What if coping with rejection is less about surviving the loss and more about surviving what you decide the loss says about you?
Alice is joined by Dr. Jessica Zucker, Los Angeles psychologist in women's reproductive and maternal mental health, founder of the #IHadaMiscarriage movement, and the author who miscarried alone at 16 weeks while her doctor stayed on the phone. For anyone sitting with grief, loss or the self-blame that follows, Jessica's thesis is unsparing: the route through it is to stop treating yourself as the reason it happened.
This episode discusses pregnancy loss, miscarriage and medical trauma in some detail.
Jessica's reframe: grief isn't a failure to fix — it's a place to live in for a while. "I'm going to swim in it," she decided. The one question she asks patients caught in self-blame — "What if you did absolutely nothing wrong?" — opens the floodgates. Alongside it: a running critique of "at least" phrases, toxic positivity, and how women are groomed, from menstruation to perimenopause, to blame their own bodies for whatever happens inside them.
Whether you're grieving a loss, coping with rejection from your own body, or sitting with someone who is, this is a clear-eyed reframe of what grief is actually for.
In this episode they explore:
"What if you did nothing wrong?" — the question that unlocks the grief
Why "at least you can get pregnant" needs deleting from the zeitgeist
Coping with rejection when it's your own body: grief, self-blame, magical thinking
"I'm going to swim in it" — refusing the cultural push to get back on your feet
"It's like a murder scene in here" — the words grievers never forget
How #IHadaMiscarriage started with a calligrapher's sign and went viral
The Beef scene and the shame of "the one thing women are supposed to do"
Groomed from menstruation to perimenopause — where self-blame comes from
Connect with Dr. Jessica Zucker:
Website: drjessicazucker.com
YouTube: @ihadamiscarriage452
Instagram: @ihadamiscarriage
Books - wherever books are sold!
Chapters:
00:00 Miscarriage statistics and why the topic stays silent
04:14 How Jessica's miscarriage differed from the typical experience
09:16 The home miscarriage: cutting the cord and getting to the doctor
13:07 Hemorrhaging, the clot, and choosing an unmedicated D&C
15:30 Toxic positivity, "at least" phrases, and what to say instead
24:52 Research on self-blame after pregnancy loss
30:12 Writing the viral op-ed and starting the #IHadaMiscarriage movement
38:14 Cultural conditioning: shame from menstruation to perimenopause
42:46 The clinical question Jessica asks patients caught in self-blame
50:26 Identity beyond motherhood and the role of community