Breaking the Silence: Tending the Heart After Miscarriage

There is a particular kind of grief that so many mothers carry quietly — folded away, unspoken, tucked beneath the everyday. It is the grief of a pregnancy that did not continue. A baby who was loved from the very first knowing, and then was gone.

Miscarriage touches an enormous number of families — somewhere between one in four and one in five known pregnancies ends this way. And yet it remains one of the last true taboos of womanhood. In a national survey on public perceptions of miscarriage, of those who had experienced one, 47% felt guilty, 41% felt they had done something wrong, 41% felt alone, and 28% felt ashamed — despite the fact that almost none of these losses had anything to do with anything the mother did. Nearly half of women affected said they felt less alone the moment someone else quietly shared their own story.

This is the heart of it. Silence breeds shame. Speaking breeds belonging.

We don’t yet have the rituals, the language, or the cultural permission that this loss deserves. There is no card in the shop for it. Often there is no name for the baby spoken aloud, no gathering of women, no acknowledgement that a mother has crossed a threshold at all. So her grief goes underground — and it can live there, quietly shaping her, for years.

This Was Still a Birth

One of my teachers, Jane Hardwicke Collings offers a way of understanding this loss. She teaches that every pregnancy results in a birth — whether that birth is a full-term homebirth, a caesarean, a termination, or a miscarriage. How a woman experiences that birth becomes part of the shape she carries forward as a mother.

This reframe matters enormously. A miscarriage is not “nothing.” It is not a pregnancy that failed to become real. It is a birth — a threshold crossed, a rite of passage lived, an initiation into motherhood every bit as real as any other. Your body opened. Your identity shifted. You became, in that moment, a mother to that baby, however briefly they were with you.

Jane’s work also speaks to the idea of the birth imprint — the understanding that both mother and baby are shaped, energetically and emotionally, by the way a birth unfolds. Just as a baby imprints on their birth experience, a mother imprints on hers too. An unacknowledged, unwitnessed, unsupported loss can leave an imprint of isolation and disempowerment that quietly colours how a woman moves through the rest of her mothering journey — including pregnancies and births that follow. This is part of why unprocessed grief from an early loss deserves the same tenderness, ritual, and witnessing we would offer any birth. You can find more of Jane’s teachings on rites of passage and the birth imprint at janehardwickecollings.com.

What the Research Tells Us

It isn’t only ancestral wisdom pointing to how significant this loss is — the research affirms it too. A comprehensive 2024–25 review of the psychiatric impact of miscarriage found that within the first six weeks after a loss, around a third of women experience clinically significant anxiety, roughly 30% experience depression, and almost as many report high levels of stress. Post-traumatic stress symptoms affect close to 29% of women at one month, and are still present in around 18% of women at nine months. Complicated, unresolved grief affects up to 30% of parents.

What stands out most is how long this can live in the body and mind if it isn’t tended — some studies have found meaningful psychological distress still present more than two years after a loss. And still, the same body of research names the culture of silence and stigma around pregnancy loss as one of the very things making recovery harder, because it removes the social witnessing and validation that grief needs in order to move.

None of this is offered to frighten you. It’s offered as permission.

If you are further down the track from your loss than you feel you’re “supposed” to be, and grief still visits — you are not broken, and you are not alone. This is simply what an unwitnessed rite of passage can look like, and it can still be tended, gently, from wherever you are now.

Ten Ways to Nurture Your Mind, Heart and Spirit After Loss

The physical body matters enormously in recovery — the nervous system holds so much of this story too — but here I want to stay close to the inner landscape: the mind, the heart, the spirit. Take what calls to you, leave what doesn’t. There is no timeline here.

