One of the most painful parts of grief is not always the grief itself. Sometimes it is the silence that can begin to grow around it. After miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, or difficult pregnancy experiences, many mothers quietly notice the same thing. People who once felt close suddenly seem uncertain. Conversations become awkward. Invitations slow down. Some friends stop checking in altogether, not because they are cruel, but because they simply do not know how to s

As human beings, we tend to organise life around an expected sequence of events. We anticipate beginnings before endings. We expect birth to precede death. We expect a life to unfold gradually through relationship, experience, identity and belonging before its eventual ending arrives. But what happens when death comes before birth?

I recently attended a webinar on grief in the workplace, facilitated by Grief First Aid, and it prompted a deeper reflection on how loss is carried into professional spaces. Grief does not remain neatly outside the office door. It arrives with people, sits quietly beside them, and often goes unseen or unspoken. I recalled how it was for my husband to go back to work carrying his grief over the death of our daughter, and I wondered if, 22 years later, whether anything had chan

Why it’s ok to feel Joy at Christmas For many people who live alongside the death of someone they love, there’s an unspoken rule that grief should hurt - especially at Christmas - like there’s an expectation that grief should be front and centre of your life, forever. But…over time…something quietly is taking place. You notice yourself laughing. You enjoy the taste of food. You feel present and more connected to life. You may even realise that your loved one is not at the fo

When I speak openly about pregnancy after stillbirth and miscarriage, people sometimes hear a story with a beginning, middle, and hopeful end. What is harder to see is the decades in between - the raw, unfiltered years where nothing felt resolved, where my nervous system was stretched thin, and where my relationship with my body, mind, and the people I loved was constantly being rewritten. I’m 21 years from my first birth trauma now. Twenty-one years from the day everything c

There are many things’ people don’t tell you about grief, but one of the hardest truths is this: after someone you love dies, your life becomes threaded with The Terrible Maths. You count everything. Not out of choice, not out of ritual - but because time suddenly becomes the only thing tying you to them, and yet it also becomes the thing taking you further away. Time seems to change You mark the minutes, because in the beginning that’s all you can do. Minutes since you las

What especially resonates with me about grief is the part about crying. You know, those moments when tears just appear, and your first instinct - or maybe someone else’s - is to hand over a tissue. We do it because we care, right? But sometimes what we’re really conveying, without even meaning to, is: “Don’t cry”, “Please stop - this feels uncomfortable.” Tears aren't weakness And here’s the thing: crying is one of the most human, sacred, and physiologically wise things we ca