A stranger told me to smile at the gym. He didn’t know I was miscarrying.

Woman with necklace — The author carries a necklace to remember her two miscarriages.
Courtesy of the author

A stranger told me to smile while I was miscarrying.
The moment crystallized a familiar form of entitlement that many women face.
I share this story so my daughters understand their anger is valid.

Unfortunately, I’m sure that as women, we have all had our own “you should smile more” moment. My most memorable one happened when I was 29 and in line to use the restroom at our local gym.

An older man with gray hair, whom I had never seen before, was also waiting to use the bathroom and tried to make eye contact with me. I was in no mood to converse or chit-chat, so I simply stood there, neutrally. I did my best to ignore him. I tried in vain to look everywhere but at him, but he inched closer.

“You know, you really should smile,” he finally uttered. “What could be so bad that you can’t smile?”

I was having a miscarriage

I needed the bathroom to check that I hadn’t bled through my leggings because I was actively miscarrying a pregnancy.

I was at the gym because my miscarriage was not a “quick” one. It happened to be an awful, excruciating, drawn-out loss that took three months from start to finish — it turns out the pregnancy was a non-fallopian ectopic, so the tissue had implanted somewhere in my body that the doctors couldn’t find. Every week, my hCG rose, followed by a large bleeding, followed by the doctors thinking it was “over,” only to have the process repeat itself over and over, until I was finally given medicine to stop the dividing tissue.

Hospital bed — The author had to be monitored for three months during her pregnancy loss.
Courtesy of the author

All that to say, it was one of the most isolating, awful experiences of my life, and going to the gym was my only way of coping. There were moments I was physically well enough to be active, and unexpected moments of bleeding, and some general days of just moderate bleeding, so I was doing everything I could just to function and make it through.

Going to the gym helped me mentally

Going to the gym was part of my daily routine at the time, and physically moving my body helped take my mind off what was happening inside my body, so that’s how I found myself in line to use the bathroom with the man who asked me the dreaded question.

This person literally knew nothing about me at the time. What if I had just found out I had cancer? What if my parent had just died? What if I had a kid in the hospital?

Woman smiling selfie — The author says going to the gym helped her mentally.
Courtesy of the author

All I remember from that moment is the punch-gutted feeling in my stomach, the franticness I felt in trying to avoid his eyes because, the flash of white hot rage in my chest at his words, and the enveloping wave of grief that arose when I remembered the secret I was carrying.

I wish I could tell you that I had told him exactly what was happening to me, but I honestly can’t remember what happened after that.

I honestly can’t remember.

What I do remember is how it felt. And that feeling is what has prompted me to tell that story, over and over, to my own four daughters, who have all already experienced their own versions of the “why don’t you smile more” demands from people.