“It will tear you open like nothing else.”
These are the deeply emotional words of a man who, along with his wife of eight years, has suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage three times.
Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek made the harrowing revelation on Instagram over the weekend, beneath a photo of him and his wife Kimberly cuddling their three-month-old daughter Gwendolyn.
While his words speak of deep-seated loss, he has one message he hopes will shine through: no one should be blamed.
The 41-year-old father of five is urging the use of the word ‘miscarriage’ be addressed to remove the underlying insinuation of blame upon a woman.
“‘Mis-carriage’, in an insidious way, suggests fault for the mother – as if she dropped something, or failed to ‘carry’,” the actor pointed out.
“From what I’ve learned, in all but the most obvious, extreme cases, it has nothing to do with anything the mother did or didn’t do. So let’s wipe all blame off the table before we even start.”
The post went on to shed light on the grief he and his wife endured in the wake of each experience, but he also speaks of hope, describing the way sufferers can ‘recognise beauty’ as they piece themselves together again.
“It’s painful and it’s heartbreaking on levels deeper than you may have ever experienced. So don’t judge your grief, or try to rationalize your way around it. Let it flow in the waves in which it comes, and allow it it’s rightful space. And then… once you’re able… try to recognise the beauty in how you put yourself back together differently than you were before,” he wrote.
