A Miscarriage And A Rainbow
With the miscarriage came the raw reality of existence, accompanied by the physical and mental vulnerability of being a leaf on life's tree.
Intro: Hi, my name is Olaf, and if you're new to this website, I just wanted to tell you that I'm a filmmaker from Iceland, and I've written and directed several films since 2003. I've also made film classes for Skillshare because I love sharing bits of my film & writing experience. This time around, though, I want to share something deeply personal.
"Sharing our experience is healthy for communal care," (noted not by Plato, but by the obscure cat behind him in that very famous but unseen drawing) - This post embodies the spirit of this quote — a sharing of experience for the love and appreciation of that thing in the cave that fears the light of vulnerability
The room is full of dead people. Even though they've left this world, their presence feels vivid and alive at this particular moment. My girlfriend lies on the bed before me, consumed by pain and there is nothing I can do. The agony of a miscarriage tests the resilience of any spirit, especially that of a mother.
The dead people in the room are our ancestors—her grandmother, my father, and many others. I'm not sure if we have summoned them as a diversion from the physical pain, or if they just decided to visit to support us. There is healing in the air, but also truth; It'll take a lifetime of human time to heal from this wound.
When asked how I met my girlfriend, I recount with pride our high score on the serendipity scale. We met at the supermarket, both reaching for oranges. Our hands touched accidentally, I cracked a joke that she misunderstood and we both laughed. In truth, we met on a dating app, but the story of the oranges remains vibrantly true because the app version rusts with each playful retelling of the oranages version. Before we knew it, we were deeply in love, I was introduced to her "17 aliens," as she jokingly (I hope) calls her four wonderful children.
It wouldn't be long until we were gifted with a pregnancy, with all the excitement, awe, thrill, and dautingness that comes with it. It was somewhere around week 8 or 9 that we saw the sonar image and we saw a white dot alone in darkness, away from the light source of the womb. With the miscarriage came the raw reality of existence, accompanied by the physical and mental vulnerability of being a leaf on life's tree. Doctor's appointments, pills, and painkillers manifesting as blood, raw without mercy.
My father committed suicide after a long battle with depression back in '99. With time I've come to understand that his death also came with gifts of expanding the womb of understanding life. Life is brutal, and timeless tears fill the seas of the universe. A death becomes life. Over time, I learned to honor life's sacredness within myself and others, recognizing the power of community and the destructive nature of isolation and self-imposed shame. Pain in shame be gone is the refreshing new hope we enjoy in modern times, something that my father and people of his generation weren't blessed with. Sharing is important, actually, vitally important, hence this blog post about our experience.
My girlfriend and I once likened our miscarriage to a rainbow – And every time we saw one, we knew that life was winking at us, whispering, "You need rain to see the colors." Of course, you need one more thing, light. A sun. A year later after the miscarriage, we had a daughter and she was named Sunneva Vilborg. (Sunneva: Morning dew in sunlight - Vilborg: A fortress on a hill to protect that dew).
A death becomes life. Our doctor told us, that a miscarriage could often aid a subsequent pregnancy. And there you go, a possible big brother in the form of a rainbow was helping his little sister to enter this world.
The room is full of a community of people.
Sunneva Vilborg