Vesna Zmijanac reveals in memoir: I lost two sons
The folk star recounts losing pregnancies in 1986 and 1987 during concert breaks, and later becoming a mother in October 1989.
Folk star Vesna Zmijanac opens one of the darkest chapters of her life in her memoir Koga ke zamirisat jorgovanite, recounting how, at the height of her fame in the former Yugoslavia, she lost two sons within a short period.
Zmijanac describes the first loss as sudden and devastating. "It was fated that at the height of my greatest fame I would also know the greatest spiritual torments... Our first child, a son, Vlado Jovanović and I lost him in 1986, when I was in the seventh month of pregnancy. A spontaneous abortion happened during the break of the concert in Mladenovac," the singer revealed.
She recounts that the premature labour began behind the stage and continued through the journey to the hospital. "And do not blame me that I cannot describe that scene of the birth, which began suddenly and prematurely and in fact took place in the dressing room behind the stage in the hall in Mladenovac, and lasted during the trip to Belgrade, and even a few minutes in the hospital, not even today can I describe it... Because it is one of those pains that still hurts, an emptiness that still gapes with the same darkness, and whenever I remember it, my womb always clenches," she writes in the book.
Repeated tragedy
Less than a year later Zmijanac suffered a near-identical loss. "Vlado's and my second unborn child, also a son, and also in the seventh month of pregnancy, I lost under approximately the same circumstances in 1987. I asked myself then, and I still sometimes ask myself — what did I do to deserve what happened to me?" she recounted.
She says those years brought long emotional struggle and self-questioning. "I gathered (and I still gather) all my mistakes and sins... I think I have paid enough and that with my pain I answered all those former questions. I paid enough. I think, more precisely, that I paid too dearly. That I overpaid," she writes.
The narrative turns toward relief in 1989: the year brought her notable album with the song that lends the memoir its title, and in October 1989 she became a mother when her daughter Nikolija was born.
Photo: press material from the event
