As Parijat shares in Pregnancy Brain, many people on complicated family-building journeys experience loss(es) of life, but also uniquely painful non-death losses. From the loss of fertility to the loss of a healthy pregnancy, the loss of how you thought you’d become a parent to the loss of choice and blissful ignorance, each of these losses, along with the babies you hold in your heart can shake us to our core.
In a society that does not know how to support grieving people, especially grieving parents and parents-to-be, there is tremendous pressure on what grieving should be and should look like. You may hear and feel strong messages to move on, as if talking about the death or non-death losses you’ve experienced is a sign of being stuck in the past.
You may also hear, “you have to let it out!” if you appear to be “too strong”, which rarely results in a deep and meaningful conversation about your lived experiences, and often more pressure to conform to what grieving and processing is supposed to look like.
In none of these scenarios is real grieving happening and eventually, you may find that in your silent or unwitnessed grief, you begin to wonder if you’re grieving or if you’re stuck in a cycle that is no longer healing.
Grief that is healing feels like flowing water
When your grief, and however you express it, feels like flowing water, it can be healing. Healing grief expression does not make your body tight. It does not take your breath away. It is not tied to anxiety, anger or guilt.
There will still be tears, but tears that you can breathe through, not ones that suffocate you. Those tears may leave you sleepy, but you feel a sense of relief, like something has shifted in you. You can breathe without pain.
There will be sadness, but a sadness that you can call upon at will, not one that slaps you across the face when you least expect it. It’s a sadness you can choose to recall as you remember your loss(es) from a place of peace.
There will no longer be triggers, just reminders. While triggers may snatch you down a rabbit hole of darkness, often without warning, reminders are ways of remembering without the overwhelming experience of being right back there. (Dive deeper into this with Delivering Miracles® episode 128.)
When grief becomes frozen
Sometimes, for those who have experienced both death and non-death losses on a complicated family-building journey, grief becomes intertwined with traumatic stress. This is when the flowing water becomes clogged—like a pipe. Some water may trickle around the blockage, but most of it remains stuck behind it.
This is a grief experience where the tears do not bring relief but they often come without your consent. They leave you exhausted and dehydrated, without any relief. There’s no relief with tears.
This is a grief experience where you may even feel scared to think or talk about the loss. You may avoid reminders of your death and non-death losses, fully convinced that this tightness will be yours forever.
It’s hard to remember life before your losses—or the ones you’ve lost—without feeling that clutching grip on your heart. You double over in pain, inundated by inescapable triggers that strike relentlessly, like the mallet in a game of whack-a-mole.
Addressing the trauma comes first
Trauma is, at its core, an injury—a wound. To truly heal, you must tend to the wound first, because your body instinctively knows how to metabolize grief after death and non-death losses. When you do, you’ll find yourself remembering with love instead of pain. You’ll be able to integrate past experiences into the person you’ve become—without retraumatization, and with a newfound sense of peace and acceptance.
Gently begin this journey with our 28-day guided experience in the Body Language Journal.
