There have been too many things in my mind lately. I wanted to write them all down here, but for some reason, I don’t know where to start.

A member of our support group had miscarriage about a month ago. She’s fine, but she’s wondering why she’s feeling “normal“. “I’m supposed to feel depressed, right?” she asked the group.

Below is part of my private message to her. I’m posting it here because I believe that what I said can be applied to everyone who have suffered loss, to those who are enduring hardships, and to those dealing with dismal episodes in their lives.

Feeling depressed after miscarriage is not necessarily a MUST. Depression is not part of a scientific procedure that you should feel after losing a baby.

Although there are what they call clinical depression where you can’t help but be depressed, most states of sadness are dependent on the emotional capacity and maturity of a person.

Of course, you cannot discount other factors such as faith and supportive enviroment, including people around you. As many others will tell you, having these are what you need most during this part of your life.

I would bet everything I own that when you had your loss, you are already emotionally mature, you have great faith in God, and you have all the support you need (from family and friends). All these possibly led to your early acceptance of what happened, and as I strongly believe, only with acceptance of the unfavorable situations you’ve been through can you move on with your life.

On the other hand, we also cannot discount the possibility of you feeling so bad for your loss that, instead of accepting what happened, you chose to just forget all about it and pretended that it didn’t happen. Doing so may hasten your recovery, but only temporarily. Imagine your life as a tower of building blocks standing on top of each other. Each block represents every event in your life, happy or sad. Whenever you face an episode head on with bravery, you place that block on the tower. Whenever you run away from an incident or forget that it happened, you leave a space in its place. You bury it with other things that you face, and the empty space is still there. No matter how high your tower of blocks may be, that empty space will make your tower unstable. Eventually, it will haunt you and cause your blocks to fall.

No matter how hard you try to run away from a not-so-favorable incident in your life, it will eventually catch up on you and cause more damage.

To those who can relate to what I’ve said, I certainly hope that you are matured enough, both emotionally and spiritually, to overcome the hurdles in your lives.