The Rage We Don’t Talk About After Stillbirth

Vallen Webb (: 00:01

Hey love, welcome back to the Pregnancy Loss and Motherhood podcast. I'm your host, Vallen Webb, and today's episode is one that we haven't discussed a lot of, and I feel like a lot of us need right now, and also we don't talk about it in our culture. So today we're really talking about rage. Rage, fucking fierce rage, not irritation.

not that sadness, excuse me, disguises snarky, but rage. That feeling, that emotion that builds up in your chest, you know, it starts small and then grows and grows kind of like a wildfire just fucking taking over everything. It can be a slow build. It can be like,

all at once explosive in your face. ⁓ And if you've experienced stillbirth, you may have felt this. ⁓ Whether you've allowed yourself to, whether you've acknowledged it or not, or tried to stuff it down like I did, because it was scary and because I was never taught that it was an appropriate emotion, and also not taught or explained how to

⁓ appropriately and healthily express it. ⁓ So let's just jump in. ⁓ So first we're gonna start out with the definition. So rage is a natural, biological, protective response.

biological as in it happens. We can't necessarily stop it from happening. It's there to protect us. It's your body's way of saying this was not okay. It's part of a trauma response right alongside the fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses. ⁓ The thing about rage, it's not just emotional. It's physical.

I mean, I can just talking about this. I can, I have goosebumps and I just, I.

Body keeps the score, right? So I feel, I know how that feels. ⁓ Some ways that this comes out. you like, maybe you get a tight chest. ⁓ You know, your breathing may hasten and your chest tightens, your jaw could clench. You may have shaky hands. So this is me as like shaky hands, sudden explosive crying. I experienced that, especially in the beginning of my.

journey after Evelyn died, ⁓ needing to punch a pillow, to scream, to throw something, to hurt something. And this isn't like, abusive hurt something. Okay, this isn't like me saying that it's.

or wanting to completely shut the world out. It's like an alarm, okay? It's like an emotional alarm bell. And instead of honoring it, being like, okay, being able to put a name to it is the first thing that most of us don't know how to do. I ⁓ experienced this in a few different ways. ⁓

The first before Evelyn even died, I experienced postpartum rage and postpartum depression after the birth of my second daughter, Violet. ⁓ I didn't know it could happen. I didn't know it was a thing. didn't know. So when it was happening to me and I couldn't understand the feelings, the emotional and the physical feelings I was feeling, and I would get so angry that I, you know, and I...

your brain is trying to make sense of it and you don't have a name for it. And for me, it was like, I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was, it was my husband's fault. It was my children's fault. It was my fault. When you can't put a name to something, you cannot take the power away from that thing. You can't neutralize it. You can't make a plan for it when it shows up.

So a lot of times, especially in grieving mothers, instead of honoring that feeling, because we may have never experienced it before this, we tend to shame it. ⁓ Women have been shamed for centuries for any type of emotional outburst. Can you imagine if we are like, my God, I was raging yesterday or I had these rage sensations, like, or if somebody saw you.

experiencing it, what they would think of us. ⁓ It's a whole thing. So we tend to shame it instead of get curious about it. But listen when I say, listen when rage says, this never should have fucking happened. Or rage says, no one listened to me. Nobody was listening to me.

Nobody was taking what I was saying seriously. said, Rage says, they sent me home when I begged for help. Rage says, where was the care? Where was the compassion? Where are the trained fucking people to help me through this? Why don't they care?

Right, like my goosebumps right now is unreal right now. Okay.

th,: 2019

But when I start having these feelings and I just need to do something, ⁓ I try to sit with it instead of, you know, numbing it or, you know, trying to do something to get out of that, that feeling and the emotions. ⁓ So I got on Facebook, I went on my support groups and I was just trying to support other, other moms, other people who are going through this by.

witnessing their pain and witnessing their beautiful babies and my rage started boiling.

How the fuck are all of these babies dying?

There's a lot of statistics out there, okay? And I just, another, once I got into that Rage-y thing and I was looking at resources that some of these moms use that they really appreciated, because I'm always trying to collect them for my listeners, for the people that I help, for families who need them. And I want to make sure they're great, right? ⁓ But I was reminded that there is a documentary on YouTube called America's Stillbirth Crisis. And some of the...

the statistics that they shared made me even more enraged.

