Slowing Down to Grieve Pregnancy Loss: Honoring Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month
There is a silent kind of heartbreak that happens when the world keeps moving, but yours has stopped. The emails keep flooding in. The school drop-offs still occur. It feels like you are moving through the mud. If you have experienced a pregnancy loss, you may be familiar with the feeling.
Other people don’t always see your grief, but it is there—tightening around your chest, catching you off guard when the house is quiet, or showing up in the moments when you least expected.
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month; a time meant to honor and remember. But it is also a dedicated time to acknowledge a loss in a culture that rarely slows down, even for grief.
The Unspoken Pressure to “Find Meaning” After Loss
We live in a society that rewards productivity and busyness. Sometimes grieving parents will feel the pressure to “get back to normal” or “find meaning” in their loss.
After a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death, many parents find themselves back at work or juggling responsibilities before their minds and bodies have had time to process what happened. Society often sends the message to “stay strong,” “find the silver lining,” or “trust that time heals.” Well-meaning but painful comments like “at least you got pregnant” or “you can try again” fail to recognize the reality of grief—the way it lingers, reshapes you, and demands space and time.
The rush to feel better is often about other people’s discomfort and their inability to sit with your pain. But grief has no timeline. There is no “normal” to return to after pregnancy or infant loss—your world has simply changed. When daily life leaves no room for grief, emotional exhaustion, numbness, and darkness can set in. Allowing space to grieve is a crucial part of healing. Slowing down isn’t indulgent; it’s essential.
Grief After Pregnancy Loss Is a Slow, Nonlinear Process
You may have days that feel steady, followed by sudden waves of sadness that catch you off guard. This is normal. There is no finish line when it comes to healing after loss. Instead, grief is a relationship with what you’ve lost that can evolve over time. Over time, grief can shift from something that overwhelms to something that becomes integrated in your life, reminding you of the love that still exists for what was lost. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting; it means learning to live alongside the loss with compassion for yourself and the life you’re rebuilding.
A client once described it beautifully: grief doesn’t shrink or disappear — it stays the same size. What changes is everything around it. People often imagine grief as a ball inside a mason jar. They assume the ball gets smaller with time, but really, the ball stays the same. It’s the jar — your life — that grows larger. You build more around the grief: new experiences, moments of joy, and space to hold both the pain and the living that continues.
Image inspired by Lois Tonkin’s (1996) “Growing around grief” model
Slowing Down Doesn’t Mean Stopping
In a world that values productivity over presence, perhaps a small voice is saying to you, “don’t lose time, start trying again” or jumping back in is the only way to heal. Our society tells you that slowing down is impossible. But that is not true. Slowing down doesn’t always have to mean taking weeks away from work or family. Slowing is about including small but meaningful rituals intentionally, like:
A quiet breath in the car before walking into work.
Saying your baby’s name out loud, even if no one else is listening.
Declining an invitation you don’t have the energy for.
A short walk without your phone, where you can let your thoughts catch up with you.
Making space in therapy each week to sit in grief with your therapist
Honoring the month of October for your loss
These small acts are ways of saying: My grief matters. My baby mattered. I matter.
A Collective Remembering
Every year on October 15th, families across the world light candles for Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. For a brief moment, across time zones and busy lives, a quiet glow connects parents who understand this kind of loss.
There’s power in knowing that you’re not alone and finding community in the shared act of remembering.
Get Support
Pregnancy and infant loss changes you. It slows certain parts of you down, whether you want it to or not. This October, consider giving yourself permission to meet grief where it lives—in the real, imperfect pauses of your everyday life.
At Nurture Therapy, we specialize in maternal mental health, including grief and loss support for miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, and infant death. Our therapists offer compassionate, trauma-informed care—in person in Chicago and virtually across multiple states—to help parents navigate loss at their own pace.
Book a consultation to get support from a team that understands this kind of grief.