When Healing Has Years Behind It: Understanding Hindsight Bias After Pregnancy Loss

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 changed. Twenty-one years from the moment I learned how thin the line is between life and death, of how fragile life could be, how quickly joy can collapse, and how deeply loss can slice itself into the body.

And with those 21 years comes something that people grieving right now don’t have yet: time.

Not “time heals all wounds” time but time that allows space for perspective, learning, integration, and self-understanding to slowly form. Time that can soften the edges. Time that can reveal things that are invisible when the pain is new.

Hindsight Bias

This is where hindsight bias sometimes shows up. It’s that quiet, misleading sense of “I should’ve known… I should’ve trusted… I can see it clearly now.”  But the truth is: I only see it clearly now because I survived it, lived through it, unravelled it, and spent years piecing myself back together.

Someone grieving today does not have the gift - or the burden - of hindsight yet.

And that matters.

What 21 Years of Healing Have Taught Me

1. My Body Was Never the Enemy

After loss, it’s so easy to feel betrayed by your own body. I remember feeling like my body had failed me, failed my baby, failed my family. But over time, I learned how deeply my body held the stories I couldn’t yet speak. The tension, the numbness, the hypervigilance - these were not signs of failure, but signs of profound love and protection.

Now, with years behind me, I can say: My body was doing its best with impossible circumstances.

But I couldn’t have known that then.

2. My Mind Tried to Make Sense of the Senseless

Early catastrophic grief rewired my thinking. The “what ifs” and “should haves” felt endless and punishing. My inner critic was loud. My fear was constant.  Now I understand that my mind wasn’t broken - it was trying to build meaning, trying to regain control in a world that suddenly felt unpredictable and terrifying.

With distance, I’ve learned to meet my thoughts with gentleness instead of judgement. But back then? I didn’t have that capacity yet. Very few do in the early days.

3. My Relationships Were Stretched and Reshaped

Grief exposes fault lines and reveals strengths. Some relationships softened and deepened; others couldn’t hold the weight of what had happened.  Two decades later, I can understand why. I can talk about communication, needs, boundaries, nervous systems,

and patterns.

But at the time, I only knew that I felt alone,

different, and changed.

Healing taught me that relationships aren’t meant to stay frozen where trauma left them.

They evolve, one way or another - and so do we.

4. I Learned Strength Doesn’t Mean “Unaffected”

People sometimes assume that because I’ve gone on to have successful pregnancies, or because I now support others through loss, I must have “healed” in a linear way.

But strength doesn’t mean untouched.

Strength is crying years later when a due date passes silently. Strength is holding space for others while remembering your own story. Strength is knowing you don’t “get over” loss - you grow around it.

5. My Story Makes Sense Now - But It Didn’t Then

This is the heart of hindsight bias. Today, looking back with 21 years of growth, therapy, reflection, and lived experience, my story has coherence. I can see the patterns, the lessons, the resilience I didn’t know I had.

But someone grieving today is still in the middle of their story. There is no clarity yet. No clean narrative. No integrated meaning.

And that’s not a failure. That’s grief.

Why I Share This

I share my story not to say “I got through it, so you will too,” but to honour the truth that early grief is a world of its own.

If you are grieving now, please know:

You are not meant to have my perspective.

You are not meant to feel wise or grounded or certain.

You are not meant to “see the lesson.”

You are not meant to be where I am.

You are exactly where you are, and that is valid.

Your nervous system, mind, body, and relationships are responding to something enormous.

None of it is wrong. None of it is weakness. None of it is a lack of insight.

You simply haven’t lived the years yet.

A Final Word: Healing Is Not the Passing of Time - It’s What Time Allows

Healing happens in layers, setbacks, surprising moments of softness, and gradual rebuilding. It’s slow. It’s personal. And it never asks you to rush. I may have 21 years behind me, but I still carry my babies with me.  I still learn from what happened.  I still grow around the incredible love and the awful loss.

Wherever you are in your journey, your experience is real, valid, and deserving of compassion - especially from yourself.

If you need support as you navigate pregnancy loss, trauma recovery, or the emotional complexities of pregnancy after loss, I’m here to walk with you, at your pace, with no pressure to be anywhere other than where you are, right now.

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