Grief & Motherhood
October is Infant and Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month. It is a chance to recognize the losses that can often feel invisible and to shed light on a type of loss that affects so many. There is still palpable silence around miscarriages that leaves so many women to grieve their losses in isolation instead of grieving in community. In general, I feel like we are pretty terrible as a society around recognizing grief and loss, even more so when it comes to pregnancy loss. I have walked with several friends through the loss of their precious babies in utero, and this gut-wrenching pain deserves to be recognized.
Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of moms on the topic of grief and motherhood. It was not necessarily a topic they were probably looking forward to having, but one that is incredibly important as we enter a season of life where we are responsible for little ones. We can often think that having kids is a time when we have to turn off our own emotions, give until we can’t give anymore, and be superheroes in all areas of our lives. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being a superhero! And from all that I know about attachment and psychology, our kids don’t need superheroes either. They need models for how to navigate the myriad of feelings they too are going to have. So what do we do with grief? It can be scary to tap into if you’ve never explored grief deeply before. The reality is that we all have losses we are holding, whether they are losses due to death, or the loss of something less tangible: relationships, physical changes, job changes, loss of free time and hobbies, and so many others. We celebrate moms for all the sacrifices, but we don’t support them in exploring the emotions around those sacrifices. We’re supposed to focus on the good we have and be grateful. It’s a lot harder to be fully grateful if you don’t allow yourself to explore the dark companion of gratitude too. When we allow ourselves to grieve what is no longer there, or what has changed, we actually allow ourselves to enter even more deeply into what we have to be grateful for.
So what can we do to make room for grief of all kinds in motherhood? Here are some helpful things you can start doing if you are processing big and small losses and need some support:
•Acknowledge it’s there; it isn’t bad or good. Be gentle with yourself.
•If you’re in front of your kid(s), it’s okay to say you feel sad/mad/lonely/etc. and then tell them what you are going to do to help with that feeling (go outside, give yourself a hug, take some deep breaths, let yourself cry). *It’s important not to make our kids feel like it’s their burden to help us out of grief, but we can invite them to witness that we have hard feelings and we know how to get through them.
•Make space to let yourself experience grief (e.g. Cry when you feel like crying, say no to something if you don’t have the capacity, press the “easy” button on hard days, journal, exercise, scream into a pillow).
•Remind yourself that feelings come and go, you can let this feeling out and it will pass.
•If it feels like grief is too big to hold right now, or that it’s causing rifts in your relationships, or making parenting extra hard, therapy might be an important part of your journey to explore.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself if you are exploring a loss for the first time or coming back to something that has been put on the back burner:
1. What are some of the things that deserve space to grieve in this season of motherhood?
2. What narrative have you been telling yourself about your losses? How can you rewrite that narrative? (e.g. this could look like shifting a narrative from, “I should be over this.” to “This person was really important to me, it makes sense that I’m still grieving.”)
3. What is one way you can make space for grief in your busy life?
If you are grieving in this season, or feel like you aren’t allowed to grieve in this season, let this be a moment of permission for you. It’s an investment in your long-term mental health and in your relationships. Because when we take care of ourselves, we show up more fully for the people we love. You and your grief matter.