Grief Isn’t a Competition

How dismissal, comparison, and minimization silence women — and why we must speak our stories anyway.

When I wrote and published my very first book, I was so excited about it. I ordered a box of business cards and passed them out everywhere I went. I even talked to cashiers at the stores I shopped in.

One cashier, in particular, shared her miscarriage experience with me. This is one of the reasons I love sharing my stories — you never know what comes from a vulnerable conversation. Most people will open up if you share first. Not to compare traumas. Not to seek sympathy. I never cared about that.

I shared because I wanted to help women who couldn’t talk about it openly.

I wanted to give them an opening.

But this cashier did something many people unintentionally do — she compared. She dismissed my loss as “not as bad as hers.”
She told me she carried twins and lost them at eight months pregnant. I had already told her I was one month in when I lost mine. Two months, if you count the month I didn’t know yet.

Now, this didn’t bother me personally. She dismissed my pain, but that’s her lens, not mine.

The reason I’m talking about this is because not everyone can shrug that off.
That may be what shuts them down. Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.
Maybe my miscarriage is not worth mentioning…
And a lot of people would unintentionally do what she did — get pulled into a comparison.
Then you end up “one-upping” each other over who hurt more… to what end?

The truth is simple:

Both of our pains were valid.
There was no need to compare.

But since she did — let’s explore the idea for a moment.

Yes, she carried her babies six months longer than I carried mine.
Does that mean her desire to see and hold her child was stronger than mine?
Does that mean her HCG levels were more “valid” than mine?
Does that mean the hope of raising her babies into childhood and adulthood was deeper than my hope?

No.

We both had that same wish.
We both felt the same hormonal chaos.
We both lost the same imagined future.

That’s what people forget — the grief, the crushed hope, the hormonal chaos… it’s all real, no matter when the loss happens. I never wrote about “it could be worse” in my book because what I lived was already traumatic enough.

The only difference was time.
She lived with the pregnancy longer than I did.
But the grief?
The numbness?
The postpartum emotional fallout?

Those things don’t care about timelines.

Let’s take it even further.

A friend of mine — someone with living children — told me after reading my book that she lost a baby two months after giving birth. She also experienced miscarriage in a different pregnancy.

She told me that with the miscarriage, she longed to have the baby in her arms. Pregnancy felt like a promise she didn’t get to experience. The loss was real. The emptiness was real.

But when she lost the baby she did get to hold — to feed, bathe, and sing lullabies to — the grief was just as unbearable. She said, “Sometimes I wished I never got to feel him in my arms… because losing him after knowing him felt impossible.”

She told me she couldn’t choose which loss was “worse.”
The emotional pain was the same.
The postpartum crash was the same.
There was no comparison.

So… was the cashier’s miscarriage worse than mine?
I doubt it.

Was mine worse than hers?
I doubt that too.

There is no hierarchy of pain.
We both grieved.
We both yearned for our babies.
We both went through postpartum.

The details may differ, but the heartbreak stands equal.

Instead of comparing, what if we learned to share with compassion?
What if we normalized these conversations so they stop being taboo?

A miscarriage becomes a memory — and memories aren’t shameful.
They’re human.

Let’s share to prepare the younger ones with knowledge.
Let’s share so no one feels alone when the inevitable happens.
Let’s share so we can support each other as a community — not competitors in grief.