Tony-Winner Laura Benanti Publishes Extremely Personal Op-Ed

This morning, Tony-winning star of stage and screen Laura Benanti published an extremely personal op-ed in Huffington Post Women. In the piece, Benanti discusses the difficult situation surrounding her miscarriage. You can read the entire article here.

In the article, she said, "When my fiancé, Patrick, and I first saw and heard our little peanut's heartbeat, a wave of love washed over me that I had not known was possible. Patrick and I loved each other so much that we created a person together, and that person was living inside my body. I felt like I was experiencing a miracle."

However, soon after, the couple lost the baby, and Benanti realized how common miscarriages were and wondered why they weren't discussed more commonly. In her typical style, the actress asks a difficult question with humor and grace, discribing miscarriages as "The Voldemort of Women's Health Issues."

"If one says the word 'miscarriage' out loud, does that feed its evil powers?" she asks in the article. "Do we fear that communing over this type of loss only makes it grow stronger?"

She goes on to discuss the pain that she felt and how it impacted her life, and how she hopes that not only the discussion about miscarriages changes, but that it, in fact, begins.

"It seems to me that we, as a culture, haven't quite learned how to broach this painful subject," she wrote. "My hope is that talking about it in an open forum can be healing in some small way. Sometimes it can be helpful to know that someone out there has felt the same pain as you, and that they are holding you in their heart."

You can read Benanti's entire op-ed on HuffPo Women here.

Benanti won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical opposite Patti LuPone in the 2008 revival of GYPSY. She was also nominated for SWING, INTO THE WOODS, and WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. Benanti has also been a regular presence on television starring on THE PLAYBOY CLUB, GO ON, LAW & ORDER: SVU, ROYAL PAINS, ELI STONE, NASHVILLE, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC LIVE!. She will play Alura Zor-El, the title character's birth-mother, on CBS' new show SUPERGIRL this fall.