Staying strong. James Van Der Beek said that learning to find “grace” is what helped him through his wife Kimberly Van Der Beek’s 2019 miscarriage.
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James, 43, and Kimberly, 38, lost what would have been their sixth child last November. After receiving encouragement from his wife, the Dawson’s Creek alum proceeded to perform on Dancing With the Stars days later alongside pro Emma Slater. In a shocking decision by judges, the pair were eliminated from the competition.
“Been feeling my way around how to talk about this moment for some time, now … one year ago today. This was less than 48 hours after witnessing an 18-week #pregnancyloss in our shower and rushing @vanderkimberly to the hospital,” he wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, November 18, alongside a pic of himself hugging Slater, 31, following their elimination. “12 hours after missing all of camera blocking thinking I wouldn’t dance, but then changing my mind after Kim said, ‘I’m not done watching you dance, I want to see that samba again in the Finals next week.’”
The Varsity Blues stars continued, “This was ½ an hour after the judges pretended to not know what was going on with me after I tried to fake my way through a cha-cha with a broken heart, and just moments after they’d chosen to send a different contestant to the finals, who — along with everyone else in the room — was shocked at their decision and tried to give me her spot live on air (@allybrooke is an angel ❤️ ). I point out all of this only to say that at perhaps any other stage in life, my demeanor in this moment would not have been so serene. I would’ve felt injustice, frustration, anger, pain … but what came over me as I comforted my partner and told Ally [Brooke] no way was I taking her spot … was grace.”
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James explained that he “had not been fully in touch” with that level of grace prior to losing his son, whom the couple named John. The Texas Rangers actor added that he believed this was his son’s “gift” to him.
“That was one of the things his soul came here to unlock: He gave me access to grace,” he said. “And I share this because we’re all going through something — and for many of us it’s much more dire than a celebrity dance show — but the mystics talk about the cure being IN the disease … and whether or not that’s true in every situation, on behalf of the son I’ll only ever hold in my heart … I’d like to invite us all to the possibility that it just might be.”
The former Fifth Harmony member, 27, told Us Weekly and other reporters last November that it “wasn’t right” for James to be eliminated after experiencing a family tragedy. “Being human and seeing that he’s been through one of the worst things in life … I felt like he had the strength to be here today, and that in itself is unbelievable and that took immense strength from him,” she said at the time.
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James and Kimberly tied the knot in 2010. Together, they share five children: Olivia, 10, Joshua, 8, Annabel, 6, Emilia, 4, and Gwendolyn, 2.
In June, the Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 alum revealed via Instagram that his wife suffered a fifth miscarriage. The pair chose to keep the baby news to themselves, but he said that the misfortune occurred “once again, 17 weeks in.”
Kimberly recently opened up about how her journey with pregnancy loss has impacted her emotionally. “I understand that I am very blessed to be able to birth five children. I’ve also had five miscarriages, two of which were really hard experiences,” she said on “The Make Down” podcast last month. “It has changed my day-to-day quite a bit, because I’m in very much a healing mode right now.”
On the one-year anniversary of her 2019 miscarriage, Kimberly called for her Instagram followers to give blood because her “life was saved by blood donors” during her last two pregnancy losses.
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