Meghan McCain opens up on having miscarriage after losing dad John McCain
Meghan McCain revealed on Wednesday the heartbreak she felt after suffering a miscarriage the same year she lost her father, Senator John McCain.
“I opened up the summer of last year burying my dad and then I ended it last summer having a miscarriage,” McCain said on “Good Morning America.” “It felt like this very strange circle of life experience that just included a lot of death and a lot of tragedy.”
The 35-year-old added, “I always describe it as the inverse of losing my dad because my dad was like the ending of a beautiful, long-lived life and I grieve that. And the way I grieved having a miscarriage and grieved my daughter was what could have been, and grieving that part, so it just hit me a lot harder than I thought it would.”
In July, McCain said she suffered a miscarriage nearly a year after her dad’s 2018 death. Now, “The View” co-host wants to destigmatize talking about this kind of loss.
“Nobody likes the word miscarriage. I think there’s a lot of shame attached to it, and a lot of sadness, and there’s a lot of societal stigma about it, but I’d rather talk about it than not talk about it,” she said.
The TV star wanted to use her platform for good.
“Oftentimes, as people turn into the show, they probably think that, you know, we’re leading these like, perfect lives and everything’s wonderful and there’s actually a lot of intensity in any human’s life, and I just thought after I had my miscarriage that I should talk about it because everything I go through, I just want people to feel less alone because I felt very, very alone during the entire experience and afterward I just felt like I have this huge platform,” she said. “Why not use it to help other women feel less alone?”
McCain furthered that she feared her experience with pregnancy would impact her work, adding that it’s really difficult being a woman.
“There are all these questions that only women have to answer,” she said. “Women have to make different choices and have different experiences across the board than men do and I think starting with motherhood is the perfect example of why it’s just never going to be an equal experience across the board for man hosting a political show versus a woman.”
The talk show host wants to let women who have had miscarriages know that they are “not alone.”
“It’s hard. It’s just really, really, really hard and I empathize with all women who have gone through it and who may go through it. It’s just horrific,” she said.