Any couple who has endured the devastation of miscarriage will tell you that physical and emotional pain is something you don't quickly forget. The excitement and anticipation are quelled, and the heartache sets in. But it isn't only the mother whose world is changed forever; her partner also experiences the loss of the life they thought they'd have.
New York Times best-selling author Frederick Joseph, 35, and his wife Porsha were thrilled to find out they were pregnant after infertility struggles. But when an ultrasound revealed their baby had no heartbeat, they were crushed. The father-to-be took to poetry to share his grief with the world.
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The couple knew they wanted a family.
The author told Today that when he and his wife started their journey toward a family, they hit some bumps in the road. About a year in, they realized "something was off." Porsha was eventually diagnosed with endometriosis and had surgery to relieve some of the symptoms. Once that was complete, the couple decided to undergo in vitro fertilization.
Their first cycle was a success.
Joseph and his wife were thrilled when she became pregnant and couldn't wait to start their family.
"We thought of it as being our luck finally coming to pass," he told Today. They heard their baby's heartbeat and felt a bit of relief. "I felt like I could finally breathe," Joseph said.
Their excitement was short-lived.
At Porsha's nine-week scan, the couple learned their baby's heart had stopped beating, and "the entire world went silent," he recalled.
Joseph explained to Today that until that moment, he was focused on life as a father, and his dreams came crashing down.
"I'd already gone out and purchased some of my favorite Mets baby gear," Joseph said. "We left our home on a Tuesday morning expecting to be parents, and then that was ripped away from us."
He turned to writing to help heal his broken heart.
At first, he spent quiet time at home but knew he needed to get his words out. Joseph wrote poetry to work through his grief. He told Today that it's important to remember fathers during a miscarriage.
"In our society, as much as we say that we want to dismantle patriarchal constructs, I feel like we don't talk enough about how dismantling them also means that we have to lean into a different type of manhood," Joseph shared. "You have understand and teach a school of humanity for men. It's not just duty and perseverance, it's grief and heartache and tears. And we need to start having conversations about how much pregnancy loss hurts."
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His poem is an ode to his wife and their bond.
In reading "We Cry Together," it's easy to see that Joseph and Porsha are very close. Even though he was heartbroken for himself, he was profoundly impacted by his wife and how the loss of their child affected her. In the closing stanza, he explains there is only one way for them to heal.
'We Cry Together' by Frederick Joseph
"Her shriek is raw, snapping all the world’s quiet
As dreams, unborn tumble into the abyss of almost.
I don’t know this sound; an anguish that pierces my soul.
With what little strength I have, I grab her hand,
Weaving through the grooves of her sorrow,
Though my grip is frail.
The geography of her face is foreign to me,
As the doctor explains the terrain of a pain
I cannot mend. A black hole I cannot save her from.
Nah, this can’t be right. Look again! Refusing to accept my wife’s body,
As the site of such an inexplicable vanishing —
A promise left lingering in the world of daydreams.
She asks me and the doctor to leave the room,
Needing a moment to plead with the universe.
From the hallway, I hear her sobbing, an ocean devouring her smile.
My knuckles meet the steel door of a sterile hospital room,
Attempting to punch away our misfortune, until I can replace it
With something she actually deserves. For all of the IVF shots,
The nights we debated over names, the anxiety attacks about money,
And the moments we pinched ourselves at the idea of being chosen
How do you stitch a wound living in the syllables of a name never called?
There is nothing to say, when spun into a vortex of unspeakable loss.
We spend weeks huddled around grief like a campfire,
Telling silent ghost stories about the people we stopped being
Just days before. Nurturing a flame so small it could be mistaken
for hope.
In the most somber hours, when the world took its deepest breath,
I sat beside her, staring at the slight crescent of her unhoused belly,
For so long, I swore I heard a heartbeat, but it was actually planets collapsing
In the cavities of my chest. And I wondered, how are we going to survive this,
And in time, my question was answered: Together."
-Excerpt from "We Alive, Beloved," $15
