getting over miscarriage

Lindell is 24 and in two years of marriage has suffered two miscarriages. Any other woman might be distraught with this sort of bad luck - along with Lindell's sad childhood history of neglect - but she believes in getting over things and getting on with life. She's tough!

"I know too many women who are ruining their lives- and boring the crap out of the rest of us - with all their moans and groans about how badly life has treated them from birth onwards," snaps Lindell, "and I'm definitely not going to get sucked into becoming a similar sad sack."

"These women are pathetic because they are living in the past and missing out on the present and the future - how silly is that?"

"Can't they see that the circumstances that once brought them bad luck no longer exist?"

"At my last job there was a woman whose husband and three kids had been wiped out in a car smash," says Lindell. "Everyone tip-toed around her and I did, too, until I discovered that the fatal accident had been ten years ago - not last month!"

"She was a bad tempered woman and by tip-toeing around her my co-workers were enabling her to remain in the past and capitalize on her misfortunes," explains Lindell. "Sure she gained a payoff from living in the past, but what sort of payoff is pity when she could have spent the last ten years being a happy woman with a great life being admired rather than pitied by everyone?"

"I'm not saying that all the moaners and groaners out there are profiting from their miseries," says Lindell. "Most of them are just pathetic sad sacks who can't see the wood for the trees and need a good kick in the butt to kick start them out of the past."

"Sure I was disappointed when I lost two babies," says Lindell, "but that was then and I got over it - and I'll get over it if it happens again. I get over everything in my life by making a conscious choice to be happy. That's all it is - a choice."

"As I see it," says Lindell, "we are rivers and the water that flows through us is our life. Sometimes the water is muddy or turbulent or downright stinking but it keeps on flowing because that's what rivers do."

"You don't see rivers trying to stop the waters flowing or trying to shore up their banks or trying to dredge their beds," says Lindell, "and yet you see plenty of people trying vainly to do such silly things."

"Flowing water - or life - does all that needs to be done."

"Just like rivers keeps flowing so do our lives - and to hang on to memories is useless because they're gone. We are the river but the water flowing through us is constantly different - our circumstances are always changing."

"Water erodes river banks and widens them," says Lindell, "and that's natural, isn't it? We all age and change shape - but we are still the river."

"It's ridiculous to cry over the first rock that bumped down our river bed or the first deluge that flooded us or the first pollutant that poisoned us," laughs Lindell, "because there are going to be many more such incidents before we dry up."

"I hate it when people say 'if things don't kill us they make us strong'," says Lindell, "because this is manifestly untrue. We start dying the day we are born and the more things that hit us the weaker - not stronger - we become."

"Some women lead charmed lives compared to the rest of us," sighs Lindell. "They are born without defects into supportive families, they marry loving men and have trouble free children."

"Don't tell me that I am going to be stronger than a woman like that because I survived a bad childhood and two miscarriages and she didn't," says Lindell.

"And don't tell me that a woman born with physical defects who suffered child abuse and marital abuse and all of her children were born with worse physical defects than hers is going to be stronger than me because of her misfortunes."

"All it means is that she is more experienced than the rest of us."

"Being experienced in the miseries of life doesn't make you stronger than someone who's miraculously escaped misfortunes," claims Lindell. "It just makes you experienced - and less strong and less attractive because of what you've been through."

"If surviving misery were a strong and attractive trait then why do people treat as lepers the victims of any catastrophe?"

"Let's face it," says Lindell, "we all have a choice when the chips are down - we can dwell on the misery of our lives or get over it."

"By getting over it I can assume the serenity of a woman without experience of misery," says Lindell, "but I can never assume that my experience of misery makes me stronger or more attractive than her."

"Her river bed is smooth and mine is full of craters - her banks are pristine and mine are badly eroded. She is a different river from me but we both flow - and flowing is what life is all about."

"I couldn't care less whether it's karma or God's will or the stupidity of my parents or my own foolishness that caused my misfortunes," says Lindell.

"Whatever happened in my past is past - it's over - and I flow through life by getting over the bad times - putting in all behind me - and living in the present. That's what survival is all about as far as I'm concerned."

"I don't learn much from my mistakes," laughs Lindell. "I don't see the point of mulling over things and trying to protect myself from things that may or may not happen to me."

"I live life to the full and if I'm hit by a rock or flooded with miseries I get over it."

"I just pick myself up brush myself down and get on with life," laughs Lindell. "And yes we're trying again for another baby - wouldn't you?"