It started with a podcast: The Worst Girl Gang Ever. From the first episode, Bex and Laura offered something different. Instead of pitying platitudes, they served up “This is shit. It’s fucking shit, and we are so sorry that you are going through this” realness.
“That’s certainly what I’d have wanted,” says Bex. “None of this medical jargon, none of this ‘Better luck next time’ or ‘At least you’ve already…’ In fact, no sentences starting with ‘At least…’”
“We’ve concentrated on humour as a recovery tool within the podcast,” she adds. “We have a real laugh, we sing, we chat, and we take the piss out of each other. Just because we’ve been through a devastating loss, we don’t cease to be women, and we don’t cease to find things funny.”
“It’s a privilege to provide any kind of light in someone’s darkness.”
Next came the book The Worst Girl Gang Ever: A Survival Guide for Navigating Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss, which has been an invaluable source of support for many women – one Amazon reviewer described it as “the lighthouse in the storm.” While Bex and Laura have carved a vital space for women to feel all their “ugly feelings”, their own loss is never far from their minds.
When I ask if it’s hard to advocate for others in such a deeply personal space, Laura says, “Well, I don’t think Bex has ever told her story on a podcast and not cried.”
“I know I’m going to cry now,” starts Bex. “A really common misconception is that pregnancy after loss is like a huge relief, and people just go, ‘Oh, she’s over it now. She’s got another baby.’ But it doesn’t erase the pain.”
Bex has used this pain as “fuel to help other people,” but as the podcast and book gained traction, she found herself talking less and less about her loss. “But when I do talk about it, I feel like I’m back there.”
There have been times when The Worst Girl Gang Ever had to wait. “During both of our pregnancies, we had to cancel podcast recordings,” Laura explains. “There was one recording where we were talking to someone who’d lost her twins at 17-18 weeks, and at the time, Bex was 17-18 weeks.” Later on, Laura, then 33 weeks pregnant, was preparing to interview someone who had lost their baby at 34 weeks. “I was like ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine’, but Bex said ‘No, we’re cancelling. It’s too much.”
After Laura had her son in 2019, she had five more losses before welcoming her second son earlier this year. For her, the podcast has enabled her to process trauma. “For a long time, I completely shut down,” she tells me. “I didn’t process anything.”
“But the more you talk about it, and the more you hear other people talking about it, things become easier to tell and to share again. Talking and writing for me have been the best tools for surviving it.”
The Worst Girl Gang Ever is a movement, and it’s grown bigger than Bex and Laura ever imagined. “We’re so proud of the gang and those within it,” says Bex. “It’s such a huge privilege to be able to provide any kind of light in someone’s darkness.”
The Worst Girl Gang Ever: A Survival Guide for Navigating Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss is now available in paperback (HQ, £9.99).
For more from Glamour UK’s Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.