Actress Ashley Williams broke her silence about a miscarriage she suffered in the middle of a New York grocery store.
The 37-year-old star of “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Jim Gaffigan Show” shared an essay on Medium in hopes of helping others deal with a taboo subject.
Williams, who has a 23-month-old son Gus, writes that she was in a Wholefoods in Manhattan when she first noticed that she was bleeding heavily.
“I had an instinct that the cramps I had been feeling all morning were miraculous evidence of new life,” Williams remembers. “… Then I felt something on my leg. A heavy, dark, and slow stream of blood made its way down my left inner thigh.”
Williams, who was eight weeks pregnant at the time, says that she was shocked to discover miscarriages are commonplace with one in four women her age experiencing them.
“If 25 percent of my peers are currently experiencing miscarriages right alongside me, why wasn’t I prepared?” she asks. “Why don’t we talk about it? Why was I feeling embarrassed, broken, like a walking wound? I live on the Upper West Side, the new stroller capital of Manhattan. How many other women have experienced a miscarriage in that very same Whole Foods?”
Williams who is married to producer Neal Dodson says that she gave birth to her son naturally at home an experience that made her feel powerful. But the miscarriage “decimated my confidence.”
She fears that the silence surrounding the subject is making women feel like failures an suggests being open about it, even telling your Starbucks barista, “that you need an extra shot because you just had a miscarriage.”
The essay was tweeted out on the star’s account inviting other women to share their stories. Her sister, author and actress Kim Williams-Paisley praised her sibling’s honesty writing on social media: “Beyond proud of my sis for bravely sharing the story of her miscarriage. She’s my hero.”
Williams is not the only high profile person to come forward on the subject.
In 2015 Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that his wife Priscilla was pregnant after suffering three miscarriages.