Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario has taken to Instagram to share a heartbreaking tribute to her friend who lost her baby at seven months pregnant.
The actress, who is currently pregnant with her first child, shared a beautiful tribute to her friend and co-star Lulu Brud and her husband Justin Zsebe who learned that their baby girl didn’t have a heartbeat during a routine ultrasound at seven months.
“I haven’t wanted to post in awhile, because I haven’t quite known what to say and I have been trying to figure out what is the best way to honor my community and in particular the two beautiful souls of [Justin] & [Lulu],” the 32-year-old captioned a photo of the couple.
In the post, Bellisario wrote about how she felt Instagram wasn’t the right place, but at the same time she felt she needed to honour her friends and their loss.
Her post continued:
Instagram isn’t the place but there is also no way to move forward (in my experience on social media) without honoring them both and the loss that they have experienced. There is so much noise here. There is much of life to be celebrated and shared and this platform is a mishmash of advertisements, sales, personal photos and funny memes (and thank god for the funny memes) but I have to be honest these days I haven’t known where I fit into all of it.
Except that when tragedy struck my best friend and her husband, I saw a community, no, an army of people come to their side.
We made phone calls and cooked food and held space and each other and did our best to be there for them during an unimaginable time of sadness and loss.
I want to thank my community for your work and love and I want to thank Justin and Lu. Your love, your marriage and your strength have inspired me, your resilience and kindness have humbled me and I am still standing in awe next to the two of you as you continue to walk through the fire.
There is still so much work to be done, but I am relieved we have the two of you to lead the way.
To my followers, thank you for supporting and respecting their privacy during this time and I want to encourage you to tell your friends and family how much you love them and do what you can to lift one another up today and in all the days to come.
Brud also took to Instagram, sharing the devastating news of their loss.
“On Monday, August 13th, Justin and I went in for our regular 7 month check-up and through a panicked ultrasound quickly learned that our beautiful baby girl had lost her heartbeat,” she captioned a photo from her hospital bed.
“There really aren’t words for this kind of loss, when your life and plans go completely sideways.”
Brud then went on to express her anger at the “atrocious” healthcare system in the US.
“In a time of bottomless grief and pain, most healthcare institutions wouldn’t even have the conversation with us about how to safely pass our child beyond, “Have you considered just laboring?”,” she shared. “Thanks to Justin and our incredible tribe around us for making calls to seemingly every doctor in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, I safely underwent a procedure that would take our daughter safely out of me.”
Her post continued:
This week has certainly taken us to new levels of grief within ourselves that we didn’t even know existed. We are heartbroken and devastated beyond belief, but we have been so held so wonderfully by the tribe around us, who within two seconds of receiving the call were barreling up our stairs and ushering us out of our home….who cooked and broke their backs cleaning our entire home and did the heartbreaking work of disassembling our nursery and resetting our space…who cocooned us in tears and silence and somehow laughter.
For the people holding space and prayers for us, we feel you too. Get yourself a tribe of friends like this. For every way that we feel unlucky, we can count two ways that we feel even luckier. We will learn how to walk and heal again and hopefully find our way back to fertility as soon as we can.
I’m sure there are waves that we can’t even see coming yet that will knock us off our feet all over again, but we are trying to just take it one baby step at a time. Baby Girl Brud-Zsebe, for the seven months that I had the honor of having your heartbeat inside of me, you taught me the deepest levels of love and grief that I’ve ever known. For never getting to share your magical light in the world, the hole you’ve left…
If you or someone you know needs support relating to miscarriage or newborn loss you can visit SANDS or call their 24-hour support line on 1300 072 637.
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