Versa - A Quietly Confronting Portrayal of Stillbirth and Grief

There is something quietly confronting about the 11-minute animated Disney movie, ‘Versa’, not because it demands attention in a dramatic way, but because it draws you into a space many instinctively turn away from; the devastating stillness that follows the death of a baby just before birth.

Versa helps illustrate the emotional experiences of Malcon Pierce and his wife Keely Tateossian, whose son, Cooper, died at full term on his due date. Theirs is a loss that defies comprehension and disrupts the natural order we expect of life. The film holds this reality with a quiet emotional honesty that is both difficult to witness and hard to turn away from.

The Moment Everything Shatters

What stayed with me most was a single moment in which Keely’s character’s heart shatters, not metaphorically but visually; the fracture spreading through her body, cracking her into pieces.  Though she stays visually intact, she becomes an image that carries a particular kind of truth for me.

Personal Experience of Stillbirth

When my own daughter was stillborn at full term, the closest language I could find was that everything in me had shattered. It was not just my heart that broke, but my entire being - my body, my mind, and my sense of identity and future. In the moment of learning of her death, it felt as though I had been reduced to fragments, left facing the impossible task of piecing myself back together, atom by atom, amid devastation and shock. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the process of rebuilding would be daunting, and I felt I was struggling, trying in some way to survive the unsurvivable.

There is a particular quality to full term loss, arriving at the exact moment life is meant to begin, when the body is ready and the world is waiting, and then everything collapses in a way that feels both unreal and frighteningly absolute.

Different Grieving Styles in Couples After Loss

What Versa captures so carefully is not only grief itself, but the divergence of grief within a couple.

Keely’s character turns towards her son (depicted by an empty cradle), towards connection and an ongoing relationship that continues beyond death, and even in her devastation there is movement towards meaning and towards holding Cooper as part of her life.

Malcon’s character moves differently, appearing to run away from Keely; or running, perhaps, to protect himself from the magnitude of what has happened.

This is where the film becomes particularly important, because it illustrates something many couples come to learn the hard way, that there is no single way to grieve.

In the aftermath of loss, especially one as profound as stillbirth, couples often find themselves grieving out of sync, with one partner often needing to speak, remember, and hold onto connection, while the other may become quieter, more internal, more busy or even avoidant. Although neither response is wrong, the difference between them can feel like ever increasing distance or even rejection.

More often than not, these responses are simply different expressions of the same underlying pain, as each person finds their own method of coping.

Kintsugi Healing and Continuing Bonds After Stillbirth

The film’s use of Japanese Kintsugi philosophy offers a powerful lens, suggesting that what is broken is not discarded but repaired with gold; that the fractures are not hidden but honoured, and that something can be both broken and whole at the same time.

We see this not only in Keely’s character’s journey but in the couple’s gradual reconnection, as their second child arrives into a family already changed by loss, where the gold remains visible and Cooper is still part of their story - where healing does not mean becoming the same in grief, but becoming more able to understand one another within it.

Why Understanding Grief Matters in Relationships

One of the things I often say in my work is that we do not know how we will grieve until we are grieving, as grief has its own intelligence and moves through each person in its own way, often defying expectation.

Recognising and making space for those differences can shape whether couples grow together or begin to drift apart.

For those navigating pregnancy loss, or any profound grief, this is often where the real work lies - not in fixing each other’s pain, but in learning how to stand alongside it and remain connected even when internal experiences look very different.

Support for Individuals and Couples After

Pregnancy Loss

This is also the space I hold in my practice, working with individuals and couples facing loss, trauma, and relationship strain; helping to make sense of these differences, soften misunderstandings, and gently rebuild connection where it has been stretched or fractured.

Because while grief may feel shattering, it does not have to leave us alone, and in the careful, patient work of rebuilding, something new can begin to emerge, not instead of what was lost, but alongside it.

Darrell

Contact Me

https://www.onthecouchcounselling.com.au/