It's not that I haven't seen them before, but something in me is different and I'm feeling different about it. But one of those statistics was stillbirth is the number one cause of death in children ages 0 to 14. It's the number one cause of death in children ages 0 to 14.

outweighs preterm birth, outweighs SIDS, it outweighs drowning, ⁓ all of these things that they collect data on. And to me, I'm like, why are we not doing anything?

And statistically, of four, one of four stillbirths can be prevented. One of four.

and stillbirth typically happens one out of every 75 births.

And in my heart.

Of course as a mom, I'm like, mine could have been prevented.

She.

Maybe if I would have just gotten induced like I had my first two times at 40 weeks instead of going over, maybe she'd be here.

because she died at that four day mark, 40 weeks and four days. ⁓

As far as we know, I mean, I didn't do an autopsy because I didn't want anybody cutting into her. And of course, I kind of regret that now because maybe there was an underlying cause, but genetic testing, all the ultrasounds that we did, the blood work, the placenta testing, like the only why they could really give me was maybe

half placental abruption, half maybe cord accident because her cord was tightly wound up, was wound around her shoulders. But the point of this being the rage that I felt two nights ago was unbearable. And it was one of those, it wasn't to the point where I wanted to hit something, but it was definitely.

where I felt I needed to do something, right? ⁓ For me, that was going to get like a diet Pepsi and some Doritos. That's my emotional... ⁓

support. Sorry, I just looked out the window and my husband is on the trampoline with a broom trying to broom off all these terrible tree seed pods. Anyways, so why don't we talk about rage? And really, the the difficult ultimate truth is that rage is uncomfortable. It's not pretty.

It's not something that you can put a bow on and make it okay, like even though it is okay.

It's uncomfortable for us to talk about. It's uncomfortable for us to like shine a light on that part of us because of the shame and we don't want people to look at us in a different way. ⁓ It's uncomfortable for others because they don't know how to hold that for you. They don't know how to hold it for themselves. It's uncomfortable for society because we've been told that

for centuries that women are overly emotional and hysterical, all of these things.

We have been shamed for centuries. ⁓ But rage doesn't discriminate. It's in all sexes, all races. It's everywhere for everybody. ⁓ We've been taught to be quiet grievers. We've been taught to cry in private to move on. ⁓

But the anger and the rage challenges that narrative. And that's uncomfortable because we don't want to be the first ones doing it. Being a trailblazer is great and all, but it's terrifying to go against that because we don't want to be thrown out of our communities. We don't want to be treated like lepers. ⁓

I don't know, rage is not something people expect from you in your grief. It's not something that we expect of ourselves because we don't talk about it. ⁓ Women, especially mothers, are expected to be nurturing and composed. ⁓ But when our babies die, we are fucking ripped wide open. Not just physically from giving birth.

⁓

but emotionally.

Rage is completely valid. It's a completely valid response to our trauma, to the loss of our child.

And yet, when we talk about it or show it, people may flinch or maybe they back away or maybe they try to change the subject or they try to minimize it. Oh yeah, you know, I've felt that anger before a sadness. Like you'll be fine. It's, you know.

Like, can you imagine?

I'll be very vulnerable right now with my rage.

So when I had a moment when my kids were busy watching a show or taking a nap, I would sit in my, so it was really great because you'd go into our bedroom, the door, go into our master bath, shut the door. And then our closet was on the other side and shut the door. ⁓ So I had this very, very safe place in my closet in our home and.

I would scream into a pillow, I would punch the pillow, I would hit the floor with my fists. Sometimes when I was just uncontrollable.

Like not knowing what to do, I would punch the wall outside the bathroom door.

To me, that's really embarrassing to say.

that I was hurting myself.

not purposely, like I wanted to hurt the wall. I wanted to.

I just, physically needed to do something. I sometimes I think we forget we're humans. Like we were meant to be, we are physical beings. Like there's a reason we have rage and a reason that we need to express that. And there are healthy ways to do that.

Now I didn't have the tools at the time. I didn't know who to talk to. ⁓

And it's obvious that I still feel some kind of shame around it. Because I would have hated for like my girls to see me. My living children.

