Singer Lily Allen has stopped using her Twitter account after social media trolls hounded her over the tragic 2010 stillbirth of her son. Allen was attacked after revealing that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after her son was stillborn when she was six months pregnant.
Trolls blamed Allen for her son's death with horrendous comments, including, “Maybe if you didn’t pump your body full of drugs you wouldn’t have miscarried.” At one point, Allen explained that she didn't miscarry—she went into premature labor, and her son died because the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. In response, a troll sent her an illustration of a crying frog in utero with a cord circling its neck.
The comments and responses were horrific, and Allen tried to defend herself. “I DO have mental health issues. Bipolar, post-natal depression, and PTSD, does that make my opinion void,” she wrote in one tweet. “I can go dig out the medical report if you want,” she said to another commenter who questioned her PTSD diagnosis.
Finally, Allen announced that she’d had enough. “My timeline is full of the most disgusting, sexist, misogynistic, racist sh*t. Really, new levels,” she tweeted. She's personally taking a break from Twitter, but she'll be back, she says. Her account has since been taken over by her friend Dennis, who said in a tweet that he’s “going on a hate-blocking spree.”
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According to the March of Dimes, stillbirth, which happens when a fetus dies in the womb after 20 weeks of pregnancy, affects about 1 in 160 pregnancies, or fewer than 1 percent of all births. Most women who have a stillbirth and get pregnant again later can have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, the organization says.
It’s not uncommon for women to suffer mental health effects in the wake of a stillbirth, including PTSD, Tamar Gur, M.D., Ph.D., a women’s health expert and reproductive psychiatrist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF. “It’s definitely a trauma,” she says, noting that women can suffer from hypervigilance, nightmares, and flashbacks in the wake of a stillbirth.
Gur says that stillbirth is in a “gray zone” when it comes to grief. “There are still stigmas, a sense of blame, assigning guilt to the mother—it hasn’t achieved the same understanding, support, and compassion as the loss of a [living] child has,” she says.
There is no timeline for grief, psychologist Paul Coleman, Psy.D., author of Finding Peace When Your Heart Is In Pieces, tells SELF. “Grief is very personal,” he says. “You are not just grieving the premature end of a pregnancy but grieving the hopes and dreams that went along with it.” With a major, unexpected loss like a stillbirth, women often second-guess themselves and wonder if they could have done anything to avoid the loss, which only “adds to their pain,” he says.
Ignoring these feelings of blame can make the problem worse. “You have to acknowledge them,” Gur says, adding that trying to ignore these emotions can lead to issues like panic attacks. “Acknowledge that [these feelings are] toxic and poisonous.”
It’s one of the hardest things to not blame yourself—but pushing past it is possible. “Terrible things happen to good people all the time,” Gur says. “Not blaming yourself takes work…until you can internalize it and believe it.”
Blaming yourself for a stillbirth is one thing, but if you face criticism from others, Gur says it’s important to know that those people must be miserable. “I’ve never seen a truly good person try to hurt someone else in this way,” she says.
Either way, it's important for women to allow themselves to grieve and to seek support from loved ones in this situation, Coleman says. Gur agrees. “Grief can be complicated,” she says, noting that some people can benefit from working with a therapist to help come to terms with their emotions.
Gur works with her patients to help them move forward, often advising them to lean on their strengths to find a way forward. A mom who is an artist, for example, may find closure in painting about her stillbirth, while it may be helpful for a writer to write a letter to her unborn child. “Anything that helps you find closure is important,” she says.
It’s possible for women to come to terms with the grief, Coleman says, but it’s a process. “It is a loss that has to be integrated into your heart and your philosophy of life in such a way that the pain no longer interferes or stings, but occasional feelings of sadness can still show up on your doorstep,” he says.
Above all, Gur says it’s important for women who suffer a stillbirth to know this: “You loved that baby, and provided them with the best home that you could for as long as you could. It’s not your fault—anything else is lies.”
Related:
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