Sarah Wells — Olympian, a keynote speaker, and friend — recently wrote about her miscarriage:
She wrote:
“I’m going to share something that some people may view as oversharing. I’m not sharing for sympathy, but to help normalize something that is far more common than we realize, and to remind us that we truly never know what someone might be carrying behind the scenes.”
Brilliant and important.
Five times in my life, I have stepped off a stage after telling a story completely unrelated to pregnancy or childbirth, and a woman has approached to tell me the story of her miscarriage.
In each case, I was the only person she had ever told.
Five times.
My willingness to be vulnerable onstage, perhaps combined with the knowledge that she wouldn’t need to see me ever again, opened a door and allowed these women to share a secret with me they had never shared before.
The number of secrets I have been told after stepping offa stage would astound you.
But the reason these miscarriage stories are told to me is that a stigma remains around miscarriages.
Sarah is seeking to break that stigma and bring this subject into the light.
Smart, brave, and necessary.
I’d also add that if anyone thinks that what Sarah has shared qualifies as oversharing (as Sarah suggests some might), they are annoying and irrelevant people.
The concern about oversharing often leads to tragic undersharing — people carrying burdens they are afraid to tell others. The world is filled with undersharing — human beings with important, entertaining, amusing, difficult, and potentially life-changing stories and ideas that remain unspoken out of fear that no one wants to listen.
We do. I promise.
Sarah also indicated that she wasn’t looking for sympathy, but had she been hoping for a little sympathy from readers, that would be okay, too.
Nothing wrong with seeking sympathy in a time of tragedy.
If someone doesn’t like that, they are annoying and irrelevant, too. Little monsters who probably spend too much time judging others and not enough time finding ways to shut up.
Whether your audience is thousands of followers on Instagram or the group of ladies you play bridge with on Tuesday nights or the two colleagues who eat lunch with you every day, don’t be afraid to share your stories.
Dispense with the needless fear of oversharing. While oversharing exists, it’s infinitesimal compared to the tragic silences that dominate our world.
What you might characterize as oversharing might be the doorway someone else needs to feel better about their own struggle and maybe share those troubles with others.
It happens to me all the time. Someone sees me telling a story onstage, online, or in writing, and then they reach out to share their own story with me.
You wouldn’t believe the burdens people carry.
Often, it’s a story that they have never shared with anyone else in the world, byt that simple act of sharing their story aloud to another human being helps.
I suspect Sarah’s story has helped many people.
You can read her whole story on her Instagram account: @sarahwells400mh.
