On a Monday April 15th at noon, I attended my final internship meeting for the spring semester. At this meeting, each peer educator had the opportunity to become vulnerable and share a personal story with everyone else. The theme of this stories meeting was empathy. I thought this would be a good opportunity to share my story of pregnancy, miscarriage, loss, healing and a calling to advocate. I mostly wanted to share my story in person to see if I was up to the challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it.
The night before, as well as every hour leading up to the meeting, I was nervous. I wanted to do this, but I knew there was a risk of being judged and feeling shame. When it was time to share my story, I took a deep breath and began talking, I started from the very beginning. I talked about finding out I was pregnant, to telling my husband, to changing internship sites, to morning sickness, to both of my ultrasounds, to my surgery, to healing and finally to advocacy. My friend Jeanie sat next to me as I told my story. I didn’t feel alone, because in many ways she lived through it with me.
When I was finished telling my story, I was welcomed by much support, condolences and even love. I honestly think it was a good decision for me to share my story with an audience of peer educators in a very safe place. I did it, and it gave me confidence that I can do it again.
