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Women aren’t broken if they can’t have children.

I felt as if someone had raided my body and pummeled my heart until it bled and broke. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.

Hell, it hurt to live.

I couldn’t fathom what had just happened. Mere hours ago, there had been a living being inside of me. I’d heard her heartbeat. I’d seen her on the ultrasound. I’d even felt her kick as she shuffled within my womb. I’d fantasized about her beautiful bright eyes, her smile, her chortle, the way she’d feel in my arms when I first held her, and the incredible and sacred mission of raising her.

The notion of having a child after trying so hard was both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. Every time I traced my hands across my belly, an indescribable wave of compassion, delight, and longing flooded through my body, warming me with the certainty that I’d do everything in my power to ensure a good life for her.

And now? Now there was emptiness. Abysmal loss. Anger. Maddening sadness. Despair.

Hydrocephalus, the doctor explained to me and my husband, Claude. In hydrocephalus, the build-up of CSF — the body fluid found in the brain — can raise the pressure inside the skull, which squashes the surrounding brain tissues. This can cause the head to steadily grow in size… convulsions… brain damage… death. He strongly advised us to get an abortion. I felt I had no choice; I did.

I caressed my belly as if my hands could magically conjure her back inside, back to life, back to how we were paired up so perfectly for the past nineteen weeks.

As a woman and as an individual, however, statistics did nothing to comfort me in my time of darkness. I stayed in the hospital overnight, my pillow clutched to my face to muffle my moans as I grieved. My husband had gone home to care for our pets; the hospital staff did their best to comfort me, bringing me a consolation card with our dead child’s footprints. This did nothing to stem the tears.

For that hospital, I was one more statistic. 10–25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage; I was part of the unlucky 1% that suffered through 3 or more consecutive first trimester miscarriages. With three prior miscarriages under my belt, my risk for another miscarriage was at 43% (another statistic that would come true months later).

Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this? How can I possibly cope?

I hated God for punishing me. I hated my body for betraying me. Throughout my childhood, I’d been haunted by the demons of abuse, alcoholism, and absence. My mother had nine children naturally without even trying and I couldn’t have just one. Throughout much of my adulthood, I’d battled through toxic relationships, grand mal epilepsy, and depression. I wept a river that night, unable to come to terms with the reality.

The grief of losing a child — no matter the age, no matter the cause — can not be contained in words. When an unborn child dies within you, usually without a defined reason, a piece of you seems to die with them. What you face in the wake of their absence is unique to you. There is no “right” or “rational” way to cope with a miscarriage, and nobody deserves to tell you otherwise.

The pain is real and raw. The loss is physical, emotional, and it will scar you. The shock strikes like an electric volt. A miscarriage jars you from delight to devastation in no time. The sense of emptiness and helplessness consumes you, and this may be the most frightening of all. Humans are hardwired to instinctively fear that which we cannot control and miscarriages are just that, uncontrollable.

We must give ourselves time to grieve, accept, and heal from our loss. Therapy may be necessary, I know it was for me.

In my journey, amidst the nightmare of it all, I was lucky to have an incredibly supportive partner by my side who respected my needs and feelings, and who loved me for all I was. Each miscarriage taught me how strong I could be. Claude and I poured our love and purpose into a philanthropic endeavor we co-founded, Elevate Foundation, which has enabled us to make a difference in young people’s lives. In a way, these are the children we never had.

Women aren’t broken if they can’t have children. We don’t have to conform to society’s idea of what a woman should be. We don’t have to be ashamed of being childless — or childfree, for that matter — whether it’s a matter of personal choice or by fate. It’s important to be compassionate to each other, and above all, to ourselves.

August marks Black Philanthropy Month across the nation and to celebrate, we’re highlighting Elevate Foundation, a dynamic foundation formed between husband and wife team Constance and Claude Jones to, as they say,“empower and help young people live a richer, more equitable and peaceful life.”

Based in San Diego, they have raised money and scholarships for a variety of non profits including Girls Rising STEAM, Girls on the Run, Feeding San Diego, Face Foundation, Computers to Kids, Just in Time Foster Youth, Humble Designs and Ronald McDonald House Charities.

