Lisa Ling Opens Up About Miscarriage

Dec. 10, 2010 — -- Another celebrity is opening up about miscarriage.

Today on ABC's "The View," journalist and former "View" co-host Lisa Ling revealed that she had a miscarriage six months ago. She said the experience floored her.

"I felt more like a failure than I'd felt in a very long time," Ling, 37, said.

Ling was seven weeks pregnant when doctors told her and her husband, oncologist Paul Song, that their baby had no heartbeat. Before she learned that she had a miscarriage, Ling said she had taken a carefree attitude towards pregnancy.

"We actually [hadn't] been trying that long," she said. "I don't know that I took it as seriously as I should have because it happened so fast. But then when I heard the doctor say there was no heartbeat it was like bam, like a knife through the heart."

Though Ling said the tragedy has left her "devastated," she wanted to tell her story to take the stigma out of talking about miscarriages. To that end, she's launched a website, secretsocietyofwomen.com, for women to post the personal stories they might otherwise be afraid to share.

Ling is the latest in a long line of female celebrities speaking up about miscarriage.

In November, British singer Lily Allen and her boyfriend Sam Cooper announced that she had a miscarriage six months into her pregnancy. It was the second miscarriage for Allen. In 2008, she and her then-boyfriend Ed Simmons lost their baby, and she spoke out about that experience.

"It's pretty hard to talk about it, but that Christmas I was at home with my family and Ed, and I wasn't drinking, and I just sat there knowing I was having a baby and I was in absolute bliss," she told the UK's Telegraph newspaper in 2009. "Sitting 'round eating turkey, playing games, watching everybody getting drunk, and being really excited knowing this time next year, I was going to have a baby. And I haven't."

Lisa Ling's Miscarriage

"I guess it wasn't to be," Allen concluded. "That's all I can say. And maybe if I'd stayed pregnant and had the baby then things would have worked out between me and Ed. I don't know. You could drive yourself insane thinking about it. ... I was really depressed because of the miscarriage and I'd kind of lost the plot a bit."

In October, Mariah Carey also revealed that she and her husband, Nick Cannon, suffered a miscarriage two years ago.

"It kind of shook us both and took us into a place that was really dark and difficult," she told "Access Hollywood." "When that happened ... I wasn't able to even talk to anybody about it. That was not easy."

Other female celebrities who've shared their stories about miscarriage include Celine Dion, Kirstie Alley, Christie Brinkley and Tori Amos.