Laura Benanti talks about her pregnancy loss.
In a Instagram message shared on Wednesday, Benanti revealed she suffered a miscarriage during a recent performance.
“On Monday, April 3, I was on stage in front of 2,000 people while having a miscarriage,” she captioned a photo of her on stage. “I knew it was happening. It started slowly the night before.”
Benanti kept saying that because it wasn’t her first miscarriage, she was “no stranger to the pain and emptiness of losing a pregnancy.” “It’s a path I’ve walked before, holding hands with my husband.” (In 2015, Benanti wrote an essay for the Huffington Post in which she reflected on a previous miscarriage, referring to miscarriage as the “Voldemort of women’s issues”.)
“But this time we walked past some of the nicest, most loving people I’ll ever have the honor of sharing space with,” she added.
She then thanked the audience for their “mercy” and for “lifting me out of my grief for that holy hour.” She also thanked her band for “unconditionally” holding her in their hearts, as well as the crew “for working so hard to make me as comfortable as possible” and her “friends and fellow artists for rallying around me and so graciously accommodated my changing needs. Thank you to the extraordinary producers and their teams who were able to provide a masterclass on how to handle a personal emergency with empathy and compassion.”
The Tony Award-winning actress also took a moment to remember the “little soul for choosing me as your home, even for a little while.” She continued, “Patrick and I are so thankful for the family we have and the miracle of our two little girls. One worn by me and one worn by an angel-on-earth.” Last year Benanti had shared on Instagram that she and her husband welcomed their second daughter through a surrogate mother.
After the loss, Benanti says that while she and husband Patrick Brown are “heartbroken”, they will “get through this together as we, and so many others, have done before”.
Benanti explained that she decided not to share her loss as a means to “gain sympathy or attention, but to remind the many people and families who have and will suffer in this way that this kind of loss is not a shame.”
“That you are not alone. And to remind myself too,” she wrote at the end of her post.