We caught up with the Jones recently to talk about their motivation behind giving.

TNJ.com: What was the inspiration behind launching Elevate Foundation?

Constance: My husband Claude and I are two people in love who really wanted to grow a family of our own. I have had fertility issues resulting in 5 miscarriages.  In order to come out on the other side of heartbreak, we had to look far and wide for something that could help us make sense of the sadness.

As abundant as our society is in so many areas, there is still lacking all around us. During life’s challenges, we were fortunate to have people in our lives who provided opportunities and resources that made a difference for us.

Claude and I created Elevate Foundation simply because we have a passion to give back to our community. We are not a non profit, so our donations go to charitable non profits that are aligned with our values. Our mission is to rebuild communities through our acts of work and uplift and inspire others to do the same. Our focus is supporting the underserved youth of color and provide them with resources and opportunities.

TNJ.com: Who have you partnered with while on your mission to give back?

Constance: To date, we have partnered with Detour, Humble Designs, Girls Rising, Treobytes, Girls on The Run, Feeding San Diego, Salvation Army, North County Community Resource Group, and many more. The strength of our relationships with established non profits help us to connect with our ‘special families’–families struggling with basic needs. Recently, we donated school supplies and laptops to 20 girls at Detour, with our support children at Treobytes, a San Diego based technology hub learned how to code over the summer.

Everything we do impacts the entire family and their future. We consider ourselves to be the helping hand they need to get to the next step in life. We are all about impact: what is going to have the biggest impact in their lives?

TNJ.com: How did you develop your unique approach to giving back?

Claude: Giving to those in need was nothing new to us; we always paid our tithes at church, but didn’t exactly know where our money was being spent. We often felt like we were giving to a black box instead of choosing the causes we felt strongly about and wanted to support. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands and create our own foundation to do just that. Four years later, we have given $80,000 to multiple organizations that we feel align with our goals– to rebuild, uplift and inspire. 

TNJ.com: What about your work do you find most gratifying?

Claude: It’s one thing to be the recipient of benevolence, but we want others to join in and give back as well. There are so many benefits to giving including a sense of empowerment, pride and accomplishment. We set up volunteer events throughout the year and when someone we have helped shows up to support, they become “elevators” themselves, lifting others up; it’s amazing. This speaks to our need to inspire others. At Elevate Foundation, we want our giving to create a lasting imprint that inspires others to give of themselves in some form. When you share with joy, selflessness and love, the benefits are endless.  Parties on both ends will forever be changed and, ultimately, be enriched for paying the love forward.

TNJ.com: What were you doing before the launch of Elevate?

Constance: We volunteered at our local Food Bank and supported community initiatives at the Salvation Army and Epilepsy Foundation. Now, we make it a requirement for each non profit we work with to offer us an opportunity to pitch in. We volunteer and experience the blessings of our donations being used for the purpose in which they were giving. We’ve done the same with Ronald McDonald House. We donated funds, gathered our volunteers, did meal prep, cooked, served and cleaned. We saw our funding at work and were part of the process.

TNJ.com: Any short to long term goals Elevate Foundation is working on?

Constance: We have a few more events happening in 2019 including working with Feed San Diego and Ronald McDonald House. I am also exploring synergies with Empty Cradle, an organization that supports women who have experienced pregnancy and/ or infant loss.

For the long term, our main goal is to continue to help others and increase the number of our volunteers; the more we have join us, the more people we can help. We will be focusing on recruiting future “elevators,” a term we use for our volunteer staff. 

Additionally, I am stepping from behind the scenes to go out into the community more to discuss the power of giving. I think many folks think money is the only way to give. There are so many facets of giving–kindness, ideas, advice, skills, attention, hope, the list is much longer than money. Giving helps improve the lives of others and it affects our own life with amazing benefits including a sense of connection; it also helps to build professional networks.

(Black Philanthropy Month is a celebration of African-descent giving. Held annually in August, it was founded in 2011 by Dr. Jackie Copeland-Carson and the Pan-African Women’s Philanthropy Network.)