'It is not ordinary to conceive a life and then lose it; it's very far from ordinary. These passings should be marked, should be respected, should be given their due. It's a life, however small, however germinal. It's a collection of cells, from you, and in most cases, from someone you love. Yes, of course, worse things happen every day; no one in their right mind would doubt that. But to dismiss a miscarriage as nothing, as something you need to take on the chin and carry on, is to do a disservice to ourselves, to our living children, to those nascent beings that lived only within us, to the person we imagined throughout the short pregnancy, to those ghost children we still carry in our minds, the ones who didn't make it.'
Maggie O'Farrell, I am, I am, I am, p.104.
