Pieces from The Mighty

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

I Want My Yellow Onion, I Want What’s Fair

Warning: This post contains This Is Us spoilers



Last night I tuned into This Is Us where I proceeded to bawl my eyes out as we watched Kate go through something that 1 in 4 women go through- a miscarriage (HopeExchange.com). At the end of the previous week we were given a glimpse of what this week’s episode would be about. I thought that I was mentally prepared to watch this episode, but boy was I wrong. This episode was more emotional than I had prepared myself for. The whole show hit home from the first few minutes when the ER doctor told Kate that although she should expect bleeding, there was no reason why she couldn’t go back to living her life, and that the good news was that since they were able to get pregnant once, that they could try again in four weeks. So many of us experience comments like these during some of the hardest days of our lives.

When we first learned about Kate’s pregnancy, she was scared to be excited about it because she was afraid that it wasn’t really going to happen. But then we watched as she did get excited about her baby. She was doing everything right, but in the end,  she still lost her baby.


One of the  most emotional moments of the episode for me was when Rebecca opened up about her own loss with Kate. Kate and Rebecca haven't always had the best relationship, but they are now part of the same club which is a club that no woman wants to be part of. Although their losses were different, it didn't matter. When Kate questioned how she could be this sad even though she hadn’t even met her baby or even knew if it was a boy or a girl. Rebecca didn’t try to compare their losses, but instead she told her that she understood because she had never held Kyle.  When you lose a baby, whether it is an early loss, a late loss, or a stillbirth, you still lose a baby. You are losing all of the hopes and dreams that you had for that baby. Rebecca told Kate about a time in the grocery store when the babies were still very little and her loss was still very raw. She had been holding her grief in, but that day it all came out. As I watched this part of the episode I related to it so deeply it that it hurt.

In the store Rebecca was breaking down over a bag of yellow onions. When she turned her back for a moment, they were taken by someone else.

“I want my yellow onion”

“I want what I came for, I want my yellow onion”

“It's not fair that I have to sit here and go without my yellow onion”

“I've been planning this dish for a whole week”

Those are just a few of the quotes from Rebecca at the store, but if you replace the word baby with yellow onion, you see quotes that run through every loss mom's head at some point.

I want my baby

I want what I came for, I want my baby

It's not fair that I have to go without my baby

I've been planning his life since I found out I was pregnant

So far, This Is Us has done a wonderful job at accurately depicting the pain of child loss. I might have bawled my way through this episode,but I was satisfied with the way in which they portrayed this devastating event.  It is my hope that they continue to tackle this difficult subject that personally touches so many.