My best friend, Keri, and I one month after my first pregnancy loss in 2015 at a memorial walk for lost babies to raise funds for our local March of Dimes. We walked for Bayley that day.

Losing a baby to miscarriage makes you feel so very alone.

In many cases, besides your spouse and a few close friends, not many people know that you have even experienced such a devastating, heartbreaking loss. The world keeps moving, bills keep adding up and you have to muddle through your grief with all the courage you can muster.

However, hidden beneath the tears, the sadness and the feelings of shame, are those that take some of the burden off of our minds and our hearts.

They stop by with casseroles and tell you that they, too, lost a baby in 1980, but never told anyone about it until today.

They sit with you on your front porch as you cry into another tissue, patting you on the back between gut-wrenching sobs that you don't think you'll ever be able to stifle.

The accompany you to memorial walks that support other mothers that have lost babies too soon, as you walk in the memory of your own sweet little one.

They message you saying "me too," on social media after you finally find the courage to open up about your loss, six months after the fact, because not talking about it helps no one.

They gift you tiny sleeping angel statues and carve pumpkins with your baby's name in them, just to show you how much they care and how much your baby's life meant to them, too.

They show you excerpts in books they recently read about Heaven, and how they believe your baby is there now, too.

They talk to us every month or so after our loss, reassuring us that we will get through this, just as they have a year or so prior.

Mostly, they listen. They listen to you talk about how you feel so broken inside. They listen to you try to rationalize your own grief for a person you never even got to meet, but loved so very much. They listen to you scheme up ideas of things you want to do to remember them. They listen to your worries as you begin the process of trying again, more scared than you've ever been.

They are your favorite cousin from childhood.

They are your great-aunt, the sister of your beloved grandmother.

They are your husband's co-worker.

They are your aunts.

They are your best friend from elementary school.

They are your mom.

They are your dad.

They are your doctor.

They are your best friend.

They are the ones that pick up miscarriage mamas, by the elbows and by the heart, and lift us up. They see the amount of pain we are in. They see the devastating loss in our eyes, and they feel it, too, because our babies would've been their nephew, cousin or grandson. They hold us as we weep on our beds. They come with us when we get tattoos for our babies. They never forget what would have been her birthday, even years after she has gone.

The friends that walk with us through miscarriage are the heroes of this story. They are the ones that parents, deep in the dark hollow of grief and despair, will remember years later.

We thank you. We may not be able to say it at the time, but know that your kind words, your sweet actions and your listening ear, meant more than we can ever tell you.

~ By: Britt LeBoeuf of theseboysofmine.com