Editor’s Note: This is the first part in a two-part series. To read Part 2, click here.

When Suffering Becomes a Place of Meaning: How the Sacraments Ground Women Walking Through Miscarriage and Infertility

“It is not by fleeing from suffering that we are healed; it is rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.”
— Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi

There are seasons in life that change us forever. Miscarriage and infertility are among them.

They do more than interrupt our plans. They can shake our identity, alter how we see our bodies, and leave us wondering where we belong. You wake up in the same body, yet it no longer feels familiar. 

Over time, you learn to adapt. You find the right words to answer difficult questions. You avoid certain conversations. From the outside, life seems to go on. Inside, however, you may be asking questions you never expected:

Why do I feel like an outsider in my own life?

Who am I if motherhood is no longer unfolding the way I imagined?

These are not simply emotional questions. They are questions of identity.

The Hidden Battle

For many women, miscarriage and infertility become more than a medical diagnosis or a painful loss. They become an identity struggle.

Many of us quietly carry the expectation: “If I am a wife, then I should become a mother.”

When that expectation is disrupted, it can feel as though something inside us has fractured. We begin comparing ourselves with other women and measuring our worth by what our bodies can or cannot do.

I know this struggle well. After my miscarriage, I wanted to feel like every other woman. Instead, I often felt like I was living in a foreign land — trying to fit into a life that no longer felt like my own.

Looking back, I realized my deepest struggle wasn’t simply about becoming a mother.

It was about remembering who I was.

Where the Christian Story Begins

When we suffer, our first instinct is often to escape the pain, numb it, or control it through a search for quick answers.

Yet Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that healing comes not by fleeing suffering, but by finding meaning through union with Christ. Those words changed the way I looked at my own journey.

Instead of asking only, “How do I make this pain go away?”, I slowly began asking, “Where are You, Jesus, in this pain?” That question led me to the sacraments.

I had always known them as gifts of grace. During my infertility journey, I came to see them as something even more personal: places where the Risen Christ met me in the middle of my grief.

When Death Enters Our Story

Miscarriage and infertility introduce us to many kinds of death. The death of a child. The death of dreams. The death of certainty. The death of the future we imagined.

Sometimes, it even feels like the death of the woman we thought we would become.

These losses run deep. They touch not only our emotions but also our sense of identity and belonging.

Yet at the heart of Christianity is the proclamation that death never has the final word.

Through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Christ entered suffering and transformed it from within. Again and again, He brings life where death seems to reign.

This is the hope the sacraments continually place before us.

The Sacraments: Where Resurrection Meets Us

The sacraments did not erase my grief. They did not promise me a child. They did not answer every question. But they did something deeper. They reminded me who I was. They nourished me when I was weary. They strengthened my marriage. They offered mercy when my heart was weighed down by guilt and disappointment. Little by little, they anchored me in Christ instead of in my circumstances.

As St. Paul writes: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

That newness of life often begins quietly. One prayer at a time. One Communion at a time.

One confession at a time. One act of trust at a time.

In Thursday’s post, we’ll explore how each sacrament speaks to a different wound caused by miscarriage and infertility — and how each one becomes a reminder that because Christ is risen, death never has the final word.

Margalita Poletunow is a Licensed Professional Counselor and coach specializing in grief, maternal mental health, and perinatal loss. She provides compassionate, faith-integrated support to women navigating miscarriage, postpartum challenges, and the journey toward healing. Through a blend of clinical insight and spiritual care, she helps women process grief, restore hope, and rediscover meaning in their story. She currently lives in Florida with her husband, Mark; they are parents to one child in heaven and twin daughters through adoption.