I learned years ago as a mother that I didn’t have all the answers, but I thought that I could at least help my children through their problems as they arose. I have done pretty well in aiming them in the right direction if I was stumped. But my daughter’s miscarriage not only left me wordless, it made me feel like a failure as a mother. I couldn’t provide the answers that would help my daughter. I could only hug her and tell her that everything would be okay.

I had an appointment with my gynecologist a week after the miscarriage. My long-time doctor—he delivered all three of my children—and friend said that “miscarriage” was a misnomer for referring to what is no longer a “viable” pregnancy.

“Unless a woman does something extremely harmful to her body, which is almost never the case, the pregnancy ends because it wasn’t viable from the very beginning,” he said. (He used some big medical terms, but this is the gist of what he said.) “It is almost never the woman’s fault. It has nothing to do with anything the woman did, but everything to do with the moment the egg and sperm join to become fertilized.” He added that it’s as simple, and as complex, as saying “it didn’t take.”

This, he said, is why he would like the word “miscarriage” erased from the language. “At such an emotionally hard time, a woman doesn’t need to feel that her actions—that she did something wrong—resulted in the end to the pregnancy.”

I shared this information with my daughter, who by this time had accepted that “it wasn’t meant to be.” She and her husband, people of faith, believed that God, in his wisdom, had postponed the joy of having a second child because it wasn’t the right time. “We’ll have other children,” she said with joy on her face. “For now we’ll enjoy our blessing of Charlotte.” (Their precious first child just celebrated her first birthday.)

I learned so much because of this “miscarriage.” I learned the medical facts behind this event, but, more importantly, I learned what strength my daughter and the man she married have. I don’t have to worry about always having the right words for them. They will be able to handle life’s challenges. For a mother, this is a great discovery!