1. Name your baby, even just for yourself. Giving your baby a name, or simply acknowledging them as a being who existed, is a small but powerful act of validation. It says: this was real, and so is my grief. Some people believe a soul will come in again should the stars align, so naming Baby might not feel right. You could use an endearment.
2. Journal, messily. Expressive writing — putting your rawest thoughts and feelings onto the page, without worrying about how it reads — has been studied for decades and shown to genuinely support people moving through grief and trauma, easing anxiety and helping fragmented, overwhelming feelings settle into something more coherent. You might try Timed Journaling fifteen to twenty minutes, a few days in a row, simply writing what you feel. No one else ever needs to read it. In my Journal I offer space for grief journalling.
3. Create a ritual or altar. Even a candle, a stone, a photograph of a scan (yes, you can ask for an ultrasound picture even if it’s showing the gestational sac and you cannot see Baby), or a nature mandala somewhere quiet can give your grief a physical home to visit, rather than carrying it everywhere, all the time. Do not underestimate the power of ritual–an intentional moment (you may choose to combine some of these Ten Ways). 
4. Speak the loss aloud to someone safe. Whether that’s a trusted friend, a counsellor, a doula, or a grief circle — being witnessed interrupts the isolation that so often deepens this grief.
5. Let anger and guilt visit without moving in. These feelings are common and don’t mean anything went wrong with your grieving. Notice them, let them be felt, and gently remind yourself of what is true — this was not caused by anything you did.
6. Mark the anniversary, in your own way. A walk, a swim, planting something, lighting a candle. Anticipating these days and choosing how to meet them can soften their sting considerably.
7. Seek out other women’s stories. Hearing “me too” from another mother is one of the most consistently reported sources of comfort after miscarriage. You are joining a much larger sisterhood than our culture lets you see.
8. Work with a grief-literate, perinatal counsellor or Reconnected Birthing Practitioner. Loss of this kind sometimes needs more than we can offer ourselves, and that is not a failure — it is wisdom. Look for someone specifically trained.
9. Reconnect with your spiritual or contemplative practice. Whether that’s prayer, meditation, time in nature, or ceremony, these practices can hold the parts of this grief that words struggle to reach — the questions of meaning, soul, and why.
10. Consider your loss as an initiation, not an interruption. As Jane Hardwicke Collings’ work reminds us, this was a birth and a rite of passage in its own right. Ask gently: what has this birth asked of me? What have I learned about my own strength, softness, or capacity to love, in surviving it? This doesn’t erase the grief — but it can, help you find meaning inside it.

A Gentle Closing

If you are reading this in the thick of a fresh loss, or in a grief that has quietly lived in you for years, I want you to know: this deserves to be spoken of. It deserves ritual. It deserves witnessing. You are not “too sensitive,” too far along, or making too much of it. You experienced a birth, and like every birth, it shaped you.

May you find, moon by moon, a little more softness, a little more company, and a little more peace.

My Story

I recently experienced my second miscarriage. It was vastly different from my first pregnancy, which I birthed naturally before I even knew I was pregnant — though I still experienced hormonal shifts and unplaced grief at the time. My third pregnancy had a long, intentional, natural conception. A baby I was already calling my little miracle. It was an incredibly hard loss.

I had a natural birth at home that ended in the emergency department. I lost too much blood. I had started spotting, so at 11 weeks I went for my first scan. “You have an empty sac,” I was told — a blighted ovum, where my baby had stopped growing at seven weeks but my body still thought it was pregnant. The ultrasound experience severely lacked humanity. I did some research and found out more on my missed miscarriage. At 13 weeks, I birthed. The two weeks in between were full of grief, shock and confusion.

I was with my sister for her postpartum at the time, and I held on to her healthy baby to fill my void, embracing the wonder of her little girl. When I got home to my partner and daughter (6-year-old), a whole new wave of processing hit — the dreams of growing our family crushed, the reality that we may not have another child settling in.

Luckily, when I was home, I saw a kind GP to help me with continuity of the process, among many other nurses and hospital staff I was grateful for.

It’s been a real blessing to be working with Jane Hardwicke Collings through this time–through a course I was already deep in called Earth Woman. Her drum journeys, teachings on trusting the process, and the inner work around my birth imprint and the summer season of mothering were deeply impactful in my healing. As was sharing my story with trusted women — many of whom shared their own losses with me in return — along with journaling, my spiritual practice, and ritual.

My partner and I did a Reconnected Birth Processing session with Bridget Lynn. I really recommend this practice to unravel further processing. It unearthed my key sore points, which, I could then work with to reframe, accept or bring a wider lense to. As part of this, Bridget did a powerful journey with me back through receiving the news and birthing. I was able to listen to and feel my body, and offer helpful messages back and bring safety in, and focus on the deep connection I had with my partner during the birth. I was able to let go of the long fertility journey and bring in a higher version of myself to hold me during the rebirth.

My family then did a ritual on the new moon to honour our baby as part of our family and journey. I believe, this was really healing for my daughter and helped bring celebration and closure.

My physical and emotional healing continues today but I am proud of how I faced it head-on and how much it is processed. I’ll continue to show up for myself. 

Thank you for listening.

This article is offered for information and reflection, and is not a substitute for professional grief counselling or medical care. If your grief feels overwhelming or unrelenting, please reach out to a perinatal-loss-informed counsellor or your GP.