Ep. 005 | “Degrees of Grief” with Jessalyn Hutto

Aug 12

In this episode of the Held Podcast, I chatted with Jessalyn Hutto about the way we relate to one another based on how long we carried the babies that we lost. Drawing from her own experience with both an early and a later gestational loss, Jessalyn explored the differences and similarities between those two experiences and the numerous other factors that impact the way we grieve. We talked about everything from the temptation to dismiss grief over earlier losses to the importance of not making the grief of others about our own. I hope you walk away from this episode with more insight into how to best minister to women who are suffering, drawing from the comfort you’ve received in your own suffering. Her reflection on the work of Christ and the hope of heaven were an encouragement to me, and I pray it will be to you as well.

About Jessalyn Hutto:

Jessalyn Hutto is the wife of a pastor, a mother to four children, and the author of the book, Inheritance of Tears: Trusting the Lord of Life When Death Visits the Womb. She lives near Houston, Texas where she serves as the women's ministry director at King's Church. You can find her occasionally blogging at JHutto.com.

Questions in this Episode:

1. Would you start off by just telling us a bit about your own experience with miscarriage?

2. Our episode today is called “degrees of grief.” Since you have experienced both, I wanted to have you on to talk about the experience of loss at various stages of pregnancy, as well as how we relate to one another based on how long we carried the babies we lost. Would you mind sharing a bit about how your later loss impacted your view of your earlier loss? What was similar about the experience? What was different? I would love for you to help us think through this both emotionally and physically.

3. After sharing that they lost a life in the womb, women are often asked “How far along were you?” This question can arise just from a desire to give a woman space to process and tell her story, or to seek to understand, but it can also be used to “measure” or “compare” grief. I’d love to hear your opinion here, would you say there are “degrees of grief?” What factors make the experience of miscarriage different than say a “stillbirth.”

4. In my experience, many women who have endured later losses wrestle with having grace/ understanding for women grieving early losses. Did you face this temptation in your grief? What counsel would you offer someone in this situation?

5. I’ve also witnessed those who endure early losses be dismissive of their own grief in light of the later gestational losses of others (or too quick to relate in a way that actually may feel dismissive of a later loss). What counsel would you offer a woman in this situation?

Questions for every guest:
What’s one way God has used your experience of miscarriage to work in your heart and life?
If you could encourage a woman to meditate on or memorize any verse or short set of verses in this season, what would it be and why?

Noteworthy Quotes:

“There are no many factors that go into a woman’s grief. Every woman is so unique, and every miscarriage is so unique, that it’s hard to just put into categories based on “early” or “later” miscarriages.”

“I think that with early miscarriages, the hardest part about them is what I call the invisibility factor. You don’t have a baby bump yet, so people don’t humanize your baby the same way they would if you did. And in reality, you may not have even told anyone that you’re pregnant yet. So it’s really hard for people to jump into your grief with you. In many ways the baby isn’t “real” to anyone else besides you,... and so when you lose that baby, its just really hard because you feel really alone…”

“...There’s also the way that it feels like your baby just disappeared like a mist. You have very little to hold onto when your baby dies early on. You may have been given a little fuzzy ultrasound picture of an oblong shape that you will treasure for the rest of your life, but that ultrasound picture doesn’t compare in any way to the depth of love or hope that you had for that child—of the future that you envisioned for them and for your family.”

“On the other hand, with a late term miscarriage, the unique suffering that you face in that situation is that it’s more visible both in your heart an physically. You’ve had more time to hope, to love, to plan. You’ve felt the baby moving inside of you. The baby is just more real to the people around you. And you might have even accumulated stuff for the baby. Physical stuff that will serve as terribly painful reminders of your loss for weeks and months to come. And if you have other children, they will be affected by that loss… so you will have to guide them through the grief just as you’re figuring it out yourself… You have so many decisions to make… what to do with the body of your baby”

“I would definitely say there are degrees of grief, but they’re not always linear or logical. There are so many variables. How far along you are in your pregnancy may increase your grief, but it also might not. Things like how long you’ve been trying to get pregnant play a factor, how many times you’ve miscarried… whether or not you have been blessed with other children makes a huge difference, either before or after your miscarriage. Things like whether or not your husband is able to enter into your grief. I’ve talked to so many wives for whom that is one of the hardest things in their miscarriage…”

“I don’t think that it is fair for us to look at the gestational age of a miscarried child and assume that someone who has miscarried earlier on experiences less grief.”

“I think it’s important for us as women when we miscarry or have a tragedy like that befall us, to give people the benefit of the doubt and to not assume the worst, because it’s really easy to assume the worst when you are hurting and grieving. And, so just as we would hope that they would be as sensitive to us as possible, I think we have to guard against judging their feeble attempts to be able to enter into our pain.”

“I do think that there’s a way in which after the 12 week marker you tend to forget how frail that life within you is and you start to assume that everything is going to go fine. I think from week 1-12 we know the risk, we know that it is very possible that baby could go through a miscarriage. But after 12 weeks I think that we think that we’ve got it made, and so in some sense I think that it can come as such a shock that it hits you differently than an early miscarriage does, but I would never say that it is more painful than an early miscarriage because I have had many friends that have miscarried earlier than either of my miscarriages and for whatever reason it hit them just differently than it hit me and it was more painful for them than it was for me. It’s a very personal loss and so we have to be very careful not to make assumptions.”

“As long as we have our theology right on this matter, it will help us to be more careful in how we think about other people’s losses. I mean according to Psalm 139, every human being is uniquely fashioned by the hand of the Lord. So from the moment of a baby’s conception, that baby is a baby— a human being made in the image of God, by God. So it doesn’t matter how long that baby has been developing within the womb of the mother, his or her death is tragic.”

“We don’t do this outside of the womb. If you’ve lost a child at 17 “Oh they cant understand real grief, they don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, but we do that with our babies inside the womb because we can’t see them the same way. But it should be just as unthinkable. Recognizing the humanity of that baby from the get go can really help guard us from dismissing another woman’s grief… It’s our duty to honor her grief because it honors that baby and it honors the work that the Lord did in her womb.”

“How horrible that there would be a culture in which we would feel shame for feeling grief over a human life, over our own children. It is good and right to feel that grief over a loss of human life no matter how early we lose them.”

“I think we just need to be careful that we don’t make other people’s suffering about us and our suffering. I think that as long as we go into ministering to other people, and it works both ways… as long as we go into the situation seeking to enter into that person’s grief, that we will be guarded from a lot of misunderstandings.”

“No matter what our past experience has been, when we’re ministering to a woman who miscarries the focus should be on her and her baby. And we should never assume that our experience is the same as hers. Our experience uniquely fits us to be able to enter into her grief in a way that other people will not be able to, but we should never assume that it’s all coming to her the way that it came to us or that her situation was the same as ours or that she feels the same level or grief or that we feels more or less than her… we have to be careful to remember that every person is unique and every situation that the Lord bring us through is unique.”“I would even say its good to put out a disclaimer at some point while you’re talking to her and ministering to her just reminding her that you know that her baby is different than your baby, that her miscarriage is different than yours and that you dont understand completely how she’s feeling but you want to be there in any way that you can be and you want to serve her however you can.”

“Count others more significant than yourself. Count other’s grief more important than your own.”

“My miscarriages were really the first time that I experienced the brokenness of this world in such a visceral way and the grief that I went through really helped me have a greater appreciation for our future home with the Lord.”

“Scripture References:

Psalm 39

Philippians 2:3

Revelation 21:1-7