I just don’t know if I can do it…but before I get into it, I suppose I should warn you to stop reading here if you aren’t caught up on this season’s, This Is Us.

Last week the show ended with a cliffhanger where we found out that Kate has lost her baby at 10 weeks along.  This show always finds a way to pull so greatly on my heartstrings that I am bawling on the couch at some point.  And usually that is okay.  But when those were the words that the show ended with, I felt everything drop out from inside of me and an, oh so familiar, raw ache began to build.

It’s been a week since we watched that episode and there is the follow up show waiting for us, but I don’t know if I can watch.  I am thrilled that miscarriage has become something that is showing up in many of the mainstream shows and more and more light is being brought to it, but it doesn’t stop the ache and the reliving for me each time.

I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this, but the timing sure is right – our first miscarriage was over Thanksgiving in 2012. It happened five years ago, which feels like both an eternity and just yesterday.  That year, we opted out of all holiday festivities, and I laid on the couch intermittently crying and feeling numb and in disbelief.  Why had this happened to me?  What had I done wrong that caused this to happen?  I think that is one of the biggest hurdles to face – the feeling that you have done something wrong.  Many of the babies that are lost in early pregnancy are due to a chromosomal abnormality that is out of the control of either partner, however, trying to rationalize that when you are fresh into a loss is nearly impossible.  Surely, I had done something that caused the loss and would have to live with this for the rest of my life.  In addition, I remember thinking how mad I was that I had just lost a baby and that my favorite holiday would be forever tainted with this feeling of anger and sadness.  Through the years the pain has lessened, and Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday (the food and family part…not the overall genocide that took place), but rarely does any holiday go by that I don’t think of that first baby and those that came after.

Can I really watch the next episode and purposefully put myself through the heartache that will follow?  Can I watch the pain in her eyes and her partners eyes as they discover they have to figure out how to live the rest of their life altered as a couple and as individuals?  The truth is that I will watch.  I will watch and think of every single miscarriage that I have had.  I will watch and feel like my soul is being crushed in the process.  I will watch because I have decided in life to not only talk about what living with pregnancy loss is like, but to be a voice for others in the process.  Like it or not, the biggest voice we have is the media.  So, at some point this weekend, you can find me on the couch crying my eyes out uncontrollably.  Likely with Thomn sitting next to me looking the same, as we are in this thing called life together.