Making connections in Hollywood is hardly uncommon.
But the thread that now binds Hilaria Baldwin and Kimberly Van Der Beek likely would have remained invisible just a few years back. Miscarriages—a word Kimberly's husband James Van Der Beek takes particular umbrage with, noting, "Nobody failed to 'carry', these things sometimes just happen"—are incredibly common and yet infrequently discussed, the idea being that women should keep pregnancies hush-hush until after the first trimester, when the risk of pregnancy loss drops considerably.
So praise be the women, and more than a few men, working to challenge that stigma, bringing together people when they're in need of that human interaction the most. Both Hilaria and Kimberly were quite far along in their pregnancies, when they recently discovered they had miscarried.
Each experienced in carrying to term (Hilaria has Carmen, 6, Rafael, 4, Leo, 3, and Romeo, 18 months, with husband Alec Baldwin; Kimberly and James share Olivia, 9, Joshua, 7, Annabel, 5, Emilia, 3, and Gwendolyn, 17 months) and dealing with the heartbreak of pregnancy loss, it was a struggle they had worked through before.
And yet with each time being just as painful as the one before, or, perhaps, even harder to handle being intimately familiar with all the promise an unborn baby held, they found themselves needing a sounding board. "We connected, and I guess we truly know what's going on for each other," Hilaria, host of the Mom Brain podcast, told Extra. "It's been tough. She's very strong and my heart is with what's going on with them."
Starting to feel okay-ish, she continued, she was glad to have been open about her experience: "Sharing can be hard, but once you share, it feels a little more real and then once it's more real, you can heal...It also made me feel not alone."
While discussions of mortality are never pleasant, eschewing such conversations leaves couples to deal with the heartbreak all on their own, adding a dose of isolation to an already painful, and often guilt-ridden, time. Because despite having no control over the situation, it's hard to quiet the internal voices asking, "Could I have done something to prevent this?"
But, as James points out, this is a circumstance that should have "zero shame", only compassion and support. "The little soul that we expected to welcome into our family took a shortcut to whatever lies beyond," he shared last week during his final episode of Dancing With the Stars. "You never know why these things happen. It's what I've been telling my kids. All you know is that it brings you closer together. It breaks you open. It opens up your heart. It deepens your appreciation. It makes you more human."
His is just one voice in the chorus of celebrities who have become increasingly vocal about their experience with miscarriages in hopes of lessening the burdens others bear. Read their words and remember that you're not alone.