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When you think of miscarriage, what images typically come to mind?

Some might think of a woman sobbing uncontrollably as her OB-GYN gives her the news, or maybe a married, 30-something couple grieving after desperately trying to conceive. No matter what images you conjure up, I’m guessing the people in it are probably fully-fledged adults, right?

But when I think of miscarriage, I think of myself three years ago: a single, sexually-inexperienced 19-year-old girl bleeding in a college dorm bathroom, debating whether it was bad enough to go to the emergency room.

While the risk of miscarriage increases as you age, young people miscarry more than you might think—we just rarely hear about it.

“It’s remarkable that there’s been very few studies of people under 18 and miscarriage; there tends to be more studies about miscarriage in older individuals,” said Dr. Anne-Marie Amies Oelschlager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The first time I took the pregnancy test, I questioned the result. The second line on the test was faint, and plus, we had used multiple forms of protection—what were the odds?

But none of that mattered: A positive result is a positive result. Almost as soon as I slipped out of my denial and started thinking about next steps, it happened.

My roommate and I were doing our makeup in front of the mirror in our dorm room when I suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the abdomen. The sharp, twisting pain almost knocked the wind out of me, and I clutched my belly. Then I felt the dripping.

I waddled to the bathroom and saw the blood. It was everywhere. No amount of tampons or pads could seem to contain it for long enough.

I knew what was happening but didn’t want to admit it to myself—I was having a miscarriage.

In the long run, this was probably a good thing. It wasn’t serious enough that I was medically in danger, and dropping out of college to raise a child was not part of the plan. I knew all of this. But still, for some reason, I couldn’t help but feel sad.

It turns out it’s common for people who miscarry to feel this sadness, even if the pregnancy was unplanned and undesired. I hyper fixated on what my life could have been had I not miscarried, and I stressed over the possibility of miscarrying again one day when I actually do want kids. I was mad at my own body because I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen to people my age. And most of all, I was mad at myself for being upset about it. I was not ready to be a parent, and I did not want to be pregnant. Yet, I still grieved.

“Even if it was an unintended pregnancy and an undesired pre pregnancy, miscarriages can still cause grief and suffering,” Amies Oelschlager said. “I think that people can sometimes underestimate the loss and the grief that can go along with it in adolescents.”

I didn’t quite know who or where to turn to. As much as I Googled, all the resources I could find were clearly meant for adults and didn’t take into account the complexities that come with miscarrying so young. In fact, when reaching out to hospitals and other medical institutions for this story, many replied that they did not have anyone on staff with expertise in this subject. And while I knew my family would have been supportive, I still felt the weight of the stigmas surrounding being a sexually active teenage girl.

Amies Oelschlager said this stigma, along with the fact that a teenager’s sexual partner is less likely to be receptive, often contributes to teens being unable to find help.

“They have to talk about the pregnancy, the loss, but also then the fact that they were sexually active,” she said. “And you know, the younger you are, the less likely that partner is going to be in your life for the duration, and the less likely your partner is going to be mature about it.”

My friends who knew what happened tried their best to comfort me. There were a lot of sentiments like, “this was for better,” and “at least you don’t have to think about it anymore.” But I did think about it. And while those things may have been true, it did not help numb the pain. For some reason, even though my pregnancy was unplanned and undesired, I still had this overwhelming sensation of grief.

I don’t blame my friends for not knowing what to say—I instead blame what we have been conditioned to think about miscarriage and teen pregnancy. I can’t help but wonder what my experience would have been like had teen miscarriage been talked about in our high school sex ed classes, the media and in medical settings.

“A lot of people in their adolescent years are not thinking about pregnancy at all, and a pregnancy might happen, and it might make them think more carefully about what they would want in the future, even if they know they don’t want it right now,” Amies Oelschlager said. “So I just encourage people to be supportive and be kind and gentle.”

The unfortunate truth is that most teens are not going to research miscarriage on their own unless it has affected them or someone they know, so we have to meet them where they are. We should focus on talking about miscarriage in the classroom just as much as we focus on putting condoms on cucumbers. We’re taught in sex ed and by mainstream media that teen pregnancy only has three outcomes: abortion, adoption, or parenthood. But there’s actually a fourth possibility, and we aren’t taught how to deal with it.

I know, now, that this wasn’t my fault, and that it’s okay to grieve and have complex emotions. But 19-year-old me, the first in my circle of friends to experience something like this, was clueless.

So now, if I feel safe, I try to talk about my experience in as many spaces as I can in the hope that that the next teen who’s the first among their friends to miscarry knows they are not alone, nothing is their fault, and that one day, it will all be okay.