After my loss, I remember one thing very clearly…I hated the grocery store. Ok, so my husband knows that I have never been a huge fan of grocery shopping but after my loss I felt like I was walking into a nightmare everytime. Over the years I have come to call this the “grocery store effect”. While I have no scientific proof of its existence I can tell you that it felt like a very real phenomenon and it went a little something like this: everytime I walked into the grocery store, I was surrounded by pregnant people and crying babies. Every single time! I remember walking up and down the aisles feeling so horrible and thinking “why did this happen to me”? “why is everyone else’s life so perfect”?

Looking back, I understand now that one of the main things I was feeling was isolation. And this is very common when you have a loss. Many people do not talk about loss and so you begin to think that you are the only one out there. The hope and mission of Share is that you understand that you are not alone. Statistically speaking, most women in the grocery store have either had a loss or know someone who has had a loss but it is hard to rationalize that when you are in the moment. If you are one of these women who is currently going feeling the grocery store effect, keep telling yourself that you are not alone.

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