The Virtue of Vulnerability: How Miscarriage Reconnected Me to My Intuition

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Finding hope and healing after baby loss, one woman awakens to her gifts of guiding others through these same difficult life waters

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I felt betrayed by my intuition after my miscarriage in 2015. Why hadn’t I felt that there was something ‘wrong’ with this baby? Because of this, and the emotional pain the loss had caused, I lost the connection with myself, my joy in life and my loved ones. I got stuck in this ‘pause-mode’ where nobody seemed to understand me and where everything I did seemed aimless…

It took me about 2 years to understand AND feel that it was not my intuition that had betrayed me, but it was I who had betrayed my intuition. Looking back, I realized that I had felt very insecure from the beginning of that pregnancy — asking for extra ultrasounds. My mind told me to stop feeling insecure, because there was no reason to feel that way. No test results proved what I was feeling. I wanted to believe my mind…until the ultrasound at 12 weeks proved my mind wrong (and my intuition right).

This harsh reality began a journey of reconnection to myself — to my intuition and learning to truly trust myself. It guided me back. My intuition had always been there, and in fact, most of the decisions in my life where made based on this ‘gut-feeling’ I had never fully embraced or acknowledged. But I had never learned to really connect and consciously listen to it.

After the loss of that tiny baby at 12 weeks pregnancy and suffering infertility for 3 years, I knew that there was only one thing that could help me be happy again. And that was NOT a ‘new’ baby (as a lot of people told me), but a ‘new’ me. Becoming the real me required reconnecting with my heart and soul, instead of living in my mind letting my thoughts rule.

This was the only way.

I would uncover my real strength, not by pretending to be strong, but by allowing vulnerability to be both seen and felt without any excuses or explanations.

This subtle, yet substantial shift in awareness and perception literally changed everything. After this internal work I became pregnant, almost immediately. Best yet, I trusted myself and this baby from the very beginning. No worries, no fear. Intuitively I knew she was healthy.

As a midwife, I had already had the great honor of assisting many women in delivering their babies — healthy ones, stillborn ones, and babies with abnormalities. I have held them through it. After my own experience of miscarriage, I strongly felt that I was here to help women (and men) with their emotional recovery after baby loss by (re)connecting to themselves, the baby they lost and their intuition.

Connecting with your intuition is such a powerful and sustainable way to move from ‘surviving’ loss — to living with loss in a way that is aligned with who you really are and can become through experience. Intuition is the base of all trust. That precious gut-feeling that is always there, knowing what to do — often stays in the background, the unconsciousness, while the mind takes over creating fear. For me intuition is trusting yourself, no matter what, no matter what life brings your way. Great strength can be found in our vulnerability, within our most painful moments. When we lean into them and listen, not pretend we are strong, we can reconnect to the parts of ourselves that will guide us through whatever comes into our lives. Take its hand…and never let go again.

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You may also enjoy reading Life After Miscarriage: The Healing Power of Non-Sexual Physical Touch, by Marla Mattenson