When I was going through recurrent pregnancy loss, one of the worst parts was that my identity as a parent felt invisible. While parents of living children are often encouraged to talk about their children and praised for all they are doing to take care of their families, it’s much more taboo for loss parents to talk about the pregnancies or babies they lost, or to receive recognition for the labor they are doing. During my recurrent loss experience, I was usually perceived as someone longing for a child rather than someone who had already carried and grieved multiple babies.

To be honest, that perception made me doubt myself quite a bit. Was I just telling myself a story or imagining a fictional scenario to make myself feel better? Was I deluding myself into believing those babies were real, not potential, and that I had “earned” the title of mom through parenting them?

Of course, I don’t claim to have the answers as to when life begins, when personhood begins, etc. (And just to be clear, I support pregnant people’s bodily autonomy around whether to continue a pregnancy regardless of the answers to those questions.) But what I do know is that right from the very beginning, pregnancy fundamentally changes the body and mind in a very real and visceral way. While the pregnancies and babies I lost may not have been visible to others, they had real, tangible, profound effects on my life. The many medical appointments I scheduled and attended, the intense nausea I suffered through, the sleepless nights I spent wondering if my baby was okay and if I was doing everything I could to protect their well-being, the conversations I had in therapy about how to balance taking time off to get prenatal care with being present and available for my clients…all of that was very real. And the (sometimes extremely painful, and almost always expensive) testing I got to try to figure out any causes of my miscarriages, the major surgery I needed to address a potential miscarriage cause, the research I did to inform future family planning decisions…also all very real.

But the self-doubt was also real. It became more real with every very well-intentioned “you’ll be a parent one day,” with every Mother’s Day that was met with silence, with every time a fetus or embryo was referred to as a “cluster of cells” or I heard someone say a pregnancy loss was not a death. 

As a therapist, I have a tendency to want to believe other people’s perspectives and validate their viewpoints. I spent a lot of time understanding and empathizing with the validity of the perspective that I wasn’t yet a parent. I understood how well-intentioned it was for people to try to comfort me by saying I had lost a potential life, not an actual life. But it felt incredibly challenging to hold space for both that mainstream dominant view, and also to still connect with my own truth and lived experience of my pregnancies and parenthood.

One thing that helped me wrap my head around it is my “mom” mug. My husband gifted me a mug that says “mom” in bold letters right after my first pregnancy loss. Over time, the ink in the letters washed away in the dishwasher. The letters are now completely faded - there is no ink left. But you can still see the word “mom” etched into the mug if you look very closely. 

Many people looking at the mug at first glance or from further away would see a blank white mug. They would find it confusing or hard to believe if I said that the mug says “mom” on it. That doesn’t make them bad people or ill intentioned. It’s very understandable why someone would take a look at the mug and assume it’s blank. We aren’t taught that we should look closely at blank mugs to see if they say any words. 

So it’s understandable to assume the mug doesn’t say anything. Very valid. And…still not correct. The mug says “mom.” 

I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for being a loss mom. In our culture, we are not taught that people can still be parents even if they don’t have living children. Pregnancy loss tends to be minimized, as does the labor that goes into navigating medical care. So it’s understandable that not everyone would acknowledge loss parents as parents. But it doesn’t mean that’s accurate. It doesn’t mean we don’t deserve for the people who love and support us to look more closely.

Now, when I’m met with comments that invisibilize or dismiss the fact that my parenthood started long before I had a living child, I remember my mug. I may not always have the energy to correct people, but I can know for myself that the mug says “mom” and anyone who misses that just isn’t looking closely enough. I will sometimes repeat to myself, “The mug says ‘mom’” to remind myself that I can still believe my truth even if others don’t see it. If you are also navigating your identity as a parent (or any other identity you hold) feeling invisible, I hope you can remember the mug too.