#13 - A Letter to Someone Who Has Hurt Me

I have not been looking forward to this post because it has been hard to think of someone who has recently hurt me, and in fact no has hurt me recently. I thought about writing a letter to my husband about how he made me feel when he broke up with me once (yes, he broke my heart and then I took him back!) But I felt that since we are married and happy together now and I have forgiven him that I should leave that story and those feelings in the past. I don’t think he would appreciate me sharing it on the Internet. The other topic I thought about writing about is really personal and I am afraid of offending or hurting others by writing a letter to them about how they hurt me and being really vague about it isn’t very interesting for you to read. But I am going to try anyway, without naming any names or too many specifics.

Dear So and So,
I am sure you have already forgotten about this incident, and I assure you that I don’t think of it as often as I used to. However, it was a dark time in my life and I am sorry to say that you made it slightly more so. I don’t know if it is because you did not understand my pain or if you just didn’t think it was justified, but whatever the reason your insensitivity was extremely hurtful and belittling.
It is reported that 20 percent of all pregnancies will end in miscarriage. This statistic is based on the women who know they have had a miscarriage; some believe the real number is around 40 or 50 percent because some women may miscarry without knowing they are even pregnant. 20 percent of women who miscarry will miscarry again in their lifetime. Due to the fact that miscarriages are a common occurrence, some may feel that the woman should not feel a sense of loss or is not entitled to a period of grieving and these people may treat the situation in an insensitive way. This is the way you treated me when I had a miscarriage. Yes, it is true I only held that life inside me for 11 weeks, but in those 11 weeks I developed a deep desire to meet that baby and had great hopes for his or her future, hopes that were never realized.
You and many others told me that it was for the best. After all, it was an “accidental” pregnancy and Matt and I would have barely been married 6 months when the baby was born. I realize we were young and that it would have been really hard, but that doesn’t mean we wanted to lose the baby and we were both upset that the pregnancy was lost.
The most hurtful thing anybody said to me was the thing that you said, only hours after it had happened. After telling me you were sorry you mentioned that you hoped I would now get on birth control. I don’t think you realize what it felt like to hear that from one of the people I expected to give me the most comfort.
When Matt and I found out we were pregnant again we decided to wait until I was 3 months along and out of the period of time when miscarriages most often occur because we didn’t want to have to go through telling everyone again. I especially felt that I would be better off keeping it to myself and grieving another loss on my own because it made it more painful when I had to face the insensitive comments of others. I hope in the future you will be more careful about what you say to those who experience miscarriage, no matter what the circumstances are.