The Grief I Wasn’t Allowed to Have

 I had two babies before I had Hunter.

Most people don’t know that.

Not because I’m hiding it… but because I was never really allowed to have it.

The first one was 7 weeks.

At the same time my grandad was dying, and my mum… well, she was dealing with her own chaos. Gambling, secrets, everything spilling out.

And somehow… it became my fault.

I told people what was going on because I didn’t know what else to do.

I was 21, living in my boyfriend’s box room, trying to hold everything together with hands that were already shaking.

Instead of being held, I was blamed.

Mum blamed me for telling.

Dad blamed me for the timing.

Like grief has a schedule. Like loss politely waits its turn.

So I lost a baby…

and then I learned very quickly that my pain was inconvenient.

The second time… I didn’t even tell anyone at first.

That tells you everything.

I was living in a flat that barely deserved the name.

No carpet. Holes in the walls. The kind of place that echoes when you breathe.

I told him… and I wish I hadn’t.

That ended in a D&C.

Cold, clinical, over before I’d even processed what was happening.

And again… no space.

No softness.

No “are you okay?”

Just:

“Millions of women go through this. You need to get on with it.”

So I did what I was taught.

I shut it down. Packed it away. Locked it somewhere in my brain with no label and no key.

Then I had Hunter.

And suddenly I had this beautiful, real, breathing reason to be okay.

So I told myself I didn’t get to be sad anymore.

Like happiness cancels grief out. Like one child replaces the others.

But here’s the truth no one said out loud:

Grief doesn’t disappear just because something good happens.

It just gets quieter.

And then louder again when you least expect it.

I don’t remember dates.

My brain didn’t keep them.

It protected me instead.

But I remember the feeling.

That empty, heavy, something’s missing but no one else can see it feeling.

The kind of grief that has nowhere to go because no one ever stood still long enough to acknowledge it.

I never got to mourn those babies.

Not properly.

Not with anyone.

So this… this is me doing it now.

They existed.

Even if only for a moment.

Even if no one else held them in memory… I did. I do.

And I’m allowed to feel that.

I can love my children with everything I have

and still grieve the ones I never got to meet.

Those things don’t cancel each other out.

They sit side by side.

So no… I didn’t “get over it.”

I just survived it.

Quietly.

Without support.

Without permission.

And here’s the part that still blows my mind…

It’s still used against me.

To this day.

Like losing my babies was something I did wrong.

Like grief was a crime.

Like being 21, scared, unsupported and drowning somehow made me guilty instead of human.

But I’m not carrying that anymore.

That blame was never mine.

It was handed to me by people who didn’t know how to sit with pain… so they threw it somewhere else.

On me.

Not anymore.

Those were my babies.

That was my loss.

That was my grief.

And if someone still wants to twist that into something ugly…

they can hold it themselves.

I’m done carrying things that were never mine to begin with.