass, teapots, mirrors). We devised our own ritual—aloud we named and claimed our anger, the source of our anger, and our feelings. Then we released it all, screaming, swinging, smashing, throwing, and breaking anything in our path.

I share this with you because, as women, we’re conditioned to be polite, pleasant, and nice. To bottle our feelings or put them last. To judge ourselves. To people please. To quiet our rage. But we are stronger in a community. We can hurt together. We can release together. We can heal together.

When you heal within a community and when you crack open your heart and you let it spill, there are people on this planet that will receive, support, and love you. It wasn’t until I shared my story, connected with women I trusted, listened to my intuition, and let go that I was then able to forgive and love myself. I thought pushing forward, being strong, and sucking it up was the right way forward.

But that’s not the way to heal.

Your story matters—you matter.

Originally appeared in Golden Gate Mothers Group Magazine.