Beverley Mitchell says Jessica Biel was one of the first people she told about her twin miscarriage
"No one should suffer in silence."
It’s a club we all wish didn’t have to exist, but one that Beverley Mitchell—actress and mom of two—became a member of a few months ago.
In a frank blog post, Mitchell says she is among the 1 in 4 women in the sorority of pregnancy loss, having miscarried twins recently.
Mitchell told People her 7th Heaven co-star Jessica Biel was one of the few people she opened up to at first.
“She was one of the first people I called and I’m just very grateful for her friendship and just her being just a frickin’ badass, awesome person.”
Mitchell eventually told Biel—and then the world—about her loss, but at first she felt really alone. She’s speaking out because she wants other women to be able to turn to their support systems the way she turned to Biel.
“I was now part of a group, the unspoken and hidden group who mourn their losses in the shadows. This was the hardest part, suffering in silence,” she wrote on her blog , Growing Up Hollywood .
Being part of a club with such a vast membership and yet feeling alone is what spurred Mitchel to share her pain with the world through her blog. On Thanksgiving Day she opened up about how she and her husband, Michael Cameron, were shocked to hear they were expecting twins. Already parents to son Hutton, 3, and daughter Kenzie, 5, Cameron and Mitchell quickly came to accept—and got excited about—welcoming multiples.
“A few weeks later, our new dream of our growing family came crashing down; we had a miscarriage,” Mitchell wrote on her blog. “This was a shock. Honestly, my first instinct was to say I was fine, and to be honest; I was trying to be. I thought I had to be, for my family, for myself. I had to jump on a plane and go to work being surrounded by babies and kids while I was still miscarrying. That was interesting.”
She goes on to explain that the miscarriage was devastating, and the loneliness made it even harder.
“I never really considered that I would miscarry being that I had already had two healthy pregnancies. This was my misconception, you see, I didn’t know much about miscarriages and I didn’t know many people who had miscarried, or so I thought,” she wrote.
“It wasn’t until I started sharing our loss that I found out many people I knew shared the same scars,” she explains, adding that the hardest part of losing the pregnancy was having to suffer in silence.
“Every time I shared what we were going through I made people uncomfortable, no one ever knows what to say, and to be honest, there is nothing to say.”
This is why some experts have called pregnancy loss a “disenfranchised grief” because the parents’ loss isn’t talked about or a recognized by the greater society, but it is time that we recognize it.
By naming her pain, Mitchell is helping change society for the mothers who come after her.
“No one should suffer in silence. To speak up and share your wounds, to allow them the opportunity to heal. Let’s remove the stigma, miscarriages happen, they are nothing to be ashamed of,” Mitchell says.
She says when she told Biel, her 7th Heaven sister was “was very supportive through everything and was always checking in on me.”
Mitchell says that she still has dreams of growing her family, but feels thankful, grateful and blessed when she looks at her children.
We’re thankful and grateful to Beverley for speaking out about her loss and inspiring others to do the same.
[Originally published November 23, updated with to include new quotes December 3, 2018]
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