Grief

To become healthy again, it is important to permit all feelings to surface. To repress them hurts you, body and soul. To acknowledge feelings is a sign of strength. Some adults still have problems expressing sadness and grief because as children they felt accepted and loved only if they were laughing and happy. Some were punished for crying, or a parent turned away and abandoned them when they expressed unhappiness and pain. We were taught to be tough and we learned well.

But grief, with all its accompanying feelings, is certain to make itself known again and again, one way or another, until you have acknowledged it properly. Feelings that are acknowledged and processed gradually lessen or transform themselves.

The above is an excerpt from Help, Comfort, and Hope AFter Losing Your Baby in Pregnancy or the First Year, by Hannah Lothrup. I just finished reading it and I liked it. Hannah is a psychologist, childbirth educator, grief counselor, lecturer, and is also on the advisory board of SHARE. She draws upon her professional experience to write the book, but also talks about her own grief as a mother who lost a baby in pregnancy.

I found her book empowering — it is filled with quotations from her and other couples’ experiences of loss and validates the wide range of feelings that are felt after a perinatal loss.  There are also suggestions on how to best cope with these feelings and how to say goodbye.  Sweet DH brought it home for me. He borrowed it from our local library, but the above link will take you to Amazon. (I do not earn any referral commission if you click on this link and purchase the book.)