We were pregnant. Something I didn’t think was possible, something I had been told wasn’t possible, but here we were pregnant. I couldn’t stop grinning. Plans were starting to be made but there were some routine test that needed to be taken.

We were called into the Doctor’s office for the test results. When we walked in, I can distinctly remember the Doctor was not smiling. “I have your test results. You have some decision you need to make. Options to discuss.” We left the office in shock and continued on with our lives. We decided to carry our daughter to term. There was a chance the tests were wrong.

They were not.

In my hand I hold two pieces of paper. The first one is my daughter’s birth certificate. The second one was her death certificate, dated just a couple of weeks later. It is all I have of her. Until this very moment, I didn’t even have memories of her. It has been 25 years now.

We never told our families about the pregnancy. Only our closets friends knew towards the end. Afterwards, we never talked about it, not to others, not to family, not between ourselves.

I never really grieved. I just went on with my life as if it never happened. I refused to visit that part of my memories. Time marched on.

Before this, I never believed in repressed memories. I believed them to be a farce. Something that an unscrupulous therapist led a patient to. How could someone possibly not remember?

It wasn’t that I had completely forgotten. It was that I refused to allow my mind to go there. There must have been times in the past where I came across the envelope. Ignored it. Refused to open it. I had to have known what was inside and why I wouldn’t open it.

Repressed memories are defined as memories that we unconsciously avoid thinking about, usually because of a traumatic experience. These memories are thought to be unconsciously blocked for several years and are recovered later, often from a trigger. Tonight, it was an envelope I decided to finally open, that was my trigger. I could no longer ignore one of the single most painful things from my past.

She was suppose to be a miracle. Something that wasn’t possible. We decide to carry our daughter to term. I refused to believe the doctors. They were right. Miriam left us 20 days later. A large part of me left with her.

We were pregnant, then we weren’t, but no child came home. We said nothing and no one asked. We buried her and returned to life. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the impact of yet another trauma. I didn’t understand the damage refusing to grieve would cause.

“People don’t like to think about death in general but especially when it happens to a baby or an unborn child,” says Gooen. “They don’t really know what to say, and they fear saying something wrong, so they don’t say anything. Then those who are going through it feel like they have to hide their pain to make other people comfortable.”