Canadian Olympian Sarah Wells is opening up about her recent pregnancy loss. "I'm going to share something that some people may view as oversharing," Wells wrote via Instagram on Friday, January 23, adding a trigger warning to the top of her post. "I'm not sharing for sympathy, but to help normalize something that is far more common than we realize, and to remind us that we truly never know what someone might be carrying behind the scenes." She continued, "A secret we have been holding for a few weeks was that I was pregnant. We had been trying for a few months, so when it worked this time, we were excited and hopeful. Unfortunately, while traveling to an event last weekend I started to experience pain and signs that something might not be right. I started to break down on the plane. I felt like my heart knew right away that something was happening and I was kind of scared to be suspended in the air while this was going on." The Olympian, who reached the semi finals while competing in the 2012 London Games, went on to detail her experience in a carousel of images. She urged her followers to "please continue reading there." Stars Who Struggled to Conceive Children Share Their Fertility Issues "When I landed I had to make the incredibly difficult decision to tell the client that I wouldn't be able to make it to the event because I needed to go to the emergency room," she continued in the first slide, acknowledging that it "sounds silly that it was a difficult decision, but I genuinely debated if I should still go." "Luckily I knew a speaker who was local to the event and I called her up and asked if she was able to step in," she continued. "Without even thinking twice, Jess Janzen dropped everything and filled in. I truly can't thank Jess enough." The athlete then detailed her seven-hour emergency room stay, in which she says she underwent scans and had blood work before she was "told it was likely I was miscarrying." "Receiving that news while in a different city and away from my person, was hard. I will say that I am very grateful for my friend Julie who showed up at the hospital despite my insistence that I'd be fine. She stayed with me and was there as I got the results. A true act of friendship," she added. "And then came the waiting. After leaving the hospital I checked into a hotel, knowing what was likely ahead. Only a few hours later my body began the process and I started to lose the pregnancy. I didn't really know how to feel, and I definitely didn't feel like myself. In my head I knew I was fine, but the drastic plummet in hormones also made me feel like I was on a rollercoaster of crying." View this post on Instagram Wells then went on to detail her miscarriage experience, including where she was when her body continued to expel the pregnancy. "And one thing that isn't really talked about is that when you start losing a pregnancy, it's not all in one go. It's something your body does for as long as it needs," she said. "So as the hours continued into the next day, I continued to lose the pregnancy...alone. In a hotel bathroom, and in the airport, and in a very unglamorous airplane bathroom. (Again, sorry if this is over sharing.) That made it hard, cause once I knew this wasn't a viable pregnancy, I just wanted it to be done. To close the chapter, but I couldn't." The athlete said that while she was miscarrying, she "wanted to crumble" but ultimately felt that she "couldn't" while she moved "through the world." "So instead, every interaction I had during that time, I felt like an imposter," she continued. "I didn't want to break down in front of the Uber driver who took me to the hotel, or the hotel front desk attendant who checked me into my room, or the person who served me breakfast in the morning. I didn't want to explain the flood of emotions the person sitting next [to] me on the plane, or the hormone waves moving through my body. So instead, I smiled. I joked about the weather. I showed up as someone I didn't quite feel like in that moment." Once she returned home, Wells said that despite having the support of the people around her - including her husband, Blake Parsons - she "still felt alone with my body." (Wells and Parsons, who married in July 2022, share a daughter, Everleigh.) Sarah Herron: Postpartum Journey Amid Pregnancy Loss Is 'Haunting Reminder' "Though Blake makes me feel very loved and supported, he ultimately cannot understand what my body is feeling," she added. "And the part that still stops me is how common this experience actually is. Miscarriage is incredibly common. We're getting better at talking about it, but I believe it happens far more often than we openly share." According to the Mayo Clinic, as many as one in four pregnancies will end in a miscarriage, though studies suggest the number to be much higher as many people miscarry without ever knowing they were pregnant. Wells shared that she is using her pregnancy loss as a reminder that no matter how someone appears