How embarrassing is that? Like how am I gonna explain that to somebody who sees me just punching a wall or sitting screaming in a closet? ⁓

How do you explain that? Okay, so what habits? We tend to stuff it down. I did that too after a while.

⁓ We numb it, we get stuck in guilt and shame instead of practicing or learning how to release that. ⁓ But here's the truth that I want you to hold onto and that's you are allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be rageful. You're allowed to be angry at the system. You're allowed to be angry at your body. You're allowed to be angry at God.

You're allowed to be angry at the unfairness. The anger doesn't make you a bad mom, it makes you human. And I'm sorry, this is such an emotional episode, but I just want you to hear me and I want you to know that it is okay to be here. A lot of my episodes, ⁓ is Evelyn's sixth birthday is coming up. I'm six years in.

and I'm still feeling all the feels. I'm still feeling all my grief. It comes and goes. It shows up ⁓ as a priority in my life at times and sometimes it's in the background, right? Kind of just idling. It's always there.

you're allowed to have these feelings.

To me, I think.

There's parts of it, my rage, that expressing the rage helps our healing or helped my healing. know, rage holds a truth for you and that's your brain and your body trying to protect you. Okay? It's a protective mechanism that happens because something is so unfair and so cruel.

that you should not have to go through and that is just not justified. And so when you're able to express it safely, it can be freeing. And then when we suppress it, it festers, it makes things worse. can turn into more depression, it can turn into anxiety, physical illness, disconnection from others.

And then, you know, think about it, like, how about when or if we can honor that rage?

Rage then becomes that fuel, that driving force for healing, for change, for claiming your story, from taking your power back to confronting the doctor or medical people who maybe have done something wrong or didn't listen to you or took your birthing choice away like mine was.

I mean, expressing rage can help you reclaim your voice. I'm sorry guys, got all this, know, now I got tears and.

Expressing rage can help you reconnect with your body. It can help you loosen the grip of the trauma, make things a little more ease, have a little more ease.

expressing that rage can make you feel like it can feel real again life.

You're not stuck. And most importantly, it helps you release.

You have to have release from your rage.

It's not to say your rage won't be triggered later on.

but there's ways to process it and release it.

in a safe way that can help your healing.

So ⁓ what are some safe ways to express your rage? Okay, and these are not things that I knew six years ago when I was going through this.

So one of those is somatic movement.

It's very intentional movement. helps process and move energy through your body. ⁓ Shaking your hands out, like just hold them out to the side and shake. Okay. Stomping your feet.

literally stomping as hard as you can. Better yet, do it outside in the grass, in the dirt, ground into that earth.

stomp the fuck out of that ground with your feet. And I'm not like, these are real things that help your body. It moves that energy out of your body. Dance like nobody's watching and not as a cliche. This isn't about your choreography. It's about releasing what's in your body.

A lot of cultures use dance as a tool.

⁓ Rebounding on a trampoline is another one that really helps you. Again, you're we're focusing on moving that energy through your body. ⁓ And then there's one that I've seen. There's this. Amazing, he's Asian man on Instagram. He does all this like somatic movement things, but if you stand up.

and you just twist the upper portion of your body and let your arms swing and like hit your chest with your hands as your arms swing and then do that body shaking. That is... ⁓

But ⁓ I'll have to actually let me write that down. I'll put it in the show notes his Instagram page, but he does a lot of somatic movements.

And OK, what's next? Vocal release, OK? Talk about raging. This is like, you know.

And I know this isn't always possible. have little ones around. Screaming. Okay, so screaming into a pillow was always one that you can do. You don't even have to do it into a pillow. Go stand on a mountaintop. Go stand in a forest. Go into your car, turn up the music and scream. You know, if you like screaming music, just sing to it in the car, like as loud as you can. Humming.

Humming is a, like I didn't know this, humming is one of those things that really moves energy, but it also moves like lymphatic. ⁓

mucus, but fluids like the fluids in your body, moaning, moaning, but moaning is one too, yes, but humming low tones, the vibrations help calm your vagus nerve. And so doing that for a few minutes, like obviously taking breaks in between, ⁓ moaning or groaning, those really low vibrational sounds.

