I have heard it said that the greatest loss a human being can experience is the loss of a child.

This is true. The person you were before you will never be again.

It doesn't just change you.

It demolishes you.

The rest of your life is spent on another level, the level of those who have lost a child.

My mom said that a few years before she died and for her it was true. She was demolished

by my brother's death and she felt the pain of it every day. But she was able to feel other

things as well. love and joy, fulfillment. She didn't just

survive. She lived for 31 years after my brother's death. She worked, she painted, she wrote books, and she was able to do all

that because she could talk about my brother's death and about him, and she could do it without

the quaver in her voice, the sense of vertigo that I still get when

talking about what happened.

There was a loss, however, my mom didn't talk about, something I only learned decades after my brother's death. My mom had lost another

child, one I never knew about. She'd had a miscarriage. I think it was in 1965 after my brother

was born and before I came along. When I did finally ask her about it, she didn't say much and I didn't want to press. It's interesting to me that my mom, who rarely spared me the details of any aspect of her life, had kept her miscarriage hidden.

I was never sure why, but then I listened to the voicemail messages from the end of last season and so many of you spoke of the babies you lost and

Society's silence surrounding it the friends and family who didn't know what to say or said nothing at all.

35 years ago I lost my only child.

My name is Catherine.

I lost the pregnancy at 12 weeks and the grief astounded me. the I was last my second child to a really rare genetic condition.

Society was telling me it's just a miscarriage,

just get over it.

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