I’ve had a handful of miscarriages in my life, and I’ve been public with exactly zero of them. While my inner circle knows a bit here and there, it’s just never something that I felt comfortable sharing publicly. But why? Deep down, I know the real reason I felt so weird about sharing some of the less stellar moments of my life (like miscarriages), and that’s because I just didn’t want to bum people out. But when I became pregnant with my daughter? I couldn’t post to my social media fast enough. I feel like I’m not alone here, right?
One comedian, Jenny Yang, wants to change all this, and she called for change in a very unsubtle, direct way.
In an August 2024 Instagram post, Yang shared a series of photos, holding the ever-popular letter board. Typically, when these kinds of photos come across a social media feed, the letter board bears a message about pregnancy or engagement or some other type of exciting milestone moment.
And Yang’s announcements took a very different spin on that notion.
“TW: miscarriage, ivf talk. SCROLL to see my ‘failures,’” she wrote in the caption on the post. “what if we shared fertility fails as a social ritual? the joys get to be public but not the pain?”
“trying to get pregnant and failing sucks. in IVF they even rub it in that you FAILED because each embryo gets graded — insult to injury i did NOT come to this country to get bad grades!” she joked.
“not talking about the loss has made me feel so alone. i’m tired of carrying all the pain of what my body had to endure since 2020. i’m tired of going through so much hormonally, emotionally., spiritually and financially to WANT to bring a baby into a world that has been so heartbreaking. g-cide, BIRTH RATES are down. Gen Z doesn’t fck. it’s like they’re saying ‘no more humans. we’ve had enough.’ (and only certain humans are allowed to have life)”
Yang noted that her mental health has suffered because of her fertility journey, joking “menty bs in this economy?” before noting that she is over her body autonomy being a talking point for politicians.
“add on to that now THEY want to make not just ab*rtion but IVF illegal????? politicizing CHILDLESS CAT LADIES?????? something broke in me. so this is what i did. i shot these photos. i don’t know if it’ll make you laugh or be offended or what. i don’t even post that much creative content anymore since 2020 because of all this. but here i am.”
“if u relate or think a friend could use the laugh. tag them … and if you commiserate i welcome your story, supportive DMs and comments. no unsolicited advice thank you. ♥️♥️🐣🐣👶👶🙏🏽”
The post went viral with over 10k likes and thousands of comments of support for Yang including One Tree Hill alum, Sophia Bush.
“It’s the sort of battle that we have to talk more about. For some, it blows up your life. Did for me. For others, it makes you know you’re in the right place because you’re held as you hurt. For others, I’m sure there’s so much more. If we talked about it more maybe the blows wouldn’t land so damn hard. Thank you,” Bush wrote.
Comedian and actor Kristen Schaal also commented and said, “I could have used this when I was having a shitshow with fertility. I unfollowed and then stopped instagram all together during it because it was so tough to see a constant celebration on here.”
In a follow-up comment, Yang wrote, “another fun fact: because of logistics and life and being disassociated through most of these IVF cycles i did ALL but ONE egg retrieval without going under anesthesia FUN TRAUMA FOR YEARS TO COME!!!!”
See Yang’s full post here.