⁓ Sound moves energy just like movement. ⁓

Number three, so one is somatic movement, two is vocal release, three, rage rituals, okay? This is the punching the fucking pillow. Buying a ⁓ punching bag off a Facebook marketplace that you can hang up and beat the shit out of. ⁓ You could use a tennis racket on your mattress or your pillow. ⁓ Write a rage letter.

Rip it up and burn it. We don't want anybody reading these, because we may make it about something to somebody else, but it's really not, and then they read it. Rip it up and burn the fuck out of it. Throw it into a million pieces in the garbage or recycling bin, whatever. Again, these are safe things you can do. Number four is ground and soothe.

So once you do any of these first three, following your rage with grounding is very helpful. So do your screaming, do your humming, do your tennis racket on the mattress. And then we wanna follow up with just breathing. I always just place my hand, I say heart, but it's really like on my chest by my throat and I put another hand on my stomach and I just.

breathe, I take really intentional like I count. ⁓ I use the box breathing method where it's four, four in, hold four, four out, hold four. It's you know, so or hands wherever it feels safe. And then you can name three things that you see here or feel.

You know, I always tell myself I am safe.

It's safe to feel this. It's safe to feel this way. I am safe now. I am safe.

We are, we are.

the biggest part of our healing journey. It is up to us.

And I just, want this to be a safe space for you. ⁓ Also understanding that community, community is so essential to our healing journey. And I want you to always be reminded that there are so many of us out there that will gladly and lovingly hold you and listen to you and witness what you're going through.

You are never meant to carry this alone. You are never meant to carry the rage alone and not know what to do with it. Being witness in your grief and your anger is so healing because you can be this way. You can be angry and yell and scream and we will still just sit there and be like, we got you. You're safe.

When another mom looks at you and says, felt that too, it just rewires something. You feel that you're not broken.

This is grief.

For a lot of us, we've never felt such profound grief, and we may never feel it as intensely again. Again, this is an out of order death. We grew up knowing our grandparents and our parents are gonna die before us. We know this, it's our life cycle. ⁓ We were never meant to live without our babies.

And that's why I created this podcast. It's why I'm creating this network of healing. ⁓ In the podcast, our training and education for professionals are Evelyn James Schaap, the support spaces, the tools, you know, to remind you that rage is welcome here. ⁓ You're not too much. You're not alone. You're not crazy.

You're not overly emotional. You're not, what's the term I used? Hysterical. Now you can be hysterical after the death of your baby, because like I was hysterical. ⁓ Whole other episode there. But that fire and that rage that's burning within you is sacred. It's protective. It's loving.

We were just never taught how to hold it and how to process and release it when it needs to be.

So before we go, I would love it if you would take a deep breath in through your nose.

and out through your mouth.

And I really want you to ask yourself whether it's just a internal conversation. Maybe you want to journal it. But what part of my grief still holds rage? Is there parts of your story that still enrages you because

Something happened. Something wrongful happened. Something ⁓ unjustified. terrible. Tragic.

the way you were treated, the way your baby was treated or talked about. What part of your grief still holds rage? I would love for you to journal on that today. Even just write it down and come back to it later. Or just kind of think about it in your head. Whatever feels good for you. And then I also though want you to maybe write or think about how can I express that safely without judgment.

How can I express that rage safely without judgment? Remember, you do not have to do this alone. Come share your story with us. ⁓ You can DM me at valinweb.official on Instagram or join our email list at evalindjames.shop to get free tools and reminders. ⁓

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being brave. And until then, I will see you next Monday. Remember today just to breathe, feel, be real with yourself. You don't have to hide your grief.

and we're here.

This episode was brought to you in partnership with White Elm. The Aquilatote is my ride or die for every hospital visit, postpartum doula session, and target run. You can grab yours at shopwhiteelm.com slash Vallen and Webb and support our work at the same time. ⁓ I do this podcast absolutely free and I do get a commission when you buy a bag with my unique code and it really helps support the podcast so that I can continue doing.

these episodes. ⁓ Please, if you are willing, ⁓ don't forget to rate and review the show, whatever platform you listen on. Every review helps us reach more lost families and break the silence around stillbirth. ⁓ Also check out the Evelyn James shop, which is soft launching with more healing resources coming soon at EvelynJames.shop. And then you can also find our book, I am officially a published author and

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